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Build on Your App

You've created your first Forge application — now add real capabilities. Follow this guided path to evolve your project from a starter API into a production-ready service.

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🛤️ Guided Path

Work through these steps in order. Each builds on the previous, but you can skip ahead if a capability isn't relevant to your project.

1. Add Authentication

Secure your API with Entra ID (corporate) or Okta (external) authentication.
What you'll do Configure authentication providers and protect your endpoints
Guide Security Overview
Deployment config Deployment Workflow
Difficulty Intermediate

2. Connect to Data

Add a database or storage backend to persist your application data.
What you'll do Provision and connect to Cosmos DB or Azure Blob Storage
Guide (Cosmos DB) Cosmos DB NoSQL
Guide (Blob Storage) Blob Storage
Foundry example Blob Storage Integration
Difficulty Intermediate

3. Call External APIs

Integrate with downstream services using generated Kiota clients and proper scope configuration.
What you'll do Add a Kiota-generated API client with authentication
Guide Downstream API Calls
Difficulty Intermediate

4. Add Eventing

Publish and subscribe to domain events using Azure Service Bus.
What you'll do Create an event publisher or subscribe to events from other services
Guide (Publishing) Event Service
Guide (Subscribing) Event Subscriptions
Foundry example Event Orchestration Example
Difficulty Intermediate

5. Configure Feature Flags

Control feature rollout at runtime without redeploying your application.
What you'll do Define feature flags and gate endpoints or UI behind them
Guide Feature Flags
Foundry example foundry/dotnet/feature-flags/
Difficulty Beginner

6. Deploy Your App

If you haven't yet, follow "From Local to Deployed" in the tutorial to publish your project and create its Azure DevOps repository and pipelines.

From there, use aspire publish to regenerate pipeline YAML whenever you add or change services, security, or infrastructure in your AppHost — then commit and push to deploy.
What you'll do Use aspire publish to regenerate Azure DevOps pipeline YAML as your AppHost evolves, then commit and push to deploy
Guide Aspire Publish
Guide (Zero-downtime) Blue-Green Deployments
Difficulty Advanced

7. Observe in Production

Monitor your application with OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs in Dynatrace.
What you'll do Verify telemetry is flowing and use dashboards for troubleshooting
Reference (OpenTelemetry) OpenTelemetry
Reference (Dynatrace) Dynatrace
Reference (Diagnostics) Diagnostic IDs
Difficulty Beginner

💡 Tips

  • Start with authentication if your API will be accessed by users or other services — it's easier to add early than retrofit later.
  • Feature flags are low-effort and can be added at any point in your development lifecycle.
  • Observability is automatic — Forge applications emit OpenTelemetry data by default via Aspire. Focus on learning how to read the dashboards rather than configuration.

🔭 What's Next

Once you've worked through the capabilities above, there's more of the platform to explore:

  • See the full CLI reference — saif CLI Reference documents every command, including ones not covered in this guide (saif service search, saif app search, saif agent init, and more).
  • Discover other Forge services — Use saif service search <name> (or the search_services MCP tool if you have saif agent init set up) to find existing services and their repositories before building something new from scratch.
  • Browse example implementations — The Foundry catalog has runnable examples for common integration patterns.