Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2019 Q3
As always, the Azure DevOps engineering team is working hard to deliver enhancements and new features across all our services. Recently we have been adding new capabilities at an unprecedented pace, including support for multi-stage YAML pipelines, Pipeline environments and Kubernetes integration, support for authenticating with GitHub identities, Python and Universal packages and public feeds in Azure Artifacts, new and updated integrations with Jira Software, Slack and Microsoft Teams, and much more.
We have also been making a renewed effort to include some smaller items each sprint which we categorize as “paper cuts”. These are minor to medium sized issues that can really help improve the users experience and are based on the amazing feedback provided through our Developer Community site.
Last week we updated the Features Timeline, take a look at the complete list of features for Q3. As we move into the second half of the calendar year, you can expect to see significant investments across all the services, but I wanted to call out some of my favorites from that list. Note that each feature links to our public roadmap project where you can find more details about each item and see its status.
Azure Pipelines:
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Instead of automatically moving a run from one stage to the next, you might want an approver to review it first. While approvals are a concept that already exists in Release pipelines, it is not yet available when defining pipelines with YAML documents. Config-as-code poses interesting challenges for where you specify approvals. We plan to make approvals a policy on the resource (agent pool, variable group, service connection, or secure file), and any stage that uses that resource will be paused for an approval.
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Multi repository support for YAML pipelines
Currently, you can trigger a pipeline from changes made in a single repository. With this feature, you will be able to trigger pipelines based on changes made in one of multiple repositories. For example, this is useful if you manage your code in one repository and the YAML file in a different repository.
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A deployment job is a special type of job that is used to deploy your app to an environment. We will enhance the strategies supported in deployment jobs to enable rolling, canary and blue-green deployments.
Azure Boards:
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Customize system picklist values
Customizing system picklists is a request with a high number of votes in the Developer Community. This quarter we will add this feature and let you to customize values on system fields such as Activity, Priority, Risk, etc.
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Update work item notifications to be more flexible
We’ll update the work item notifications so that they are more customizable and flexible. You will have the full subscription option, unsubscribed option and a customizable option. This gives you the choice to follow just certain events on the work item, such as state changes or assigned to field changes.
Azure Repos:
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Add granularity to automatic reviewer policy
We are adding granularity to the automatic reviewer policy so that you can set required reviewers at the group level. Today you can set a total required reviewer policy, but this is a global total. For example, this will let you set two people from a specific group as approvers.
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You will be able to update, and close work items through Git commits by using a syntax similar to “fixes #3245”.
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Support push policies to block commits meeting certain criteria
We are adding push policies that will allow admins to block pushes to a repository based on certain criteria. You will be able to set policies to block pushes where the commit author does not match the defined pattern. In addition, you will be able to block pushes where the push contains a file name that violates the defined pattern.
Azure Artifacts:
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Simplified set-up and pipelines experiences
We’re making a major update to the “Connect to feed” dialog that supports more modern tools and reduces the need to manually generate and store Personal Access Tokens on disk in order to use Azure Artifacts feeds. We will also release new package authentication tasks for Azure Pipelines that will allow you to securely configure both Azure Artifacts feeds and any other feeds you provide via service connections.
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Billing management and cost controls
Now that we’ve introduced consumption-based pricing for Azure Artifacts, we’ll be adding a set of views to help you understand your usage across feeds and upstream sources. From those views, we’re also adding a set of manual and automatic clean-up tools to help you control your costs.
Azure Test Plans:
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We are adding a test progress report to Test Plans. The report will be powered by analytics to reflect the summary, progress and drill down for the selected Test Plan.
Administration:
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Policy to control and restrict new Azure DevOps organizations
An organization in Azure DevOps is a mechanism for organizing and connecting groups of related projects. To help with governance, we are creating a new policy to control who in your enterprise can create new Azure DevOps organizations attached to your Azure Active Directory.
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Export list of all Azure DevOps users paid under an Azure subscription
We will let you pull a full list of paid users under one Azure subscription. This export will provide a list of all the users under the same Azure subscription, the organizations and projects they can access, when they last accessed Azure DevOps, and when they were first added. You can use the information provided by the export to see which project your users have access to. This can be useful if you need to split costs based on projects.
We appreciate your feedback, which helps us prioritize. If you have new ideas or changes you’d like to see, provide a suggestion on the Developer Community, vote for an existing one, or contact us on Twitter.
We have an Azure repo containing various ARM templates and powershell scripts located in its own DevOps project. In the "old" version of release pipelines it was easy to add the repo as an Artifact and reference the template and parameter files in the resource group deployment task. In Multistage-pipelines, we can't seem to find out how we can reference ARM templates and Powershell scripts. Is it possible to add an Azure repo from another...
Thanks for all the new features as always. I did notice the new Test Plans page was auto enforced on our instance this morning. We are in preview but did not receive a notice and have not found any notices in the documentation or on here. Thankfully we can still flip it back using the preview feature toggles. Could you please put changes like these in this blog or in the Azure blog so our...
Hi John, you can subscribe to receive release notes updates here.
That sounds great.
I think we will have more work on our mobile Azure DevOps app again.
Will the new features be available directly in the preview library?
We need it for the app ThreeOps.
Hi Thorsten, is there a specific feature that you are looking for? Some features will be in the preview library and others won’t.
For the Approvals in yaml pipelines, will there be documentation for this when it releases? Where can I find documentation on how to integrate this?
Hi Ian, approvals in multi-stage YAML pipelines are now available to all organizations. You can find the documentation here.
Love it!
thank you Anisha
Regarding the enhancements for Artifacts, don’t forget about Azure Dev Spaces when you design this.
Today it’s a struggle to even get a workaround working when using Azure Dev Spaces with Azure DevOps Artifacts in private feeds.
More info can be found at Dev Spaces git repo.
Hi Per, thank you for the feedback. I will send this to the team.
Nice Features, but for me the most important feature for Adopting Azure Piplines is missing: Please support branch-specific pipeline settings like variables, expiration policy, repository settings and so on. To get a better understanding visit: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/using-plan-branches-289276872.html . This is the only feature we’re missing to start adopting azure pipelines /azure devops server.
Hi Jens, thank you for the suggestion. I will pass this to the team.
Great article, thanks a lot for all the very helpful work and informative roadmap! We always closely follow the roadmap and look forward to upcoming features. I noticed that there are very rarely Wiki-Features on the roadmap (also in the past) and I’m wondering whether these feature-teams don’t publish their plans. We like all the Wiki-Features implemented during the last sprints and are really looking forward to additional ones!
Hi Patrick, glad to know that you are enjoying the new features. For now what has been published in the roadmap is all the team has planned. The team will continue to improve wiki based on customer feedback. You can see notes on new features in the release notes.