Building Agentic Solutions with Microsoft Foundry

Chapter 6. Orchestrating Agents with Workflows

In the previous chapters, you learned how to deploy models, configure agents with tools, and customize those agents for specialized tasks. A single, well-tuned agent can carry a conversation, call an API, and synthesize results, but it hits a ceiling quickly when a task requires distinct phases of work, conditional logic, or human sign-off. That is where Workflows come in.

Workflows are Microsoft Foundry’s visual orchestration layer. They let you string together multiple agents, data transformations, branching logic, and human checkpoints into a repeatable, auditable process. This is provided as a low-code builder that makes multi-agent workflows approachable. Think of a workflow as a directed graph: nodes are actions (invoke an agent, set a variable, ask a question), and edges encode order and conditions.

This chapter covers the core orchestration patterns Foundry ships as templates, walks through building a multi-agent workflow from scratch, and then digs into Power Fx, the formula language you will use any time you need more than a straight-line flow.

Note

At the time of writing, Foundry workflows can be authored visually, and declarative workflow definitions can also be represented in YAML for source control and developer workflows. Check the current Foundry SDK and Microsoft Agent Framework documentation before relying on continual UI support, because the workflow authoring surface is evolving.

The orchestration logic and patterns ...