Azure on Jason Haley

Agentic RAG Chronicles

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing: The Agentic RAG Chronicles (Blog Series)

Last year I chronicled several RAG Demos with the idea I would have a documented place to return to when I was looking for specify RAG features. Having those demos documented and all the reference links in one location really was useful for me - so I am going to do the same thing this year, but with Agentic RAG components.

Agentic RAG

Last year when I was learning RAG, that technique became known as Standard RAG or Semantic RAG. At its core, it’s a system that uses semantic search—understanding meaning rather than just matching keywords—to find relevant information, then feeds that information to an LLM to answer a user’s question. When you first build one of these systems, the results feel almost magical. But it doesn’t take long before you encounter questions the system can’t answer using semantic search alone.

Virtual Boston Azure AI - Microsoft Build Recap

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last night Bill, Udai, Veronika and I gave our top picks from Microsoft Build at the Virtual Boston Azure AI meetup.

In order to not overlap topics, we each picked areas to cover - mine was Copilot and Copilot Studio.

My picks:

Copilot Wave 2 Spring release features – this was announced in April but still hasn’t landed for us. You’ll know when this lands due to the look of Copilot changing. The navigation will be on the left side of the screen with the new release (instead of the right where it is now).

eShopSupport Series: EvaluationTests Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the seventh part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

NOTE: This entry will make the most sense to you if you’ve first read eShopSupport: Evaluator Project

EvaluationTests Project

The EvaluationTests project is a recently added xUnit Test Project that uses the new Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Evaluation packages highlighted in this blog: Evaluate the quality of your AI applications with ease. I think the idea is to replace the Evaluator project but, as is, it doesn’t run all 500 evaluation questions in the dev folder (which is good since it would not be cheap to do unless you are running locally).

Virtual Boston Azure Lunchtime November 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today at lunchtime Bill Wilder and I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. Our talks were based on the same material we presented on Tuesday night, however I introduced eShopSupport as well today.

The recording of the session can be found on the (Lunchtime editions) Boston Azure YouTube channel.

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

My part of the presentation PDF can be downloaded here.

Virtual Boston Azure November 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night Bill Wilder and I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. Our talks were about adding GenAI to .NET applications. My portion was mostly demos that focused on Azure SQL’s new native VECTOR support, Entity Framework Core and Semantic Kernel.

The recording of the session can be found on the Boston Azure YouTube channel.

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

eShopSupport Series: Customer Web UI Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the sixth part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

CustomerWebUI Project

The CustomerWebUI project is a Blazor application used to capture support ticket information from customers. It is one of the two user interface projects in the solution that highlight how to adding some AI functionality into business applications can be useful. The project is located under the src folder:

In this entry I’ll cover the functionality the web application provides, a few things I found interesting and some thoughts on improvements.

eShopSupport Series: Python Inference Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifth part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

PythonInference Project

The PythonInference Project is a python project that provides a web API to classify the case type when a new customer support ticket is entered in the system. It does this by passing the user’s comment to the API, which uses a local model from Hugging Face (cross-encoder/nli-MiniLM2-L6-H768) to classify the text.

eShopSupport Series: Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

The Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

Unlike the other blog entries in this eShopSupport Series, this one is going to cover two projects in the solution: AppHost and ServiceDefaults - both are important for the Aspire local development experience. These projects are located under the src folder:

In this entry I’ll cover the details of how the AppHost and ServiceDefaults projects are used in the local development environment, a few things I found interesting and some thoughts on improvements.

Techbash 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week I presented at the TechBash conference in Pocono Manor, PA. All the resources for the conference are available on the TechBash GitHub repo. Below are links to my presentations specifically.

