Often, yes. Microsoft 365 Copilot already answers from content in Microsoft 365, and Copilot Studio suits simpler assistants. A custom RAG assistant on Microsoft Foundry makes sense for customer-facing use, large or mixed content sources, strict quality targets or deep system integration. We recommend the simplest option that meets your needs.

We ground every answer in retrieved content, instruct the model to say when it does not know, and show citations so users can check the source. Before launch, we test with real questions using Microsoft Foundry evaluators for retrieval quality, groundedness and relevance, then fix gaps in content or configuration before anyone relies on it.

Not when it is set up properly. We connect Microsoft Entra identity and carry document permissions into the search index, so results are trimmed to what each user can already access. We also exclude sensitive content that should not be indexed and align the design with your Microsoft Purview policies and labels.

Common sources include SharePoint libraries, intranet and public web pages, PDFs and Office documents, Azure Blob Storage and structured data from business systems. During discovery, we check content quality and ownership, because an assistant is only as good as the material behind it. Outdated or conflicting documents are flagged for cleanup.

Running costs come mainly from Azure AI Search capacity, usage of premium features such as agentic retrieval and semantic ranking, and model usage in Microsoft Foundry. We estimate these from your expected question volumes during design, set budgets and alerts in Azure, and tune the setup so costs stay predictable as usage grows.

Content changes, so indexes refresh on a schedule and quality is rechecked with the same evaluation set used at launch. We hand over monitoring, a content ownership model and a simple process for flagging poor answers. If you would like us to run and improve the assistant for you, we can discuss ongoing support.

Yes. We design and build RAG knowledge assistants for organisations across Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Wollongong. Discovery workshops and user testing can run on-site or online, with local account management backed by our wider Microsoft AI engineering team. 

In most cases, yes. Microsoft Foundry and Azure AI Search are available in Australian Azure regions, and we confirm in-region availability for the models and features your design needs. We also review personal information handling with reference to the Privacy Act 1988. Final compliance depends on your environment, data and legal obligations.