Administering and maintaining your project
Managing user settings
Update your profile and interface preferences via the User settings icon in the top right corner. You can also access preview features to stay up to date.
Practical tips
Set your time zone to (UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London in User Settings > Time and Locale to ensure consistency.
Using wikis
You MAY use Azure DevOps Wikis to record project information and decisions, but you MUST NOT use them for information that should be stored in a controlled document.
Further reading and information
Create a project wiki to share information - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn
Creating and managing dashboards
Use dashboards to monitor key metrics like test results, build quality, code coverage and burn-down rates. The following layout is RECOMMENDED:
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Top row: Display build metrics for quick visibility of build status.
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Middle row: Show test results and code quality metrics to track code health.
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Bottom row: Reserve for sprint and team performance metrics.
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Further reading and information
Understand dashboards, charts, reports, and widgets - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn
Project housekeeping tasks
Follow these RECOMMENDED practices to keep projects clean and well-organised:
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Set artifact retention policies Keep only the latest, previous and active releases versions to minimise storage costs.
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Pipeline run retention: Retain only recent, relevant runs for debugging. Set retention policies to delete pipeline runs after 30 days.
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Delete obsolete branches. Remove inactive or redundant branches to remove clutter.
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Clean agent pools: Clean stale directories and repositories on self-hosted agents weekly to avoid disk space issues.
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Keep agents updated: Enable automatic updates for minor version changes and manually upgrade for major updates.
Managing costs
To control and optimise costs Organisation Owners SHOULD:
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Monitor Azure DevOps costs: Review consumption costs against your Azure subscription weekly to spot unexpected charges early.
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Downgrade or remove inactive users: Downgrade inactive users to Stakeholder after 8 weeks. Remove users who haven't used Azure DevOps for 6 months.
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Set a monthly cost threshold: Set alerts for when costs exceed a threshold and review cost breakdowns in the \"Cost Management + Billing\" section of the Azure portal.
Further reading and information
Manage paid access for users - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn
Billing FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn
Data privacy and availability
Azure DevOps Services includes strong data protection, availability and features:
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Data Availability: Continuous access through data redundancy, even during failures.
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Service Availability: High uptime with built-in availability mechanisms.
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Service Security: Protection against threats and vulnerabilities.
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Data Privacy: Compliance with privacy laws and best practices
Further reading and information
Data protection overview - Azure DevOps Services | Microsoft Learn
Practical tips
YOU MUST NOT store Personal Identifiable information (PII) in Azure DevOps!
Connecting Defender for Cloud DevOps
Connecting Azure DevOps to Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps identify and fix security issues. Check with your Organisation Owner and Cyber Security team about potential costs first.
The following practices are RECOMMENDED:
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Connect to Defender for Cloud: Organisation Owners MAY link Azure DevOps to Defender for Cloud for security insights. This will also install the Defender for DevOps Container Mapping extension to protect containerized applications.
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Enable Pull Request Annotations: Turn on annotations to highlight security issues in pull requests, so they can be fixed before merging.
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Review Alerts and Recommendations: Regularly review Defender for Cloud alerts and follow recommendations to reduce risks.