It was great to see companies sending their employees to conferences again. This was my first time at TechBash, and I finally got to meet Alvin Ashcraft in person (the Morning Dew). I also met a bunch of people from the Philly area and around Pennsylvania, but there were attendees from all over-even a couple of guys from Panama!

eShopSupport Series: Evaluator Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

Evaluator Project

The Evaluator project is a console application used to evaluate the chat portion of the application provided by the AssistantApi in the Backend project. The Evaluator application uses the questions in the evalquestions.json file to test the assistant API and scores the results it returns against the answers in that JSON file. This gives you the ability to measure the quality of the chat functionality - which is an important thing to do when you are building application functionality that depends on an LLM.

eShopSupport Series: DataIngestor Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second part of the eShopSupport Series which covers the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

DataIngestor Project

The DataIngestor is a console application that will process the data files created by the DataGenerator - it does not ingest the data into any of the databases. I mentioned in the last entry about the DataGenerator that you didn’t need to use the DataGenerator because there are two sets of generated files provided in the github repo: dev and test. What I failed to mention is those files are result of both the DataGenerator and the DataIngestor being run. So you also don’t have to use the DataIngestor.

eShopSupport Series: DataGenerator Project

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first part of my eShopSupport Series which looks into the details of the eShopSupport GitHub repository.

DataGenerator Project

The DataGenerator is a console application that will generate multiple types of seed data files for loading into the application or to use when evaluating the question answering functionality. However, you don’t have to use the DataGenerator - there are two sets of generated files provided in the github repo: dev and test.

In this entry I will provide some detail of what the DataGenerator application does, some interesting things about it and a few things I’d like to change.

Virtual Boston Azure August 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night I spoke at the Virtual Boston Azure meetup. The talk was about the Azure Developer CLI and geared towards developers.

The recording of the session can be found on the Boston Azure YouTube channel.

Talk: What is the Azure Dev CLI (AZD) and How Can You Use It?

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

The resource slides:

I added this slide after the presentation with links I mentioned after the recording was stopped:

eShopSupport Series

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing: The eShopSupport Series

In case you missed this week’s .NET Conf Focus on AI you can find all the videos on the dotnet YouTube channel. The one I want to point out here is: Better Together: .NET Aspire and Semantic Kernel with Steve Sanderson and Matthew Bolanos.

Steve’s portion of the talk is a distilled version of his NDC talk earlier this year: How to add genuinely useful AI to your webapp (not just chatbots) where he introduced the eShopSupport project. If you are a .NET developer looking for ways to use AI in real world applications - you should absolutely watch that video.

Wisconsin .NET User Group

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday night I spoke at the Wisconsin .NET User Group near Milwaukee, WI. I was nice to meet so many .NET developers interested in RAG and AI.

To carry on the tradition from my Memphis talk, I gave the presentation a local look using images related to Milwaukee generated from Bing/create.

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

One of my demos failed to deploy before the talk, but I don’t think it was missed due to having so many good questions. It was really nice meeting a user group with so many core members. Plus the pizza was really good!

Boston Azure June 2024

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last night was the Season of AI presentation. We started with Bill Wilder presenting the fundamentals of Generative AI and quick introduction to Azure AI Studio, then I finished up with a .NET code walkthrough implement Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) using Semantic Kernel.

It was nice to see a lot of regular faces and meet several new people.

Demo Code

The demo code is on my GitHub repo BostonAzure-June2024 under a subdirectory.

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

This is the fifth C# demo in The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series) and has the most extensive use of Semantic Kernel out of all the demos I’ve reviewed.

The use of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is different with this project than the other demos I’ve reviewed - mainly because RAG is just one of its features.

With this demo, I also took the time to configure the optional authentication so I could play with the MS Graph plugin … and WOW! Just adding the web searcher and MS Graph plugin really make this a powerful demo app. It gives me a lot of ideas for my own projects.

Semantic Kernel Hello World WebSearchEnginePlugin

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: The Bing Search APIS are being deprecated. See the announcement for more details: Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025. I have updated the post and corresponding Github code to use the Brave connector instead.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I’d written my last of these blogs, mainly due to me getting more in depth with Semantic Kernel. However, after I watched Will Velida’s video Using Bing Search API in the Semantic Kernel SDK … I couldn’t help but wonder what the API calls were behind the scenes. Will does a great job at explaining how to use the plugin and the Bing resource needed to make calls to the search API, so I won’t get into that part of it - I want to focus on the usefulness and API calls made by the plugin.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 2 - (Deprecated)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: Planners have been deprecated. See this Semantic Kernel blog for more detail: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations

