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azure-search-openai-javascript

ChatGPT + Enterprise data with Azure OpenAI and Cognitive Search

Features
Getting started
Azure account requirements
Azure deployment
Sharing environments
Enabling optional features
- Enabling authentication
Using the app
Running locally
Using a different backend
Productionizing
Clean up
Resources
- Note
- FAQ
- Troubleshooting

This sample demonstrates a few approaches for creating ChatGPT-like experiences over your own data using the Retrieval Augmented Generation pattern. It uses Azure OpenAI Service to access the ChatGPT model (gpt-35-turbo), and Azure Cognitive Search for data indexing and retrieval.

The repo includes sample data so it's ready to try end to end. In this sample application we use a fictitious company called Contoso Real Estate, and the experience allows its customers to ask support questions about the usage of its products. The sample data includes a set of documents that describe its terms of service, privacy policy and a support guide.

The application is made from multiple components, including:

Search service: the backend service that provides the search and retrieval capabilities.
Indexer service: the service that indexes the data and creates the search indexes.
Web app: the frontend web application that provides the user interface and orchestrates the interaction between the user and the backend services.

Features

Chat and Q&A interfaces
Explores various options to help users evaluate the trustworthiness of responses with citations, tracking of source content, etc.
Shows possible approaches for data preparation, prompt construction, and orchestration of interaction between model (ChatGPT) and retriever (Cognitive Search)
Settings directly in the UX to tweak the behavior and experiment with options
Optional performance tracing and monitoring with Application Insights

Getting started

Azure account prerequisites

IMPORTANT: In order to deploy and run this sample, you'll need:

Azure account. If you're new to Azure, get an Azure account for free to get free Azure credits to get started.
Azure subscription with access enabled for the Azure OpenAI service. You can request access with this form.
Azure account permissions:
- Your Azure account must have Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write permissions, such as Role Based Access Control Administrator, User Access Administrator, or Owner. If you don't have subscription-level permissions, they must be granted to you with RBAC for an existing resource group and deploy to that existing group.
- Your Azure account also needs Microsoft.Resources/deployments/write permissions at a subscription level.

Azure deployment

Cost estimation

Pricing may vary per region and usage. Exact costs cannot be estimated. You may try the Azure pricing calculator for the resources below.

Azure Container Apps: Pay-as-you-go tier. Costs based on vCPU and memory used. Pricing
Azure Static Web Apps: Free Tier. Pricing
Azure OpenAI: Standard tier, ChatGPT and Ada models. Pricing per 1K tokens used, and at least 1K tokens are used per question. Pricing

Azure Cognitive Search: Standard tier, 1 replica, free level of semantic search. Pricing per hour.Pricing
Azure Blob Storage: Standard tier with ZRS (Zone-redundant storage). Pricing per storage and read operations. Pricing
Azure Monitor: Pay-as-you-go tier. Costs based on data ingested. Pricing

⚠️ To avoid unnecessary costs, remember to take down your app if it's no longer in use, either by deleting the resource group in the Portal or running azd down --purge.

Project setup

There are multiple ways to successfully setup this project.

The easiest way to get started is with GitHub Codespacesm that provides preconfigurations to setup all the tools for you. Read more below. Alternatively you can set up your local environment follwing the instructions below.

GitHub Codespaces

You can run this repo virtually by using GitHub Codespaces, which will open a web-based VS Code in your browser:

VS Code Remote Containers

A similar option to Codespaces is VS Code Remote Containers, that will open the project in your local VS Code instance using the Dev Containers extension:

Local environment

Azure Developer CLI
Node.js LTS
Docker for Desktop
Git
Powershell 7+ (pwsh) - For Windows users only.
- Important: Ensure you can run pwsh.exe from a PowerShell command. If this fails, you likely need to upgrade PowerShell.

Then get the project code:

Create a new folder and switch to it in the terminal
Run azd auth login
Run azd init -t azure-search-openai-javascript
- note that this command will initialize a git repository and you do not need to clone this repository

Deploying from scratch

Execute the following command, if you don't have any pre-existing Azure services and want to start from a fresh deployment.

Run azd up - This will provision Azure resources and deploy this sample to those resources, including building the search index based on the files found in the ./data folder.
- You will be prompted to select a location for the majority of resources, except for the OpenAI and Static Web App resources.
- By default, the OpenAI resource will be deployed to eastus2. You can set a different location with azd env set AZURE_OPENAI_RESOURCE_GROUP_LOCATION {location}. Currently only a short list of locations is accepted. That location list is based on the OpenAI model availability table and may become outdated as availability changes.
- By default, the Staic Web App resource will be deployed to eastus2. You can set a different location with azd env set AZURE_WEBAPP_LOCATION {location}. Currently only a short list of locations is accepted. Note that Static Web App is a global service, and the location you choose will only affect the managed Functions App which is not used in this sample.
After the application has been successfully deployed you will see a URL printed to the console. Click that URL to interact with the application in your browser.

