
Before you begin, ensure you have an Azure subscription and sufficient permissions to create resource groups, Search services, and storage resources. For development scenarios, consider using a separate resource group to manage costs.
- Provisioning and configuring an Azure AI Search service
- Defining indexes and connecting data sources for ingestion
- Implementing and integrating custom skills (Azure Functions or web APIs) into enrichment pipelines
- Building a knowledge store to retain and query enriched data
| Goal | Outcome | Key steps / examples |
|---|---|---|
| Set up Azure AI Search | A running Search service with an index ready to ingest data | Provision Search in Azure portal or via CLI; create an index and map fields; connect blob, Cosmos DB, or SQL data sources |
| Build & integrate custom skills | Enrich content during indexing (e.g., OCR, entity recognition, translation) | Implement Azure Functions or custom web APIs; register skills in a skillset; add to indexer pipeline |
| Create a knowledge store | Structured repository of enriched content for analytics and querying | Configure a knowledge store (Azure Storage or Cosmos DB); route enriched documents to the store |
- Azure AI Search overview: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/search/
- Create and manage indexes: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/search/search-create-index-portal
- Skillsets and cognitive enrichment: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/search/cognitive-search-concept-intro