Last week in the Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 1 entry, I used the Handlebars planner to implement the sample Hello World functionality and then looked at the token difference between using a saved plan vs. generating a plan. In this entry I use the Function Calling Stepwise Planner to create the sample Hello World functionality and compare it to the implementation in the Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3 entry.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 1 - (Deprecated)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: Planners have been deprecated. See this Semantic Kernel blog for more detail: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations

A few weeks ago in the Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3 blog entry, I showed how to use OpenAI Function Calling. The last half of that entry was all about how to view the response and request JSON going back and forth to OpenAI, which detailed four API calls. In this entry I look at using the Handlebars Planner to accomplish the same functionality. Then I’ll show the request and response JSON for both using a saved plan as well as having the LLM create a plan and end with a token usage comparison.

Memphis Azure User Group

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday night I spoke at the Memphis Azure User Group, it was nice to meet some people in person and see how excited others are about finding valuable ways to work GenAI into their applications.

I also gave my slide deck a completely new look (Memphis themed via Bing/create):

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The presentation pdf can be downloaded here.

Since the presentation was hybrid, there were not as many questions as the other two times I’ve given the talk … or that is my guess at the reason why it was so quiet. That also means I should have put that third demo back in the presentation (I took a demo out after the first version of the talk since there were so many questions and needed to free up time for Q&A). Next time I’ll have it ready to use in case I need it.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I blogged Part 2 showing the creation of a native function plugin, in this post I want to take that native function a step further and use the OpenAI Function calling. This will allow us to not provide the current date when making the call to get a historic daily fact and have OpenAI call a function to get the current date.

I’ve added the HelloWorld.Plugin3.Console project to the GitHub repo for the code in this blog entry.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 2

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago I blogged Part 1, in which I moved the prompt to a prompt template. In this part, I implement a native function that will take in the current date and make the call to the LLM.

I’ve put the code for this blog in the HelloWorld.Plugin2.Console project in the same repo as the other SK entries: semantic-kernel-getting-started.

Semantic Kernel Plugin: Native Function

There is a good Microsoft Learn module: Give your AI agent skills that walks you through the details of what a native function is and how to implement them.

My Session at Boston Global Azure Bootcamp

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past weekend was Boston Azure’s Edition of the annual Global Azure Bootcamp. This year we focused on AI and hands-on-labs.

The odd thing about when we scheduled the meetup was we had a lot of people sign up for the group just to rsvp - before most of the existing members had gotten around to rsvp’ing. We did not expect that. It is a mystery as how they heard about the event so quick. We only had one room reserved, so there really was a hard cap on how many people we could let in.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 1

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, in my last entry I created a simple Hello World application with Semantic Kernel. Since then, I’ve worked my way through the MS Learning path: APL-2005 Develop AI agents using Azure OpenAI and the Semantic Kernel SDK - which I highly recommend if you are also learning SK.

In this entry I’m going to start with the code from the last entry and extract the prompt to a plugin. I’ve put the code for this blog in the same repo as the last entry: semantic-kernel-getting-started

Semantic Kernel Hello World

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past Thursday night after the Virtual Boston Azure meetup, Bill Wilder (@codingoutloud) created an AI mini-workshop (hands on) for the attendees that were interested in getting hands on with code using the Azure OpenAI API.

This post is me using the same idea but with Semantic Kernel.

OpenAI Chat Hello World C#

Bill provided the following code for us to get a simple OpenAI chat working:

using Azure;
using Azure.AI.OpenAI;


string? key = "...";
string? endpoint = "...";
string? deployment = "...";

// output today's date just for fun
Console.WriteLine($"\n----------------- DEBUG INFO -----------------");
var today = DateTime.Now.ToString("MMMM dd");
Console.WriteLine($"Today is {today}");
Console.WriteLine("----------------------------------------------");


var client = new OpenAIClient(new Uri(endpoint), new AzureKeyCredential(key));

// TODO: CHALLENGE 1: does the AI respond accurately to this prompt? How to fix?
var prompt = $"Tell me an interesting fact from world about an event " +
            $"that took place on {today}. " +
            $"Be sure to mention the date in history for context.";