It will look like the following:

NOTE: It can take 15+ minutes for the application to be fully deployed.

Deploying with existing resources

If you already have existing Azure resources, you can re-use those by setting azd environment values.

Existing resource group

Run azd env set AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP {Name of existing resource group}
Run azd env set AZURE_LOCATION {Location of existing resource group}

Existing OpenAI resource

Run azd env set AZURE_OPENAI_SERVICE {Name of existing OpenAI service}
Run azd env set AZURE_OPENAI_RESOURCE_GROUP {Name of existing resource group that OpenAI service is provisioned to}
Run azd env set AZURE_OPENAI_CHATGPT_DEPLOYMENT {Name of existing ChatGPT deployment}. Only needed if your ChatGPT deployment is not the default 'chat'.
Run azd env set AZURE_OPENAI_EMBEDDING_DEPLOYMENT {Name of existing GPT embedding deployment}. Only needed if your embeddings deployment is not the default 'embedding'.

Existing Azure Cognitive Search resource

Run azd env set AZURE_SEARCH_SERVICE {Name of existing Azure Cognitive Search service}
Run azd env set AZURE_SEARCH_SERVICE_RESOURCE_GROUP {Name of existing resource group with ACS service}
If that resource group is in a different location than the one you'll pick for the azd up step, then run azd env set AZURE_SEARCH_SERVICE_LOCATION {Location of existing service}
If the search service's SKU is not standard, then run azd env set AZURE_SEARCH_SERVICE_SKU {Name of SKU}. The free tier won't work as it doesn't support managed identity. (See other possible values)

Other existing Azure resources

You can also use existing Form Recognizer and Storage Accounts. See ./infra/main.parameters.json for list of environment variables to pass to azd env set to configure those existing resources.

Provision remaining resources

Now you can run azd up, following the steps in Deploying from scratch above. That will both provision resources and deploy the code.

Deploying again

If you've only changed the backend/frontend code in the app folder, then you don't need to re-provision the Azure resources. You can just run:

azd deploy

If you've changed the infrastructure files (infra folder or azure.yaml), then you'll need to re-provision the Azure resources. You can do that by running:

azd up

Sharing environments

To give someone else access to a completely deployed and existing environment, either you or they can follow these steps:

Install the Azure Developer CLI
Run azd init -t azure-search-openai-javascript or clone this repository.
Run azd env refresh -e {environment name} They will need the azd environment name, subscription ID, and location to run this command. You can find those values in your .azure/{env name}/.env file. This will populate their azd environment's .env file with all the settings needed to run the app locally.
Set the environment variable AZURE_PRINCIPAL_ID either in that .env file or in the active shell to their Azure ID, which they can get with az ad signed-in-user show.
Run ./scripts/roles.ps1 or ./scripts/roles.sh to assign all of the necessary roles to the user. If they do not have the necessary permission to create roles in the subscription, then you may need to run this script for them. Once the script runs, they should be able to run the app locally.

Enabling optional features

Enabling authentication

By default, the deployed Azure web app will have no authentication or access restrictions enabled, meaning anyone with routable network access to the web app can chat with your indexed data. You can require authentication to your Azure Active Directory by following the Add app authentication tutorial and set it up against the deployed web app.

To then limit access to a specific set of users or groups, you can follow the steps from Restrict your Azure AD app to a set of users by changing "Assignment Required?" option under the Enterprise Application, and then assigning users/groups access. Users not granted explicit access will receive the error message -AADSTS50105: Your administrator has configured the application <app_name> to block users unless they are specifically granted ('assigned') access to the application.-

Enabling CORS for an alternate frontend

By default, the deployed search API will only allow requests from the same origin as the deployed web app origin. To enable CORS for a frontend hosted on a different origin, run:

Run azd env set ALLOWED_ORIGIN https://<your-domain.com>
Run azd up

Running locally

You can only run locally after having successfully run the azd up command.

Run azd auth login
Run azd env get-values > .env to get the environment variables for the app
Run az login
Run npm start or run the "VS Code Task: Start App" to start the project locally.

Using the app

In Azure: navigate to the Azure Static Web App deployed by azd. The URL is printed out when azd completes (as "Endpoint"), or you can find it in the Azure portal.
Running locally: navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5173

Once in the web app:

Try different topics in chat or Q&A context. For chat, try follow up questions, clarifications, ask to simplify or elaborate on answer, etc.
Explore citations and sources
Click on "settings" to try different options, tweak prompts, etc.

