Challenge 00 - Ready, Set, Connect

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Introduction

Precision Labs’ Support Copilot is built and hosted in Microsoft Foundry, and needs to find trustworthy answers in three data sets: CRM accounts, support tickets, and KB articles. In this challenge you will prepare the three environments used for the rest of the hack: an Azure lab subscription (Microsoft Foundry), an Elastic Serverless trial (data and MCP tools), and a GitHub Codespace (your developer environment).

Prerequisites

Description

Launch the Azure Lab Environment

Today’s hack event is providing you with a temporary Azure Lab environment powered by CloudLabs. To use CloudLabs you must register for the event at the following link:

Register for Azure Lab Environment from Microsoft powered by CloudLabs

Once registered, you will receive a confirmation email from: microsoftevents@cloudlabs.ai

NOTE: If you do not see the email in your inbox, please be sure to check your Spam or Junk folders.

When you receive the confirmation email:

Gather the following from the lab environment and keep them handy. You will use them in the Codespace terminal:

  1. Azure username (example: odl_user_xxxxx@aiw-ds.cloudlabs.ai)
  2. Azure password

Keep these credentials handy as you will need them to log into the Microsoft Foundry portal.

Create an Elastic Serverless Trial Environment

The following steps guide you to create an Elastic Serverless trial via the Microsoft Marketplace in the Azure portal.

  1. Go to Elasticsearch (7-day free trial) in the Microsoft Marketplace.
  2. Click the Get it now button.
  3. You will be prompted to log in to the Azure portal. Use the Azure username (odl_userxxxxx@aiw-ds.cloudlabs.ai) and password you were provided from the lab environment.
  4. On the Basics tab:
    • Choose “Create new” for Resource Group and give it a name (example: rg-elastic-hack-john).
    • For Resource Name, use elastic-wth
    • For Hosting Type, choose Serverless.
    • Use the default Region ((US) East US).

      WARNING: Do NOT choose “Cloud Hosted” for the Hosting Type as it will not support the features required for this hack.

  5. Click Review + Create. Your Elasticsearch trial deployment will start.
  6. When the deployment is complete, click the Go to resource button. This will open the Elastic Cloud Resource pane in the Azure portal where you can view your deployment.
  7. In the Elastic Cloud Resource pane, click the View in Elastic link (on the lower right side of the window). This will launch the Elastic Kibana portal.
  8. Kibana will prompt you to log in. Click the SSO link and log in using your Azure credentials (odl_userxxxxx@aiw-us.cloudlabs.ai).
  9. In Kibana, gather your Elasticsearch endpoint URL and your Kibana URL. They are different URLs, and you will need both.
  10. Create an API key for the deployment script:
    • In the project, go to Developer Tools / API keys (or search for “API keys” in the top search bar).
    • Click Create API key, give it a name such as wth-setup, and keep the default privileges.
    • Copy the encoded key value immediately. It is shown only once.
    • Keep it available until you create your local .env file in the deployment section below. You will paste it into ELASTIC_API_KEY.

Warning: Treat API keys like passwords. Do not paste them in chat, screenshots, or Git.

If you are not able to provision Elastic via the Microsoft Marketplace, expand and follow the instructions below to create a trial directly on Elastic’s website:

Click to expand/collapse Create Elastic Serverless Non-Marketplace Trial

Create Elastic Serverless Non-Marketplace Trial

  1. Go to Elastic Cloud trial account and sign up for a free Elastic Cloud trial using a personal email address.
  2. Check your inbox for a verification email to launch the new trial.
  3. When prompted to create a project, choose Elasticsearch as the project type.

WARNING: Choosing a different project type may impact how this lab works!

  1. Give your project a name (example: elastic-wth)
  2. Choose Azure for your Cloud provider and Virginia (eastus) or Washington (westus2) for your Region.
  3. Wait for the project to finish creating, then open it.
  4. Gather your Elasticsearch endpoint URL and your Kibana URL. They are different URLs, and you will need both.
  5. Create an API key for the deployment script:
    • In the project, go to Developer Tools / API keys (or search for “API keys” in the top search bar).
    • Click Create API key, give it a name such as wth-setup, and keep the default privileges.
    • Copy the encoded key value immediately. It is shown only once.
    • Keep it available until you create your local .env file in the deployment section below. You will paste it into ELASTIC_API_KEY.

Warning: Treat API keys like passwords. Do not paste them in chat, screenshots, or Git.

Launch Development Environment

You will use GitHub Codespaces as your development environment. A GitHub Codespace is a development environment hosted in the cloud that you access via a browser. The Azure CLI and Python are pre-installed, and the Codespace installs the sample data loader’s Python packages during creation.

GitHub Codespaces is available to every personal GitHub.com account, which includes a monthly free usage quota. You can check your balance on the GitHub billing page.

  1. Open the Codespace for this hack: Elasticsearch with Foundry Codespace
  2. Sign in with your personal GitHub account.
  3. Verify the Dev container configuration is set to the one for this hack, then click Create Codespace.
  4. Wait for Visual Studio Code to load in your browser. The first launch takes approximately 3-5 minutes. The Codespace automatically installs the elasticsearch and python-dotenv Python packages during creation.

NOTE: If you close the Codespace, return to GitHub Codespaces to find and re-launch it.

Configure and Load Sample Data

In this section, you will deploy the sample data for this hackathon.

From the Terminal in your Codespace, complete the following:

  1. Add your Elastic values to the configuration file used by the setup scripts. Copy the .env.sample file to .env:

    cp .env.sample .env
chmod 600 .env
code .env

    Replace the values of these three entries with the URLs and encoded setup API key you copied from your Elastic project:

    ELASTICSEARCH_URL=https://<your-elasticsearch-endpoint>
KIBANA_URL=https://<your-kibana-endpoint>
ELASTIC_API_KEY=<your-encoded-setup-api-key>

    Save the file before continuing.

    WARNING: Keep .env private and never commit it to Git.

  2. Run the data loader:

    bash data/load_data.sh

    The loader automatically reads the settings from .env.

    Warning: Every run deletes and recreates the three workshop sample indices. Wait for the generators to finish and check that the final document counts are 500 accounts, 3,000 tickets, and 150 articles.

    NOTE: If the script fails or prints ERR, read the error, check your .env settings and project access, and run it again.

Verify Your Elastic Environment in Kibana

  1. Open your Kibana URL in a browser and sign in.
  2. Confirm the sample indices exist:
    • Open Index Management (search for “Index Management” in the top search bar) and select the Indices tab.
    • Find precision-crm-accounts, precision-support-tickets, and precision-kb-articles. Click each one and open the Documents tab (or use Discover) to confirm it contains records.

Success Criteria

Learning Resources

Tips