CompletionsOptions completionsOptions = new()
{
    Temperature = 0.7f,
    DeploymentName = deployment,
    Prompts = { prompt },
    MaxTokens = 250,  // PLEASE DON'T MAKE LARGER THAN 250 (but see what happens at 25)
};

Response<Completions> completionsResponse = client.GetCompletions(completionsOptions);

Console.WriteLine($"\nPROMPT: \n\n{prompt}");

int i = 0;
foreach (var choice in completionsResponse.Value.Choices)
{    
    Console.WriteLine($"\nRESPONSE {++i}/{completionsResponse.Value.Choices.Count}:" +
        $"{choice.Text}");
}

Console.WriteLine($"\n----------------- DEBUG INFO -----------------");
Console.WriteLine($"Tokens used: {completionsResponse.Value.Usage.CompletionTokens}/{completionsOptions.MaxTokens}");
Console.WriteLine("----------------------------------------------");

When you run this code (you’ll of course need to add in you own values for the key, endpoint and deployment), you will get a response like this:

Boston Code Camp 36 Sessions

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was Boston Code Camp 36 hard to believe it has been going on for 20+ years now. For me it is one of those regular events for the Boston tech community that is well worth spending a Saturday attending.

It was nice to see a lot of regular faces and meet some new people.

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

I was surprise the room was full, it was good to see so many developers, students and architects - mostly with .NET backgrounds looking to get started with RAG applications.

Demo Review: Azure Vector Search AI Assistant

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Vector Search AI Assistant

This is the fourth C# demo in The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series) and is the first demo so far that saves its history to a database.

This Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) demo is a little different than the last three because it primarily uses data from a database as the content to search instead of documents. It also uses Semantic Kernel more than other demos have, which is neat to see too.

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo (Python)

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo (Python)

This is the last in the family of Azure Search OpenAI demos that I’m covering (I’m not looking at the Java version). I reviewed the C# version and the Javascript/Typescript version earlier this month. Of the three I’m covering, this one seems to be the most active, popular and have the most documentation.

At the beginning of this month, the Hack Together: The AI Chat App Hack used this demo at the sample repository, marking it as a solid reference implementation for RAG.

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Javascript/Typescript

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Javascript/Typescript

This is the second in the family of Azure Search OpenAI demos that I’m reviewing. Last week I reviewed the C# version. As you’ll see below, the Javascript version is a bit different.

The user interface (UI) functionality is provided by a set of web components that you can add to about any web application (ie. React, Angular, Vue, etc.) - in fact the web application in the demo is written in React. Also the chat communication is written to match the HTTP protocol for AI chat app which means the frontend can communicate with any backend that matches that protocol.

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo C#

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo C#

If you are looking for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) demos that utilize Azure Search and Azure OpenAI (along with several other supporting Azure services), then there is a set of related demos that do just that in GitHub.

This family of RAG demos consists of:

azure-search-openai-demo-csharp - written in C#.
azure-search-openai-demo - written in python.
azure-search-openai-javascript - written in javascript/typescript.
azure-search-openai-demo-java - written in java.

This post is about #1 above, I will cover #2 and #3 in later posts, but I will leave the Java version to someone else to review.

Demo Review: Simple RAG using SQL Server, OpenAI and Function Calling

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Simple RAG using Blazor, SQL Server, Azure OpenAI and Function Calling

If you are like me, a full stack C# developer who is attempting to get up to speed on how GenAI technologies are going to show up in our business applictions - then after you get the first demo up and running, this demo (also by Michael Washington) is a great next step.

RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) applications typically have the following steps:

Demo Review: Simple RAG using SQL Server and OpenAI

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Demo Review: Simple RAG using Blazor, SQL Server and Azure OpenAI

Are you a full stack C# developer attempting to get up to speed on all this GenAI stuff? Are you typically a relational database developer (ie. SQL Server) wondering what all the hoopla is around vector databases and more importantly how all this stuff relates to some type of functionaly that you have a chance at really using in your day-to-day work? Oh and you probably have not had time to dig into this pattern named Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) due to being too busy implementing web application or service code.