Using a different backend

The Search API service implements the AzureML Chat Backend Protocol. It can be swapped with any service that implements the same protocol, like the Python backend client in this repository instead of the Node.js implementation featured in this repo.

To do so, follow these steps:

Deploy this repository, following the steps above.
Get the frontend URL:

If you want to use the deployed web app, run azd env get-values | grep WEBAPP_URI to get the URL.
If you want to use the local web app, use http://localhost:5173.
If you want to use the Codespaces local web app, use https://<your_codespace_base_url>-5173.app.github.dev.

Open the alternative backend repository your want to use, for example: https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-search-openai-demo
Set the frontend URL as an allowed origin with azd env set ALLOWED_ORIGIN <your_frontend_url>.
Follow the steps to deploy the Python backend.
Once the Python backend is fully deployed, get the backend URL with azd env get-values | grep BACKEND_URI.
Set the backend URL in this repo, running azd env set BACKEND_URI <your_backend_url>.
Depending on whether you want to use the deployed web app or the local web app:

If you want to use the deployed web app, run azd up to redeploy.

If you want to use the local web app on your machine or in Codespaces, run:

# Export the environment variable.
# The syntax may be different depending on your shell or if you're using Windows.
export BACKEND_URI=<your_backend_url>

# Start the app
npm start --workspace=webapp

Enabling Authentication

This sample is composed by two applications: a backend service and API, deployed to Azure Container Apps, and a frontend application, deployed to Azure Static Web Apps. By default, the deployed Azure Container App will have no authentication or access restrictions enabled, meaning anyone with routable network access to the container app can chat with your indexed data. You can require authentication to your Azure Active Directory by following the Add container app authentication tutorial and set it up against the deployed Azure Container App.

To limit access to a specific set of users or groups, you can follow the steps from Restrict your Azure AD app to a set of users by changing "Assignment Required?" option under the Enterprise Application, and then assigning users/groups access. Users not granted explicit access will receive the error message -AADSTS50105: Your administrator has configured the application <app_name> to block users unless they are specifically granted ('assigned') access to the application.-

Productionizing

This sample is designed to be a starting point for your own production application, but you should do a thorough review of the security and performance before deploying to production. Here are some things to consider:

OpenAI Capacity: The default TPM (tokens per minute) is set to 30K. That is equivalent to approximately 30 conversations per minute (assuming 1K per user message/response). You can increase the capacity by changing the chatGptDeploymentCapacity and embeddingDeploymentCapacity parameters in infra/main.bicep to your account's maximum capacity. You can also view the Quotas tab in Azure OpenAI studio to understand how much capacity you have.
Azure Storage: The default storage account uses the Standard_LRS SKU. To improve your resiliency, we recommend using Standard_ZRS for production deployments, which you can specify using the sku property under the storage module in infra/main.bicep.
Azure Cognitive Search: The default search service uses the Standard SKU with the free semantic search option, which gives you 1000 free queries a month. Assuming your app will experience more than 1000 questions, you should either change semanticSearch to "standard" or disable semantic search entirely in the request options. If you see errors about search service capacity being exceeded, you may find it helpful to increase the number of replicas by changing replicaCount in infra/core/search/search-services.bicep or manually scaling it from the Azure Portal.
Azure Container Apps: The default container app setup uses 1 vCPU core and 2 GB RAM per container, with autoscaling enabled. The minimum number of replicas is set to 1, and the maximum to 10. You can change vCPU and RAM capacity in the template, and define your own auto-scaling rules based on load. For more details, read Set scaling rules in Azure Container Apps.
Authentication: By default, the deployed app is publicly accessible. We recommend restricting access to authenticated users. See Enabling authentication above for how to enable authentication.
Networking: We recommend deploying inside a Virtual Network. If the app is only for internal enterprise use, use a private DNS zone. Also consider using Azure API Management (APIM) for firewalls and other forms of protection. For more details, read Azure OpenAI Landing Zone reference architecture.

Resources

Clean up

To clean up all the resources created by this sample:

Run azd down --purge
When asked if you are sure you want to continue, enter y
When asked if you want to permanently delete the resources, enter y

The resource group and all the resources will be deleted.

Note

Note: The documents used in this demo contain information generated using a language model (Azure OpenAI Service). The information contained in these documents is only for demonstration purposes and does not reflect the opinions or beliefs of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information contained in this document. All rights reserved to Microsoft.

FAQ

Why do we need to break up the documents into chunks when Azure Cognitive Search supports searching large documents?

