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AB-100: Design AI-Powered Business Solutions

AB-100 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Design AI-Powered Business Solutions

Architect in layers, then place each requirement

Design answers usually fail because the candidate picks a component before deciding which layer the requirement belongs to. Separate the solution into layers:

  • Experience: where the agent surfaces - Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, a website, a custom app, or voice.
  • Orchestration: the agent itself - instructions (persona, tone, scope, guardrails), topics for scripted conversation paths, and generative orchestration that selects knowledge and tools dynamically.
  • Knowledge: Dataverse tables, SharePoint, uploaded documents, websites, connectors. Grounding needs retrieval and instructions that enforce scope and citation.
  • Tools/actions: Power Platform connectors, REST APIs, custom connectors, prompts, flows, child agents. Actions change state; knowledge does not.
  • Data and identity: Dataverse schema, security roles, Entra ID app registrations, SSO, and the distinction between an agent's own service identity and the signed-in user's delegated access.
  • Governance and observability: DLP policies, content moderation, transcript retention, analytics.

Traps: putting facts in instructions instead of knowledge (they go stale and consume context); expecting a topic to fire when generative orchestration can route around it - mark such topics explicit or constrain orchestration; assuming the agent bypasses SharePoint permissions (security trimming still applies); designing no fallback or human handoff; conflating the agent's authentication with the end user's delegated authorization.

Rule of thumb: instructions = policy, topics = scripted paths, knowledge = facts, tools = verbs, Dataverse = memory. If a requirement fits none of those, it is an identity or governance requirement.

Worked example: "The agent must answer HR policy questions and let employees book leave." Policy Q&A is knowledge over the HR SharePoint site, trimmed to the user's permissions. Leave booking is a tool calling the HR API with delegated user auth, so the request is audited as that employee. Neither needs a topic, but both need instructions defining refusal, scope, and escalation.