Connect AI agent tools to external services

Preview

Learn how to connect AI agent tools to external applications like Slack, Google Calendar, or any service with an API using HTTP requests. Agents can use externally connected tools to automate tasks, send messages, and retrieve data from third-party platforms.

Requirements

Create a Unity Catalog HTTP connection. See Connect to external HTTP services.

Create a Unity Catalog function tool

After creating the HTTP connection and testing that it works properly, create a Unity Catalog function that uses the connection. The following example creates a Unity Catalog function tool that an agent can use to post a message to Slack:

SQL
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION main.default.slack_post_message(
  text STRING COMMENT 'message content'
)
RETURNS STRING
COMMENT 'Sends a Slack message by passing in the message and returns the response received from the external service.'
RETURN (http_request(
  conn => 'test_sql_slack',
  method => 'POST',
  path => '/api/chat.postMessage',
  json => to_json(named_struct(
    'channel', "C032G2DAH3",
    'text', text
  ))
)).text

Create a tool in agent code

To send HTTP requests to external services with Python, use the http_request function from the databricks-sdk library. This function sends an HTTP request to an external service using a Unity Catalog connection to authenticate.

Permissions required: USE CONNECTION on the connection object.

The following example makes an external HTTP request from inside agent code.

Python
from databricks.sdk import WorkspaceClient
from databricks.sdk.service.serving import ExternalFunctionRequestHttpMethod

WorkspaceClient().serving_endpoints.http_request(
  conn="connection_name",
  method=ExternalFunctionRequestHttpMethod.POST,
  path="/api/v1/resource",
  json={"key": "value"},
  headers={"extra_header_key": "extra_header_value"},
)

conn: The connection object that specifies the host, port, base_path, and access credentials.
method: The HTTP request method used to make the call. For example: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
path: The path to concatenate after the base_path to invoke the service resource.
json: The JSON body to send with the request.
headers: A Map to specify the request headers.

Example notebooks

The following notebooks demonstrate creating AI agent tools that connect to Slack, OpenAI, and Azure AI search.

Requirements​

Create a Unity Catalog function tool​

Create a tool in agent code​

Example notebooks​

Slack messaging agent tool

Microsoft Graph API agent tool

Azure AI Search agent tool

Requirements

Create a Unity Catalog function tool

Create a tool in agent code

Example notebooks