Azure Boards + GitHub Integration Improvements

Dan Hellem

The existing Azure Boards + GitHub integration has been in place for several years now. This integration was a great starting point, but it does not offer the level of traceability that our customers have grown accustomed to. Based on your feedback, we have put together set of investments to enhance this integration. Our goal is to improve upon it so that Azure Boards customers who choose to use GitHub repositories can maintain an equivalent level of traceability to having repositories in Azure DevOps.

These are some of the items we have planned.

Improved AB#ID validation

Improve the Azure Boards GitHub app to inform users when a link to a work item is invalid. This will help users to identify and fix before the Pull Request is merged.

Add link to GitHub commit or pull request

Today users must cut and paste the full URL of the GitHub commit or pull request. We want to improve that experience to allow you to search for the commit or pull request and select it from a list of repositories. This will make it easier to link to the correct commit or pull request.

Show more details

There are lot of different things that happen over the lifetime of a pull request. But today the GitHub integration only shows if a pull request is either open or closed. We want to improve that to match how GitHub displays the status of a pull request from the Pull Request list. This will include the following:

• Pull Request id
• Date the pull request was created
• Pull request status (draft, review required, approved, merged)
• Status of checks (completed, partially completed, failed)

Create branch from work item

One of the more popular features of our Azure Boards and Repos integration is to create a new branch from a work item. This creates a new branch in the repository and automatically links the work item to future commits and pull requests. We would like to provide a similar experience for customers who have their GitHub repository connected to Azure Boards.

Improve scalability

Today, you can only link up to 500 GitHub repositories to a single Azure DevOps project. We want to improve the user experience to scale up and allow more than 500 repositories to be connected.

Stay updated

Be sure to follow our official Azure DevOps Roadmap to stay up to date on our features and timelines.

We need feedback

We would greatly value your feedback on a couple of different fronts. Firstly, if you have an interest in gaining early access to these features, kindly reach out to us via email. Please include your name of your organization (https://dev.azure.com/{organization}).

Secondly, if there are any additional scenarios you believe we should consider investing in with the Azure Boards + GitHub integration, we encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Your input is highly appreciated, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Dan Hellem Program Manager, Azure DevOps

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