Azure DevOps Overview
Interacting with Azure DevOps
Azure CLI
- You can use Azure CLI with the Azure DevOps extension to work with Azure DevOps
- Enables automate everything as you can script anything and hook it in a build pipeline.
- Run on Linux, macOS or Windows
- Accessible via browser using Azure Cloud Shell
- It structures as group, sub group and commands
az –help: display all groups, sub groups and commands
- e.g.
vm is sub group of az so you can run az vm -help too
- Find command:
az find -q MyCommand
Azure PowerShell
- PowerShell providing services like Shell and Command parsing
- Base PowerShell has 2 format:
- Windows PowerShell
- PowerShell core (Cross platform, Linux and macOS)
- Cmdlets are shipped in modules
- Module is a .DLL that include the code for Cmdlet
- Cmdlet is loaded by loading all its modules
Get-Module to get list of all loaded modules.
- Azure PowerShell is a PowerShell module that can be added to Windows PowerShell & PowerShhell core
- Accessible via browser using Azure Cloud Shell
- 💡 Can store templates or scripts on Azure Storage account and securing them with SAS token
- Azure Repos
- Source control for your code.
- You can use Git repositories or Team Foundation Version Control.
- Azure Pipelines
- Helps providing build & release services for continuous integration & delivery
- Azure Boards
- Agile tools that support planning and tracking work items
- Azure Test Plans
- Tools for testing your applications
- Azure Artifacts
- Allows teams to work with
maven, npm and NuGet packages
- Same purpose as JFrog Artifactory
Licensing & Azure DevOps packages
- 📝 Azure DevOps Server
- Can install on-prem
- Free-trial available
- Formerly known as Team Foundation Server
- Pay month-to-month or 3-year commitment
- Bonus for using cloud services for migration.
- You’ll also need Windows or Windows Server licenses for the servers
- Azure DevOps Services
- On cloud
- Licensing
- Individual services:
- e.g. Azure Pipelines & Azure Artifacts
- Free tier available
- User licenses
- Basic Plan: First 5 users free then cheap price per user
- Basic + Test plans: More expensive per user
- Management:
- Check on azure prices:
Service hooks
- Trigger tasks in external services from Azure DevOps
- E.g. if code is pushed => create a new card in Trello or just call a webhook
- You can integrate with (see updated list in official docs)
- Build and release: AppVeyor, Bamboo, Jenkins, MyGet, Slack,
- Collaborate: FlowDock, HuBot, Office 365
- Customer support: UserVoice, ZenDesk
- Plan and track: Trello
- Integrate: Service Bus, Azure Storage, Grafana, Web Hooks, Zapier
Managing users and their access
- Access levels
- Basic features
- Accessed by first 5 free users.
- Includes almost all of the features.
- Stakeholder features
- Unlimited free users
- Only includes working with Azure boards but not with agile tools such as Kanban boards, backlogs etc.
- Go to your “Organization Settings” -> Users
- List of users & their access levels (basic / stakeholder)
- You can add new users here:
- A user must have a valid Microsoft account.
- They get an e-mail to join.
Notifications
- You’re notified when changes occur to work items, code reviews, pull requests, source control files, and builds.
- You can be notified via email.
- Notifications are managed in 4 levels:
- Your own notifications in your organization menu, managed by you
- Team notifications, managed by a team administrator
- Project notifications, managed by a member of the Project Administrators group
- Organization/collection-level notifications, managed by a member of the Project Collection Administrators group
Extensions
- Install extensions
- Extensions are installed on organization level.
- Allows you to e.g.:
- Introduce new tasks in Azure Pipelines
- Integrate with e.g. JIRA
- Solve pull request conflicts
- …