2025-11-18: Agentic knowledge base with Bing + SharePoint options

This release upgrades the agentic retrieval feature to use Azure AI Search's new Knowledge Base functionality, which provides enhanced intelligent document retrieval with configurable reasoning levels and support for multiple knowledge sources including web and SharePoint.

Knowledge Base changes

• Upgraded from Knowledge Agent to Knowledge Base: The feature now uses the new KnowledgeBaseRetrievalClient from Azure AI Search, replacing the legacy KnowledgeAgentRetrievalClient
• Added multiple reasoning level options: Choose between minimal, low, or medium reasoning effort for retrieval
  • Minimal: Most similar to current search() call, where we bring our own query planning to generate a single query
  • Low: Adds a query planning step that's built into AI Search and can suggest multiple queries for complex queries
  • Medium: Adds an optional iteration step if an AI Search model determines results aren't good enough

The feature supports three kinds of sources:

• Search Index (default): Searches documents in your Azure AI Search index. We currently only support one index, but you can modify the code to bring in additional indices if desired. We may add a YAML config for multiple indices in future.
• Web Source (optional): Enables searching the public web for information
  • ⚠️ Requires answer synthesis mode (disables streaming, follow-up questions, and some LLM customizations)
  • ⚠️ Microsoft Data Protection Addendum doesn't apply to data sent to Web Knowledge Source
• SharePoint Source (optional): Searches SharePoint documents using on-behalf-of flow
  • Requires authentication to be enabled
  • Requires users to have a Microsoft Copilot license

Environment variable changes

New environment variables for deployment configuration:

• USE_AGENTIC_KNOWLEDGEBASE: Enable the knowledge base feature (replaces USE_AGENTIC_RETRIEVAL)
• AZURE_SEARCH_KNOWLEDGEBASE_RETRIEVAL_REASONING_EFFORT: Set default reasoning level (minimal, low, or medium)
• USE_WEB_SOURCE: Enable web knowledge source
• USE_SHAREPOINT_SOURCE: Enable SharePoint knowledge source
• AZURE_OPENAI_KNOWLEDGEBASE_DEPLOYMENT: Specify the deployment for knowledge base
• AZURE_OPENAI_KNOWLEDGEBASE_MODEL: Specify the model (default: gpt-4.1-mini)
• AZURE_OPENAI_KNOWLEDGEBASE_MODEL_VERSION: Specify the model version

⚠️ If you were using the previous agentic retrieval feature (USE_AGENTIC_RETRIEVAL), you must change USE_AGENTIC_RETRIEVAL → USE_AGENTIC_KNOWLEDGEBASE

UI enhancements

• Developer settings: New options for toggling sources and changing reasoning level.

• Thought Process: Now includes:
  • Token usage for the planning process
  • Generated search queries
  • Activity details for each source citation

Documentation

See docs/agentic_retrieval.md for complete deployment and configuration instructions.

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All changes included in this release

• Comment out the functions by default by @pamelafox in #2827
• Comment out final function in azure.yaml by @pamelafox in #2829
• Fixes issue with user uploaded files by @pamelafox in #2830
• Add Knowledge Base support by @mattgotteiner in #2835

Full Changelog: 2025-11-12...2025-11-18