Microsoft Azure DevOps – Organization

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Background: In last article of Azure DevOps we discussed introductory part of Azure DevOps. In this article we will go one step ahead and will discuss Organizations in Azure DevOps

Take away from this article: At the end of this article we will got to know about

• What is Azure DevOps Organization
• What we get with free Azure DevOps Organization
• Managing Azure DevOps Organizations settings

What is Azure DevOps Organization :

• An Organization in Azure DevOps is a mechanism for organizing and connecting groups of related projects.
• Whenever we first time start / sign-in with Azure DevOps, default organization is created.
• Currently I am logging with my Microsoft account – prashamsabadra@live.com as shown in below fig to start with Azure DevOps free 🙂
• Once we signed in we will get following prompt

• Once we click on “Continue” button, we will get prompted for the organization name
• Here, we are specifying organization name as – “KnowledgeJunction” as shown in below Fig

• Once we have clicked on “Continue” from the above image we will be redirected to home page of our organization – https://dev.azure.com/<Organization name>, here – https://dev.azure.com/KnowledgeJunction as shown in below Fig

• So here default Organization is created
• We have various details on home page and options like – Name of Organization, link to create “New organization“, option for setting s/ updating settings – “Organizations settings“
• We have option to create “Project” – either “Public Project” or “Private Project“. We will discuss about Azure DevOps Project in next upcoming article 🙂
• We will also receive an email – “You have been invited to a Azure DevOps Project!” as

• There are various details in email as shown in below Fig
  • “Join now” button to sign in with Azure DevOps
  • Azure DevOps documentation details – “Get started” button in email
  • Our Organization details

What we get with free Azure DevOps Organization:

• Five free users with Basic access
• Unlimited Visual Studio subscribers and Stakeholders
• Free monthly amounts of additional services such as build and deployment 

Organization Settings: Lets explore few of the organization settings… From the Azure DevOps home page / Organization home page, we have an link “Organization settings“. By clicking on this link we will be redirected to Organizations settings overview page – https://dev.azure.com/<Organization name>/_settings/organizationOverview as shown in below Fig

On Organization Settings overview page, we have various settings such as

• Option to use new URL, by default this setting is On. But if we turn off this setting, we could use old URL => https://<organization-name>.visualstudio.com, here in our case – https://knowledgejunction.visualstudio.com/
• Setting Privacy URL – This is the link to custom document which specifies privacy of all users, internal as well external. Please have a more look for Privacy Policies detail – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/organizations/accounts/add-privacy-policy-url?view=azure-devops
• Delete Organization – This will delete the Organization. We will discuss details for deleting and recovering organization in separate article
• Users – https://dev.azure.com/KnowledgeJunction/_settings/users .

From Users, We can manage our organization access. we could add users as shown in below Fig. Here, I am adding user – prasham@knowledgejunction1.onmicrosoft.com.

Only organization owners or members of the Project Collection Administration group can add users at this level.

Once added, respective user will receive email as shown in below Fig. Click on “Join now” button from email and user will be redirected to DevOps home page.

We have other settings as well like, Filter users option, session notifications, summary, access level as shown in below fig

• Auditing: Audit page – https://dev.azure.com/<organization name>/_settings/audit shows the detailed messages. These are very important in case we need to verify the things or need to track the activities of users. Please have a look at below fig,
  • we can Export logs as well either in CSV or JSON format.
  • We can have very detailed level description under “Details” column

• Azure Active Directory:
  • From this setting page – https://dev.azure.com/knowledgejunction/_settings/organizationAad, we could connect with “Azure Active Directory” of our organization
  • We could connect with multiple organization Azure Active Directory
  • Here I have connected with my “KnowledgeJunction” Azure Active Directory as

• Once we successfully connected with our organization Azure Active Directory, we get a “Connect success!” prompt and one message as shown in below Fig.

• Message is, we need to sign in and sign out to see our organization AD users.
• Also, to add users from our organization Active Directory, we need to have permission to at least one account from organization AD
• Once we have permissions in place then we could add other users as shown in below Fig – Here, we are adding user – Prasham1@knowledgjunction.onmicrosoft.com which is from KnowledgeJunction organization AD

Since this article is going long, we will stop here :). There are individual settings for Board, Pipelines, Artifacts and other settings as well which we will discuss in next upcoming respective articles.

Next Article : In next article we will discuss about Azure DevOps Organization Permissions

References:

• About organization management in Azure DevOps
• Create an organization or project collection
• Plan your organizational structure
• Add users and manage access in Azure DevOps Services

Thanks for reading 🙂 Feel free to discuss / comment / questions. SHARING IS CARING 🙂

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