Create a Foundry Resource and Project

Lab overview

Lay the foundation for the Contoso Knowledge Assistant. In this lab, you create a resource group, deploy a Microsoft Foundry resource with its first project, grant yourself the Foundry User role needed to build inside it, and open the project in the Foundry portal. Everything else in this series lives in what you create here.

Why you'd do this

Microsoft Foundry is where you build and run AI agents on Azure, and everything in it hangs off two things: a Foundry resource and a project. The resource is the Azure object that owns the billing, the networking, the identity, and the encryption settings; the project is the workspace inside it where you deploy models, upload documents, and build agents. One resource can hold several projects, which is how a team keeps the help desk assistant separate from, say, a sales chatbot while sharing the same governance settings.

Creating the resource through the portal wizard, rather than clicking "new project" from inside the Foundry portal, is the right move when you care about where the resource lands and how it is governed. The wizard walks you through storage, inbound and outbound networking, managed identity, and encryption before anything is deployed. Accepting the defaults is fine for a lab, but in a real tenant this is the moment you would lock down public access or point the resource at a customer-managed key.

The role assignment at the end matters because being an Owner on the subscription is not enough to build in Foundry. The portal checks for the Foundry User role on the resource before it lets you deploy a model or create an agent, so granting it to yourself here saves a confusing "you don't have permission" wall in the next lab. You'll see this pattern again in the Foundry roles lab later in the series.

If you're preparing for a certification, this maps to the AI-901 objectives on AI agents and their components and the AI-103 material on creating agents in Foundry Agent Service.

Lab details

• Resource Group: rg-contoso-assistant
• Region: East US 2
• Foundry Resource: contoso-foundry-01
• Project: contoso-knowledge-assistant
• Role Assignment: Foundry User

Learning objectives

1. Create a resource group and deploy a Microsoft Foundry resource with its first project.
2. Review the governance settings in the Foundry resource wizard.
3. Assign the Foundry User role required to build inside a project.
4. Open the project in the Foundry portal and locate its endpoints and keys.

Exam relevance

• AI-901 — Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals — AI agents and their components, grounding with your own data.
• AI-103 — Developing AI Apps and Agents on Azure — create a prompt agent in Foundry Agent Service, agent instructions, tools, and versions.

How this lab fits into the project

This is lab 1 of 12 in the Contoso Knowledge Assistant project. Contoso's IT help desk fields the same policy questions all day, so over this series you'll build an AI agent that answers them from the company's own documents, then ground it, secure it, evaluate it, monitor it, and publish it to Teams. This lab creates the Foundry resource and project that every later lab builds on, so start here.

Step-by-step instructions

1. Create the resource group:
   • Click the top search bar, type resource groups, and select Resource groups.
   • Click + Create.
   • Enter rg-contoso-assistant as the name and accept the default region of East US 2.
   • Click Review + create, then Create.
2. Start the Foundry resource wizard:
   • In the top search bar, type Foundry and select Microsoft Foundry.
   • In the left menu, expand Use with Foundry and select Foundry.
   • Click + Create.
   • Select rg-contoso-assistant from the resource group dropdown.
   • Open the region dropdown, scroll down, and select East US 2.
   • Enter contoso-foundry-01 as the name.
   • Double-click the default project name and enter contoso-knowledge-assistant.
3. Review the governance tabs and deploy:
   • Click Next to leave the Basics tab.
   • Accept the default Storage, Inbound Networking, Outbound Networking, Identity, and Encryption settings, clicking Next on each.
   • Leave Tags blank and click Review + create.
   • Review the settings and click Create.
   • Wait for the deployment to complete.
4. Verify the resource and grant yourself build permissions:
   • Click Go to resource.
   • On Overview, confirm the provisioning state shows Succeeded.
   • Click Click here to view endpoints and review the endpoints and keys.
   • Click Access control (IAM).
   • Click + Add, then Add role assignment.
   • Search for and select Foundry User, then click Next.
   • Click + Select members, search for your account, select it, and click Select.
   • Click Review + assign twice and wait for the assignment to complete.
5. Open the project in the Foundry portal:
   • Click Overview, then Go to Foundry portal.
   • Confirm the New Foundry toggle is on at the top of the page.
   • Confirm contoso-knowledge-assistant shows in the upper-left.
   • Note the project endpoint, the OpenAI endpoint, and the API key.
   • Click Manage, then Resource details.
   • Note the resources deployed with the project.