Chunking allows us to limit the amount of information we send to OpenAI due to token limits. By breaking up the content, it allows us to easily find potential chunks of text that we can inject into OpenAI. The method of chunking we use leverages a sliding window of text such that sentences that end one chunk will start the next. This allows us to reduce the chance of losing the context of the text.

How can we upload additional documents without redeploying everything?

To upload more documents, put them in the data/ folder and run ./scripts/index-data.sh or ./scripts/index-data.ps1.

How does this sample compare to other Chat with Your Data samples?

Another popular repository for this use case is here: https://github.com/Microsoft/sample-app-aoai-chatGPT/

That repository is designed for use by customers using Azure OpenAI studio and Azure Portal for setup. It also includes azd support for folks who want to deploy it completely from scratch.

The primary differences:

This repository includes multiple RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) approaches that chain the results of multiple API calls (to Azure OpenAI and ACS) together in different ways. The other repository uses only the built-in data sources option for the ChatCompletions API, which uses a RAG approach on the specified ACS index. That should work for most uses, but if you needed more flexibility, this sample may be a better option.
This repository is also a bit more experimental in other ways, since it's not tied to the Azure OpenAI Studio like the other repository.

Feature comparison:

Feature	azure-search-openai-javascript	sample-app-aoai-chatGPT
RAG approach	Multiple approaches	Only via ChatCompletion API data_sources
Vector support	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Data ingestion	✅ Yes (MD)	✅ Yes (PDF, TXT, MD, HTML)
Persistent chat history	❌ No (browser tab only)	✅ Yes, in CosmosDB

Technology comparison:

Tech	azure-search-openai-javascript	sample-app-aoai-chatGPT
Frontend	React/Lit	React
Backend	Node.js (Fastify)	Python (Flask)
Vector DB	Azure Cognitive Search	Azure Cognitive Search
Deployment	Azure Developer CLI (azd)	Azure Portal, az, azd

How do you use GPT-4 with this sample?

Run these commands:

azd env set AZURE_OPENAI_CHATGPT_MODEL gpt-4

You may also need to adjust the capacity in infra/main.bicep file, depending on how much TPM your account is allowed.

What is the difference between the Chat and Ask tabs?

The chat tab uses the approach programmed in chat-read-retrieve-read.ts. The ask tab uses the approach programmed in ask-retrieve-then-read.ts. There is also another one /ask approach available, [using an agent](https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-search-openai-javascript/blob/main/packages/search/src/lib/approaches/ask-read-retrieve-read.ts.

What does the `azd up` command do?

The azd up command comes from the Azure Developer CLI, and takes care of both provisioning the Azure resources and deploying code to the selected Azure hosts.

The azd up command uses the azure.yaml file combined with the infrastructure-as-code .bicep files in the infra/ folder. The azure.yaml file for this project declares several "hooks" for the prepackage step and postprovision steps. The up command first runs the prepackage hook which installs Node dependencies and builds the React.JS-based JavaScript files. It then packages all the code (both frontend and backend services) into a zip file which it will deploy later.

Next, it provisions the resources based on main.bicep and main.parameters.json. At that point, since there is no default value for the OpenAI resource location, it asks you to pick a location from a short list of available regions. Then it will send requests to Azure to provision all the required resources. With everything provisioned, it runs the postprovision hook to process the local data and add it to an Azure Cognitive Search index.

Finally, it looks at azure.yaml to determine the Azure host (Container Apps and Static Web Apps, in this case) and uploads the zip to Azure App Service. The azd up command is now complete, but it may take a few minutes for the app to be fully available and working after the initial deploy.

Related commands are azd provision for just provisioning (if infra files change) and azd deploy for just deploying updated app code.

Troubleshooting

Here are the most common failure scenarios and solutions:

The subscription (AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID) doesn't have access to the Azure OpenAI service. Please ensure AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID matches the ID specified in the OpenAI access request process.
You're attempting to create resources in regions not enabled for Azure OpenAI (e.g. East US 2 instead of East US), or where the model you're trying to use isn't enabled. See this matrix of model availability.
You've exceeded a quota, most often number of resources per region. See this article on quotas and limits.
You're getting "same resource name not allowed" conflicts. That's likely because you've run the sample multiple times and deleted the resources you've been creating each time, but are forgetting to purge them. Azure keeps resources for 48 hours unless you purge from soft delete. See this article on purging resources.
After running azd up and visiting the website, you see a '404 Not Found' in the browser. Wait 10 minutes and try again, as it might be still starting up. Then try running azd deploy and wait again. If you still encounter errors with the deployed app, consult these tips for debugging App Service app deployments and file an issue if the error logs don't help you resolve the issue.

pkbullock/azure-search-openai-javascript