Orchestrate durable AI workflows with Azure Durable Functions

Intermediate
Developer
Azure Functions

Learn how Azure Durable Functions preserves state and coordinates long-running AI workflows. Design deterministic orchestrations that process work in parallel, wait for human decisions, and recover from failures without duplicating external side effects.

Learning objectives

After completing this module, you'll be able to:

  • Explain how Durable Functions coordinates reliable, long-running AI workflows.
  • Separate deterministic orchestration logic from activity functions that call AI models and external services.
  • Implement fan-out/fan-in processing for independent documents or media items.
  • Build human approval flows with external events and durable timers.
  • Apply retries, timeouts, idempotency, and compensation to failed workflow steps.

Prerequisites

Before beginning this module, you should have:

  • Programming experience with Python.
  • Basic understanding of Azure Functions and cloud computing concepts.
  • Familiarity with asynchronous programming and distributed systems concepts.