Microsoft’s Four IQs: How Foundry IQ, Fabric IQ, Work IQ, and Web IQ Ground Enterprise Agents

Microsoft introduced four context engines—Foundry IQ, Fabric IQ, Work IQ, and Web IQ—that ground enterprise AI agents in unstructured documents, structured business data, Microsoft 365 work signals, and web information, with Foundry IQ unifying the others. The architecture enables agents like a refund processing agent to access relevant knowledge and data, while Agent 365 provides identity and security boundaries. This addresses the 'context rot' problem that causes many agent demos to fail in production.

Member-only story Microsoft’s Four IQs: How Foundry IQ, Fabric IQ, Work IQ, and Web IQ Ground Enterprise Agents A practical look at the context layer that grounds AI agents in knowledge, data, work, and the web. This article breaks down Microsoft IQ, the context layer that grounds AI agents in four kinds of enterprise knowledge: unstructured documents, structured business data, human work signals from Microsoft 365, and fresh information from the web. You will learn what each of the four engines Foundry IQ, Fabric IQ, Work IQ, and Web IQ does, how they fit together inside a single agent architecture, and where Foundry IQ unifies the others. I walk through a worked refund processing agent so you can see how the pieces cooperate, why your agent instructions still matter after the IQs remove most of the plumbing, and how Agent 365 gives an agent its own identity and security boundary. By the end, you should be able to decide which IQ to reach for, sketch the architecture, and know exactly where to start building. Reference here https://mediusdl.event.microsoft.com/video-7535305/4950f04e09/LIVE171 v1.mp4?sv=2018-03-28&sr=c&sig=50VbAp8AFU38m3nNCyixqxXt09rJ7mXi7gWvBUNb4g0%3D&se=2031-06-04T14%3A13%3A43Z&sp=r . The real problem: context rot and the demo-to-production gap Most agent demos work because the author already knows the answer and wires the agent to one clean source. Production is the opposite. A support agent needs the customer’s…