RAG Demo Chronicles

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing: The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series)

In my last blog entry I mentioned how I’ve been spending a lot of time learning AI related topics lately. Recently the newest research topic is RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). The more I learn about RAG, the more I am convinced it is how my clients will be able to take advantage of GenAI in the short term.

For those of you who are not familiar with the topic, you may have heard a presentation or blog focusing on “How to Chat with Your Documents” or something along those lines - these are usually about RAG. The idea is an application that is like ChatGPT but only looks at your data and documents.

(Personal Update) Learning AI

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first of many blog posts I plan to make this year, stay tuned (please subscribe) for more soon.

Learning AI

Currently I am working my way through the four stages of competence with the topic of AI. This quarter (Q1 of 2024), I’m currently working on moving from stage 2 to stage 3 in the four stages of competence. For reference, those stages are:

Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence

Last year I moved from stage 1 to stage 2:

In the beginning of last year (2023) I had my head buried in the sand while all the other leaders in my industry were actively learning how to use the latest and greatest AI tool (ChatGPT). Around the middle of the year when Microsoft started making their Github Copilot more available and more useful, I finally started to pay attention and use the new Generative AI tools - specifically in helping my day-to-day activities of coding. I’ve also started to realize that it is nicer to “chat” with a tool in normal language to search instead of trying to find the right mix and order of keywords to do a search (ie. Bing Chat and OpenAI ChatGPT)

Azure VPN Client Using Point-to-Site to Connect to Azure SQL Database

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Connect to Azure using Point-to-Site VPN to Connect to Azure SQL Database

This past week a client of mine gave me a challenge:

Configure an environment that meets the following criteria

Remove the need to manage IP addresses for SQL Azure
Use a hub and spoke VNET configuration
Connect to Azure using a VPN - using Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication would be a bonus
Connect to SQL Azure using AAD authentication

Originally, I thought this would be quick and simple … turns out it isn’t. After doing some searching online, I found many people trying to solve similiar challenges. Here are some recent posts I found in Microsoft Learn:

Quickstart: Deploy an existing container image to Container Apps using Bicep

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Like my last post (Quickstart: Container Apps using Bicep), this post is a supplement to the existing Azure Container Apps docs and provides a Bicep walkthrough to getting started.

Quickstart: Deploy an existing container image to Container Apps using Bicep

Azure Container Apps is a serverless platform to run and orchestrate your container applications.

In this quickstart, you’ll use Bicep to create a Container Apps environment with an existing container image stored in an Azure Container Registry. If you have not used Bicep yet or want to learn more about what it can do, I recommend going through the Fundamentals of Bicep learning path to get you started.

Quickstart: Container Apps using Bicep

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This quickstart is a supplement to the existing Azure Container Apps docs and provides a Bicep walkthrough to getting started.

Quickstart: Deploy you first container app using Bicep

Azure Container Apps is a serverless platform to run and orchestrate your container applications.

In this quickstart, you’ll use Bicep to create a Container Apps environment with the helloworld sample container image. If you have not used Bicep yet or want to learn more about what it can do, I recommend going through the Fundamentals of Bicep learning path to get you started.

How to set environment variables in a Container App using the Azure CLI

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Last month when I presented on Azure Container Apps, I was asked “How would you set an environment variable?”. Since it isn’t currently surfaced in the Azure Portal, I wasn’t sure.

Container Apps is still in preview and right now the best way to access the largest amount of features is by using ARM or Bicep … but since it is new a lot of people start with the Portal or the Azure CLI to explore.

How to rollback a Container App revision using the Azure CLI

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month I posted How to rollback a Container App revision which focused on using the Azure Portal UI. In this entry I want to go over the same demo scenario using the Azure CLI.

Prerequisites for this walkthrough are to follow the steps in the Quickstart first: Deploy your first container app (Azure CLI), and insert the following steps before the last Clean up resources step.

Rollback a container app revision using the Azure CLI

At this point you’ve created the Container App and verified the deployment in the browser, now let’s look at the list of revisions using the containerapp revision list command.

How to rollback a Container App revision

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I presented “A look at Azure Container Apps” to our local Azure user group. I was my first time presenting the topic and I’ll just say it wasn’t my best presentation (believe me - I’ve watched the whole recording). But anyway … during one of the demos a question came up about if it was easy to rollback a revision. I attempted to do perform a demo of how to do it, but the demo gods were not helping me last Thursday night.

