The outcome

Get into the official Microsoft Foundry experience with the right account and a setup you understand.

Microsoft Foundry is a enterprise AI application, model, agent, evaluation, and governance platform on Azure. Building, evaluating, deploying, and governing enterprise generative AI applications and agents across models, tools, data, and Azure services. This guide narrows that broad capability into one repeatable outcome, with checkpoints that keep the source material and your judgment in the loop.

Before you begin

Set the boundary before the tool starts.

Choose one real task, identify who will use the result, and decide what evidence or test will make the result acceptable. Gather only the source material needed for that task. If the work contains confidential, personal, regulated, or client-owned information, confirm that the platform and account are approved before sharing it.

Troiana principle

AI should make the work easier to inspect. If the workflow removes the source, the owner, or the review step, redesign the workflow.

Step by step

A workflow you can repeat.

  1. 01

    Start at https://ai.azure.com/ and confirm the domain before entering account or payment information.

  2. 02

    For desktop use, follow the official download link. Current availability: Microsoft Foundry is available through its web portal, Azure APIs, SDKs, CLI tooling, and development integrations; its earlier name was Azure AI Foundry..

  3. 03

    An Azure subscription, supported region, Foundry resource and project, approved model access, least-privilege Microsoft Entra identity, and billing controls.

  4. 04

    Sign in with the account you intend to keep using, then review plan, data, notification, and permission settings.

  5. 05

    Run one low-risk test task before connecting sensitive files, repositories, or workspace data.

Working standard

What good use looks like.

  • Use official download pages.
  • Review permissions during setup.
  • Keep installers and applications updated.

Foundry spans models, agents, tools, projects, identities, networks, and billable Azure resources whose availability varies by region. Isolate projects, use least-privilege RBAC and managed identities, approve model provenance and terms, classify data, validate integrated and external safety controls, test the full application, monitor diagnostics and cost, and version every model, prompt, evaluator, and guardrail change.

Official references

Check the current product documentation.

Features, plan limits, availability, and data controls change. These official pages are the starting points used for this collection.