Azure Portal Navigation
Get comfortable with the Portal layout before your first lab
🟢 Beginner
⏱ 8 Minutes
📘 AZ-104 · Prerequisites
Why This Matters
Every lab in this course is written for the Azure Portal at portal.azure.com. If you've never used it before, a few minutes learning the layout will make every lab's instructions much faster to follow.
The Basics
- Search bar (top of every page): the fastest way to get anywhere. Type a service name (e.g., "Virtual machines", "Resource groups") and select it from the results. Every lab in this course starts with "Search for <service>" — this is what that means.
- Blade: the Portal's term for a panel/page. Clicking into a resource opens its "blade," which has a left-hand menu of sections (Overview, Settings, Monitoring, etc.).
- + Create: the button to start creating a new resource. Creation wizards are organized into tabs (Basics, Networking, Management, Tags, Review + create) — labs reference these by tab name.
- Review + create: the final tab of almost every creation wizard. Azure validates your configuration here before letting you click Create.
Resource Groups
A resource group is a logical container for related resources. Nearly every lab's first step is creating a resource group (named rg-az104-labXX by convention), and the last step ("Cleanup") is deleting it — which deletes everything inside it in one action. This keeps costs predictable: if you forget anything else, deleting the resource group cleans it up.
rg-az104-lab01
├── Virtual Network
├── Network Security Group
├── Virtual Machine
└── Public IP Address
Cleanup step:
Delete resource group "rg-az104-lab01"
└─ Removes everything above
in a single action ✓
Useful Portal Features Used Throughout This Course
- Resource groups > <name> > Overview: shows all resources in the group — useful for confirming what you've created so far.
- All resources: a flat view of everything in your subscription, filterable by resource group, type, or location.
- Notifications (bell icon, top right): shows deployment progress — useful when a "Create" action takes a few minutes (e.g., VMs, gateways).
- Cloud Shell (terminal icon, top right): gives you a browser-based CLI. Not used in this course — every lab is deliberately Portal-only — but worth knowing it exists, since some Microsoft Learn docs default to it.
Cost Awareness
The Portal shows estimated costs in some creation wizards (e.g., VM size selection shows an hourly estimate). Combined with the Cost tip repeated throughout this course — always run each lab's Cleanup section — this is enough to keep a free/trial subscription's spend near zero.
How This Connects to Other Topics
Cloud Computing Fundamentals
Resource groups sit at the bottom of the resource hierarchy (Management Group → Subscription → Resource Group → Resource).
Module 01 — Identity & Governance
This is the first hands-on module — Entra ID Overview is where Lab 01 begins.
Key Takeaways
💡 Summary
- Search bar = fastest way to find any service
- Blade = a resource's panel with a left-hand section menu
- + Create wizards are organized into tabs, ending with Review + create
- Resource group = logical container; delete it to clean up everything inside
- Notifications (bell) track deployment progress
- Cloud Shell exists but isn't used in this course (Portal-only labs)
- Always run each lab's Cleanup step to keep costs near zero
See It In Action
Associated lab: Lab 00: Azure Portal Navigation
Now that you understand the portal's layout, dive into a hands-on lab where you'll create a resource group, explore Azure services, and get comfortable navigating — exactly what you'll do in every subsequent lab.