Azure Weekly

Issue #559 - 19th April 2026

Highlights this week include: Give your AI agent the keys to OneLake: OneLake MCP Generally Available: The OneLake MCP tools reach general availability, exposing 19 conversational commands that let an AI agent explore and manage Fabric data (lakehouses, mirrored databases, KQL databases and OneLake-enabled semantic models) while operating strictly within the caller's existing Azure identity and Fabric permissions. Bring your local files to OneLake with OneLake file explorer (Generally Available): OneLake File Explorer for Windows is now GA, surfacing OneLake workspaces alongside local folders in Windows File Explorer so developers and analysts can drag-and-drop CSV, Excel, Parquet and other local files directly into Fabric without uploading through a browser or writing ingestion scripts.

Microsoft Foundry Toolkit for VS Code is Now Generally Available: The extension formerly known as AI Toolkit has been rebranded to Microsoft Foundry Toolkit and reached GA, offering a curated playground of 100+ models, a low/no-code Agent Builder, deep-cycle agent debugging with the Agent Inspector, Phi edge-model tooling and one-click deployment to the Microsoft Foundry Agent Service. VS Code Updates Boost AI Agents, Terminal Control and Copilot Workflow: A roundup of the 8 and 15 April 2026 VS Code releases that expand agent-focused tooling with a new companion app for agent sessions and supervised review loops, better terminal interaction, session debugging and additional built-in Copilot functionality.

Supercharge Your Dev Workflows with GitHub Copilot Custom Skills: A hands-on walkthrough of GitHub Copilot Custom Skills, showing how a SKILL.md file plus supporting scripts and templates in a .github/skills/ folder can turn documented multi-step runbooks into one-command agent workflows that Copilot discovers from the description field and executes autonomously. What Makes a Good GitHub Copilot Agent Skill: Thomas Thornton distils practical design lessons from building real-world Copilot skills, arguing that a specific, task-shaped YAML description with explicit negative scope, a lean body that lets detail load on demand via references/, reasoning-based guidance over rigid rules, and trigger-testing against messy user phrasing matter far more than polish or length.

Smart Tier Azure Blob and Data Lake Storage (GA): Smart tier is now generally available in nearly all zonal public cloud regions for Azure Blob and Data Lake Storage, automatically shifting block blobs between the hot, cool and cold tiers based on real access patterns so customers can retire hand-maintained lifecycle rules and avoid rehydration cost spikes. Minimum billable object size for cooler storage tiers (GA): Azure is introducing a 128 KiB minimum billable object size for objects placed in the cool, cold and archive tiers (the hot tier is unaffected), with new BlockBlobSmall and Data Lake Storage Small metric types exposed in the portal so customers can assess impact and either pack small objects together or rely on smart tier to keep them hot.

Migrating Azure WebApps from Docker Compose to Sidecar: Richard Fennell walks through moving Azure WebApps off the retiring Docker Compose option (due to retire on 31 March 2027) onto Sidecar containers, covering the in-portal migration dialog and the new sitecontainers BICEP block he had to add to keep his Azure DevOps pipeline-driven deployments reproducible. Integration Testing Azure Functions with Reqnroll and C#, Part 1 - Introduction: Jonathan George opens a five-part series on out-of-process integration testing of Azure Functions using the open-source Corvus.Testing.AzureFunctions.ReqnRoll library, introducing Reqnroll (the community successor to SpecFlow) together with the FunctionsController, FunctionConfiguration and FunctionsBindings classes that start, configure and tear down function instances during BDD-style tests.

Anthropic Claude Opus 4.7 in Microsoft 365 Copilot: Microsoft is adding Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 to Microsoft 365 Copilot, with availability in Copilot Cowork (Frontier) and Copilot Studio early-release environments and a rollout underway for Copilot in Excel; the new model is positioned as faster and more precise, with improved tool selection, self-checking of outputs and higher-resolution image reading.

I've spent much of this week wrangling Azure DNS, Azure Static Web Apps and Enterprise Edge; a refreshed endjin.com went live last week. While Azure changes occur rapidly, the eventual consistency of global DNS propagation, and migrating from one instance of Azure Static Web Apps to another caused issues with enabling the Enterprise Edge CDN feature. As with most DNS issues, you just need to wait and be patient, and the issues tend to resolve themselves. I did want to give a big shout out to Jonny Reilly who is regularly featured in the newsletter; I put many of his tips from How I fixed my SEO and Azure Static Web Apps: dynamic redirects with Azure Functions to good use. Thanks Johnny, you're a star!