Requirements, Agents and Grounding Data
AB-100 planning starts with business and technical requirements, agent fit, task automation, analytics, decision support, and grounding data quality.
How to study for Microsoft AB-100
Treat each item as an architecture decision: identify the business process, select the Microsoft AI pattern, then add ALM, telemetry, security, responsible AI, and governance controls.
Core concepts
Concept 1
Agentic business solutions should be selected only when agents improve task automation, analytics, decision-making, or business process outcomes.
Exam cue: Start with business process requirements before selecting a Microsoft AI service.
Concept 2
Grounding data must be assessed for accuracy, relevance, timeliness, cleanliness, availability, access rights, and downstream usability.
Exam cue: Check grounding data quality before designing prompts or agent behavior.
Concept 3
Business solution data should be organized so other AI systems can reuse it safely and reliably.
Exam cue: Decide whether the task needs automation, decision support, analytics, or a deterministic workflow.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Designing an agent before the business requirement and success metric are clear.
Guardrail: Avoid defaulting to custom agents, skipping grounding-data checks, or treating prompts and connectors as outside the release process.
Using stale or inaccessible data as grounding context.
Guardrail: Avoid defaulting to custom agents, skipping grounding-data checks, or treating prompts and connectors as outside the release process.
Assuming every workflow needs an autonomous agent.
Guardrail: Avoid defaulting to custom agents, skipping grounding-data checks, or treating prompts and connectors as outside the release process.
Memory anchors
Grounding Data
Grounding data is the business context and source information used to anchor AI responses.
Data Relevance
Data relevance checks whether source content actually answers the business process need.
Data Timeliness
Data timeliness checks whether grounding content is current enough for the decision.
Task Automation
Task automation uses AI or agents to reduce manual steps in a business process.
Decision Support
Decision support helps users evaluate options without removing required human judgment.
AI Requirement
An AI requirement states what the solution must accomplish, constrain, measure, or integrate.
Grounding Availability
Grounding availability means required source data can be accessed by the solution when needed.
Reusable Business Data
Reusable business data is organized so multiple AI systems can consume it with governance.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
A distributor wants an agent to approve credit-limit increases. The written policy contains fixed thresholds, and every decision must be identical for the same inputs. What should the architect recommend?
A service organization is considering an agent that summarizes long case histories before a human decides whether to grant an exception. Which requirement most strongly supports using the agent?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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