What I'm using to stay up to date on Azure news

info@jasonhaley.com (Jason Haley) — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year!

Yeah, yeah I know - January is almost over already. You aren’t tired and letting up on your resolutions yet are you? I know sometimes when I start a new year with a plan to make lots of changes and to be focused on a new year full of goals that really interest me … I start to run out of gas around the end of week 3.

Azure on Jason Haley

Agentic RAG Chronicles

Introducing: The Agentic RAG Chronicles (Blog Series)

Agentic RAG

Virtual Boston Azure AI - Microsoft Build Recap

My picks:

eShopSupport Series: EvaluationTests Project

EvaluationTests Project

Virtual Boston Azure Lunchtime November 2024

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

Virtual Boston Azure November 2024

Talk: Add Gen AI to your existing .NET apps with Semantic Kernel & Azure SQL

eShopSupport Series: Customer Web UI Project

CustomerWebUI Project

eShopSupport Series: Python Inference Project

PythonInference Project

eShopSupport Series: Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

The Aspire Projects (AppHost and ServiceDefaults)

Techbash 2024

eShopSupport Series: Evaluator Project

Evaluator Project

eShopSupport Series: DataIngestor Project

DataIngestor Project

eShopSupport Series: DataGenerator Project

DataGenerator Project

Virtual Boston Azure August 2024

Talk: What is the Azure Dev CLI (AZD) and How Can You Use It?

eShopSupport Series

Announcing: The eShopSupport Series

Wisconsin .NET User Group

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Boston Azure June 2024

Demo Code

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

Demo Review: Chat Copilot

Semantic Kernel Hello World WebSearchEnginePlugin

UPDATE: The Bing Search APIS are being deprecated. See the announcement for more details: Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025. I have updated the post and corresponding Github code to use the Brave connector instead.

Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 2 - (Deprecated)

UPDATE: Planners have been deprecated. See this Semantic Kernel blog for more detail: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations

Semantic Kernel Hello World Planners Part 1 - (Deprecated)

UPDATE: Planners have been deprecated. See this Semantic Kernel blog for more detail: Semantic Kernel: Package previews, Graduations & Deprecations

Memphis Azure User Group

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 3

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 2

Semantic Kernel Plugin: Native Function

My Session at Boston Global Azure Bootcamp

Semantic Kernel Hello World Plugins Part 1

Semantic Kernel Hello World

OpenAI Chat Hello World C#

Boston Code Camp 36 Sessions

Talk: Getting Started with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Demo Review: Azure Vector Search AI Assistant

Demo Review: Azure Vector Search AI Assistant

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo (Python)

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo (Python)

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Javascript/Typescript

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Javascript/Typescript

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo C#

Demo Review: Azure Search OpenAI Demo C#

Demo Review: Simple RAG using SQL Server, OpenAI and Function Calling

Demo Review: Simple RAG using Blazor, SQL Server, Azure OpenAI and Function Calling

Demo Review: Simple RAG using SQL Server and OpenAI

Demo Review: Simple RAG using Blazor, SQL Server and Azure OpenAI

RAG Demo Chronicles

Introducing: The RAG Demo Chronicles (Blog Series)

(Personal Update) Learning AI

Learning AI

Last year I moved from stage 1 to stage 2:

Azure VPN Client Using Point-to-Site to Connect to Azure SQL Database

Connect to Azure using Point-to-Site VPN to Connect to Azure SQL Database

Quickstart: Deploy an existing container image to Container Apps using Bicep

Quickstart: Deploy an existing container image to Container Apps using Bicep

Quickstart: Container Apps using Bicep

Quickstart: Deploy you first container app using Bicep

How to set environment variables in a Container App using the Azure CLI

How to rollback a Container App revision using the Azure CLI

Rollback a container app revision using the Azure CLI

How to rollback a Container App revision

What I'm using to stay up to date on Azure news

UPDATE: The Bing Search APIS are being deprecated. See the announcement for more details: Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025. I have updated the post and corresponding Github code to use the Brave connector instead.