AI-901: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals for Business Professionals
Foundational, hands-on AI-901 prep for business professionals. Learn Responsible AI, Foundry models, prompts, agents, text, speech, vision, and Content Understanding — all in the Azure portal, no coding required.
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Exam Preparation Included
Practice with real exam-style questions for the AI-901 certification. AI-powered feedback helps you understand every answer.
About This Course
Get hands-on with Microsoft Azure AI and Microsoft Foundry to prepare for the AI-901 certification exam no coding required. This foundational, AI-led course walks you through the two exam objectives: identifying AI concepts and capabilities (responsible AI, model components, AI workloads) and implementing AI solutions using Microsoft Foundry (generative AI apps & agents, text & speech, computer vision & image generation, and information extraction with Azure Content Understanding). Every topic is paired with a guided hands-on lab you complete entirely in the Azure portal and Microsoft Foundry portal deploy models, chat in the playground, build agents, test speech and vision capabilities, and run a Content Understanding document pipeline against a real Azure subscription. Perfect for business analysts, consultants, product managers, and IT professionals who want to understand Microsoft's AI stack and earn the AI-901 certification without writing code.
Course Curriculum
12 Lessons
Responsible AI Principles
Teaching lesson: Microsoft's six Responsible AI principles (fairness, reliability & safety, privacy & security, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability) and how they show up in Azure AI services and governance features.
Apply Responsible AI in the Portal
Hands-on lab (portal only): configure Content Safety, examine default guardrails in Foundry model deployments, and walk through Azure AI resource governance controls.
AI Models and Configurations
Teaching lesson: what large language models, small language models, and multimodal models are; tokens, context windows, temperature, top-p, and how model choice and configuration affect output quality, cost, and latency.
Explore Models in the Foundry Catalog
Hands-on lab (portal only): browse the Microsoft Foundry model catalog, compare GPT, Phi, and open-source models, examine model cards, and review deployment options in the Foundry portal.
AI Workloads Overview
Teaching lesson: the five AI-901 workload categories per the April 15, 2026 exam skills measured — generative and agentic AI, text analysis, speech, computer vision, and information extraction — and which Microsoft Foundry tools and Azure AI services map to each.
Tour Azure AI Workload Tools in Azure AI Foundry
Hands-on lab (portal only): tour every Azure AI workload area inside Azure AI Foundry — Language Playground (sentiment, key phrases, NER, PII, summarization), Speech AI Services (transcription, voice synthesis, speech translation), Vision AI Services (image captions, tags, object detection, OCR), Images Playground (gpt-image-1 image generation), and Content Understanding (structured document extraction). No code required — everything runs in the browser against pre-provisioned resources.
Prompt Engineering Fundamentals
Teaching lesson: prompt structure (system, user, assistant), few-shot prompting, grounding, chain-of-thought, and how prompt design drives output quality. Uses narrative examples rather than code.
Practice Prompt Engineering in the Foundry Playground
Hands-on lab (portal only): deploy a chat model in Microsoft Foundry and iterate on prompts in the Foundry playground — system prompts, few-shot examples, temperature, and grounding with your own data.
Deploy and Chat with Models in Foundry
Teaching lesson: model deployment options (serverless vs dedicated, PTU vs standard), deployment regions and quotas, and how to pick the right deployment for a business scenario.
Deploy a Chat Model and Use the Playground
Hands-on lab (portal only): create a Foundry project, deploy GPT-4o-mini, and hold a multi-turn conversation in the Foundry chat playground — adjust system prompt, temperature, and max tokens.
Single-Agent Solutions in Foundry
Teaching lesson: what an agent is (model + instructions + tools + knowledge), single-agent patterns, Foundry Agent Service, tools (functions, file search, code interpreter), and when to build an agent vs. a plain chat experience.
Build a Foundry Agent in the Portal
Hands-on lab (portal only): create a single-agent solution in Microsoft Foundry — configure the model, system instructions, attach file-search knowledge, and chat with the agent in the playground.
This course includes:
- 24/7 AI Instructor Support
- Live Lab Environments
- 6 Hands-on Lessons
- Exam Prep Included
- Completion Badge
Earn Your Badge
Complete all lessons to unlock the AI-901: Azure AI Fundamentals — Business Professionals achievement badge.
AI-901: Azure AI Fundamentals — Business Professionals
Awarded for completing AI-901: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals for Business Professionals. Demonstrates portal-only proficiency with Azure AI Foundry — Responsible AI, model catalog, playgrounds, agents, text, speech, vision, and Content Understanding, with no code required.
Skills You'll Earn
Complete all lessons in this course to earn this badge