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Use this article to create a Foundry project and confirm that your environment is ready before you start building agents, evaluations, and files. This article describes how to create a Foundry project in Microsoft Foundry. Projects let you organize your work—such as agents, evaluations, and files—as you build stateful apps and explore new ideas. If your organization requires customized Azure configurations like alternative names, security controls, or cost tags, you might need to use the Azure portal or template options to comply with your organization’s Azure Policy requirements.

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Prerequisites

The Foundry RBAC roles were recently renamed. Foundry User, Foundry Owner, Foundry Account Owner, and Foundry Project Manager were previously named Azure AI User, Azure AI Owner, Azure AI Account Owner, and Azure AI Project Manager. You might still see the previous names in some places while the rename rolls out. The role IDs and core permissions are unchanged by the rename.
  • If you’re creating the project for a team:
    • Access to a role that allows you to complete role assignments, such as Owner. For more information about permissions, see Role-based access control for Microsoft Foundry.
    • A list of user email addresses or Microsoft Entra security group IDs for team members who need access.
Use the following tabs to select the method you want to use to create a Foundry project:
  • No other prerequisites necessary when using the portal.

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Create a Foundry project

Use one of the following methods.
These steps provide a way to create a new Azure resource with basic default settings.To create a Foundry project, follow these steps:
  1. Sign in to Microsoft Foundry. Make sure the New Foundry toggle is on. These steps refer to Foundry (new).
  1. The project you’re working on appears in the upper-left corner.
  2. To create a new project, select the project name, and then select Create new project.
  3. Give your project a name and select Create project. Or see the next section for advanced options.

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Advanced options

  1. You create a Foundry project on a Foundry resource. The portal automatically creates this resource when you create the project. Select an existing Resource group to use, or leave the default to create a new resource group.
Especially for getting started, create a new resource group for your project. The resource group makes it easy to manage the project and all its resources together.
  1. Select a Location or use the default. The location is the region where the project resources are hosted.
  2. Select Create. You see the progress of resource creation. The project is created when the process is complete.

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Create multiple projects on the same resource

Create multiple Foundry projects on an existing Foundry resource to enable team collaboration and shared resource access including security, deployments, and connected tools. This setup is ideal in restricted Azure subscriptions where developers need self-serve exploration ability within the setup of a preconfigured environment.
Diagram shows how a team could share resource access with multiple projects on a Foundry resource.
Foundry projects as Azure child resources may get assigned their own access controls, but share common settings such as network security, deployments, and Azure tool integration from their parent resource. While not all Foundry capabilities support organizing work in projects yet, your resource’s first “default” project is more powerful. You can identify it by the tag “default” in UX experiences and the resource property “is_default” when using code options.
FeatureDefault projectOther projects
Model inference✅✅
Playgrounds✅✅
Agents✅✅
Evaluations✅✅
Tracing✅✅
Datasets✅✅
Indexes✅✅
Foundry SDK and API✅✅
Content understanding✅✅
OpenAI SDK and API✅Responses, Files, Conversations
OpenAI Batch, Fine-tuning, Stored completions✅-
Language fine-tuning✅✅
Speech fine-tuning✅-
Connections✅✅
  • To add a project to a Foundry resource:

    ​
    Foundry portal

    1. Select Operate in the upper-right navigation.
    2. Select Admin in the left pane.
    3. Select the Parent resource you want to add a project to.
    4. Select Add project.

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    Python SDK

    Add this code to your script to create a new project on your existing resource: 
    # source: https://github.com/Azure/agent-first-sdk/blob/main/tests/management_sdk/manage_ai_foundry.ipynb

# <create_client>
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.mgmt.cognitiveservices import CognitiveServicesManagementClient

subscription_id = 'your-subscription-id'
resource_group_name = 'your-resource-group-name'
foundry_resource_name = 'your-foundry-resource-name'
foundry_project_name = 'your-foundry-project-name'
location = 'eastus'

client = CognitiveServicesManagementClient(
    credential=DefaultAzureCredential(), 
    subscription_id=subscription_id,
    api_version="2025-04-01-preview"
)
# </create_client>
# TODO: add code to create create a new resource group

# <create_resource_project>
# Create resource
resource = client.accounts.begin_create(
    resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
    account_name=foundry_resource_name,
    account={
        "location": location,
        "kind": "AIServices",
        "sku": {"name": "S0",},
        "identity": {"type": "SystemAssigned"},
        "properties": {
            "allowProjectManagement": True,
            "customSubDomainName": foundry_resource_name
        }
    }
)

# Wait for the resource creation to complete
resource_result = resource.result()

# Create default project
project = client.projects.begin_create(
    resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
    account_name=foundry_resource_name,
    project_name=foundry_project_name,
    project={
        "location": location,
        "identity": {
            "type": "SystemAssigned"
        },
        "properties": {}
    }
)
# </create_resource_project>
# TODO: code to do role assignment to give user project manager role on the account

# <create_additional>
# Create additional project
new_project_name = 'your-new-project-name'

project = client.projects.begin_create(
    resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
    account_name=foundry_resource_name,
    project_name=new_project_name,
    project={
        "location": location,
        "identity": {
            "type": "SystemAssigned"
        },
        "properties": {}
    }
)
# </create_additional>
# <show_project>
# Get project
project = client.projects.get(
    resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
    account_name=foundry_resource_name,
    project_name=foundry_project_name
)
print(project)
# </show_project>

    ​
    Azure CLI

    To add a new project to my-foundry-resource: 
     az cognitiveservices account project create \
 --name my-foundry-resource \
 --resource-group my-foundry-rg \
 --project-name {new_project_name} \
 --location eastus
  • If you delete your Foundry resource’s default project, the next project created will become the default project.

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View project settings

On the Home project page, you see the project endpoint and API key for the project. You don’t need the API key if you use Microsoft Entra ID authentication.

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Grant access to team members

If you created the project for a team, assign the Foundry User role to team members so they can use the project and its resources. This role provides the minimum permissions needed to build and test AI applications. For other roles you might need to assign, see Role-based access control for Microsoft Foundry.
The Foundry RBAC roles were recently renamed. Foundry User, Foundry Owner, Foundry Account Owner, and Foundry Project Manager were previously named Azure AI User, Azure AI Owner, Azure AI Account Owner, and Azure AI Project Manager. You might still see the previous names in some places while the rename rolls out. The role IDs and core permissions are unchanged by the rename.
To complete role assignments, you need a role such as Owner on the project. For more information, see Role-based access control for Microsoft Foundry.
  1. In the Foundry portal, select Operate in the upper-right navigation.
  2. Select Admin in the left pane.
  3. Select your project name in the table.
  4. Select Add user in the upper right.
  5. Enter the email address of the team member.
  6. Select Add.
Repeat these steps for each team member or security group.
To add multiple users at once, use a Microsoft Entra security group instead of individual email addresses.

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Verify team member access

Ask a team member to verify their access by signing in to Microsoft Foundry and selecting the project from the project list. If the team member can’t access the project, verify that the role assignment completed successfully. Check that you used the correct email address or security group ID. Make sure the team member’s Azure account is in the same Microsoft Entra tenant.

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Delete projects

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Foundry. Make sure the New Foundry toggle is on. These steps refer to Foundry (new).
  1. In the upper-right navigation, select Operate.
  2. In the left pane, select Admin.
  3. Select your project.
  4. In the upper right, select the trash can icon to delete the project.
Use with caution. You can’t recover a project after it’s deleted.

Create your first connection

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