The Microsoft IQ Series

Learn Microsoft IQ with The IQ Series! Microsoft IQ is Microsoft's unified intelligence layer for the enterprise, bringing together three core intelligence services:

• Foundry IQ: A managed knowledge layer for enterprise data; connecting structured and unstructured data across Azure, SharePoint, OneLake, and the web so agents can access permission-aware knowledge.
• Work IQ: The intelligence layer that personalizes Microsoft 365 Copilot; understanding context, relationships, and work patterns so agents can be faster, more accurate, and more secure.
• Fabric IQ: Unify business semantics across data, models, and systems to power intelligent agents and decisions grounded in a live, holistic view of the business.

Together, these IQs enable AI agents to reason, retrieve, and act with deep business context going beyond traditional RAG for true enterprise intelligence.

Note: The series kicks off with Foundry IQ episodes. Work IQ and Fabric IQ content is coming soon!

📺 Foundry IQ episodes premiere every Wednesday at 9 AM PT, starting March 18, 2026 on Microsoft Developer YouTube.

📚 Episodes

Episode	Description	Video	Cookbook
Foundry IQ: Unlocking Knowledge for your Agents	Understand Foundry IQ's core components and how it fits into the agent architecture	Mar 18, 2026	Cookbook
Foundry IQ: Building the Data Pipeline with Knowledge Sources	Learn how different content enters Foundry IQ from various sources	Mar 25, 2026	Cookbook
Foundry IQ: Querying the Multi-Source AI Knowledge Bases	Dive into Knowledge Bases and multi-source query paths	Apr 1, 2026	Cookbook
Work IQ	Coming soon!
Fabric IQ	Coming soon!

Episode Format

Each episode includes:

• Introduction (1 min): Executive speech
• Tech Talk (15 min): Interactive discussion with Product Group + Advocacy
• Close-out (1 min): Doodle summary

Episode folders also include Jupyter notebook cookbooks with hands-on, step-by-step guidance.

🚀 Get Started

1. Deploy to Azure

Click the button above to deploy all required Azure resources: AI Search, Azure OpenAI, a Foundry project, Azure Blob Storage, and seeded sample data with a ready-to-use knowledge base.

In the deployment form:

• Create a new resource group (e.g., iq-series-rg): click Create new under the Resource group field
• Enter your User Object ID: run the following in a terminal to get it:

az login
az ad signed-in-user show --query id -o tsv

• Customize the resource prefix, location, and SKUs as needed, then click Review + create

Once deployment completes, copy the Azure AI Search endpoint and API key from the deployment Outputs tab. You'll need them in the next step.

⚠️ Troubleshooting: Deployment script failed?

Some Azure tenants enforce policies that block key-based access on storage accounts. This can cause the data seeding script to fail while all other resources deploy successfully. If this happens, your Azure resources (AI Search, OpenAI, Foundry project, etc.) are fully deployed — only the sample data and knowledge base setup is missing. You can seed the data manually using either of these alternatives:

1. Run the Episode 1 cookbook: Open the Episode 1 cookbook and run it end-to-end — it indexes the same NASA "Earth at Night" sample data to your AI Search and creates the knowledge source and knowledge base.
2. Seed via Foundry IQ UI: Create an index in AI Search manually using the NASA Earth at Night dataset, then create a knowledge source and knowledge base pointing to it through the Foundry IQ portal.

2. Learn with Copilot

Launch a Codespace and start exploring Foundry IQ with GitHub Copilot. Copilot connects to your deployed knowledge base via MCP. Ask questions about your data and get grounded, cited answers.

1. Click the button above to open a Codespace

2. Open .vscode/mcp.json and replace the two placeholders with your values from the deployment Outputs tab:

   • <your-search-service> → your AI Search service name
   • <your-search-api-key> → your AI Search admin API key

3. Enable the foundry-iq tool (important!): Open Copilot Chat, click the 🔧 Tools icon at the top of the chat panel. Scroll through the tool list and find foundry-iq — toggle it on. If you skip this step, Copilot won't be able to query your knowledge base.

4. Ask Copilot questions about your knowledge base, try these:

   • "What does Earth look like at night from space?"
   • "How do scientists use nighttime lights to study urbanization?"
   • "What are the brightest regions on Earth at night and why?"

5. Open any cookbook notebook and use Copilot to help you learn and experiment:

   • "Explain what this notebook does step by step"
   • "What is a knowledge source vs a knowledge base?"
   • "Help me create a new knowledge base with a different index"

You can also use the repo locally. Clone the repo, open in VS Code, update .vscode/mcp.json with your values, and the MCP server appears in Copilot Chat Tools.

3. Run the Cookbooks

The cookbook notebooks reuse the same Azure resources you deployed in Step 1 — you do not need to redeploy for each episode. Each cookbook folder needs its own .env file with your endpoint values:

1. Go to the Azure portal → your deployment → Outputs tab
2. Create a .env file inside the episode's cookbook/ folder (e.g., 1-Foundry-IQ-Unlocking-Knowledge-for-Agents/cookbook/.env)
3. Paste the values from the Outputs tab — see each cookbook's README for the exact variables needed

📍 Where does the .env file go? Each episode's cookbook/ folder expects its own .env file. The notebooks load it with dotenv relative to the notebook's location.

🙏 Get Involved

We'd love to see you contributing to our repo and engaging with the experts with your questions!

• 🤔 Do you have suggestions or have you found spelling or code errors? Raise an issue or Create a pull request.
• 🚀 If you get stuck or have any questions about Microsoft IQ, join our Discord.
• Check out Contributing & Trademarks details.