Use the Azure Boards app in Microsoft Teams

Azure DevOps Services

If you use Microsoft Teams, you can create work items and monitor work item activity in your Azure Boards project from your Teams channel. You accomplish this by adding the Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams to your Teams channel.

The Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams enables users to complete the following tasks:

  • Set up and manage subscriptions for creating and updating work items
  • Manage other work item events
  • Receive and manage notifications for work item events in their Teams channel
  • Create work items from conversations in the channel
  • Search and share work items with other members in the channel using the messaging extension
  • View work item previews from their URLs to start discussions and keep the conversations contextual.

Pic: Notification

Read this article to learn how to:

  • Add the Azure Boards app to your team in Microsoft Teams
  • Link and unlink your Azure Boards project to the Azure Boards app
  • Set up subscriptions to work item related events in your Teams channel
  • Create work items from your Teams channel
  • Monitor work item activity in your Teams channel

Note

Azure Boards and Microsoft Teams integration is only supported for Azure DevOps Services.

Also, Azure Boards and Microsoft Teams integration isn't supported if you're an O365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) customer that uses an Azure Commercial subscription in conjunction with your GCC tenant.

Prerequisites

Note

  • You can link the Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams only to a project hosted on Azure DevOps Services at this time.
  • Notifications are currently not supported inside direct messages.
  • Only public channels are supported.

Add the Azure Boards app to Microsoft Teams

You add the app to your Teams channel in Microsoft Teams.

  1. Visit the App store in Microsoft Teams and search for the Azure Boards app. Upon installing, a welcome message from the app displays as shown in the following image.

    Pic: Welcome message

  2. Use the @azure boards handle to interact with the app. For a list of commands, see Command reference provided later in this article.

To use the app, you must first link your Azure Boards project to your Teams channel.

  1. Once the app has been installed in your team, connect and authenticate yourself to Azure Boards. Use Sign in with different email if your Microsoft Teams and Azure Boards are in different tenants.

    Connect and authenticate yourself to Azure Boards.

    Connect and authenticate yourself to Azure Boards, step 2.

  2. After signing in, use the following command inside a Teams channel to link to the Azure Boards project that you specify with the URL:

     @azure boards link [project url]
    

    For example:

     @azure boards link https://dev.azure.com/myorg/myproject
    

Once the project is linked, you can create work items using @azure boards create command or use message actions.

Set up subscriptions

You can create subscriptions to monitor work items at any time using the @azure boards subscriptions command.

  1. Select the area path you want and event that you're interested in. Use the associated filters to customize what you get notified on in your Teams channel. To help easily set up subscriptions, your recently accessed area paths are shown in the area path dropdown.

    Set up subscriptions.

In case the area path you want doesn't appear in the Area path dropdown menu, follow the instructions mentioned in the next section, Add area paths. Area paths added using the @azure boards addAreapath command and area paths for which subscriptions are created in the channel always appear in the Area path dropdown along with recently accessed area paths.

Add area paths

You can add areas that your team works on to the channel so that they're always available for creating work items and subscriptions. This feature is useful for teams with more than 100 area paths in their project.

  • Use the following command to add area paths from your project to the Teams channel.

      @azure boards addAreapath [area path] 
    

    For example:

      @azure boards addAreapath myproject\fabrikam
    

    add areapath success message

  • If you choose project name as your area path, then you'll receive notifications for all the area paths in the project.

Create a work item with a command

With the Azure Boards app, you can create work items from your channel. The app supports custom work items as well.

  • To create a work item, use @azure boards create.

    Create work item using command

Create a work item from message actions

Often, discussions in a channel require creation of work items. You can use message actions to create a work item. The selected message is pre-filled in the description section of the work item. The Discussion section of the newly added work item stores a link back to the conversation in the channel.

  • To create work items using message actions

    Create work item using message action

    Create work item using message action, step 2.

Manage Azure Boards subscriptions

  1. To view, add and remove subscriptions for a channel, use the @azure boards subscriptions command:

     @azure boards subscriptions
    

This command lists all the current subscriptions for the channel and allows you to add new subscriptions and remove existing ones. As part of adding subscriptions, you can also customize what you get notified on by using various filters.

View subscriptions

Note

Team administrators aren't able to remove or modify subscriptions created by Project administrators.

Search and share work items using compose extension

To help users search and share work items, the Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams supports compose extension. You can search for work items by work item ID, title, or supported functional command. For a list of commands, see Functional work item search. To use the compose extension, users must sign in to Azure Boards app either by running @azure boards signin command or by signing into the compose extension directly.

Signing into the compose extension.

Preview work item URLs

To support collaboration around work items discussed within a channel, the channel displays a preview of work items referenced. When a user pastes the work item URL, a preview is shown similar to the following image. This preview helps to keep work item-related conversations relevant and correct.

Work item URL unfurling.

For this feature to work, users must be signed in. Once signed in, this feature works for all channels in a team in Microsoft Teams.

A Teams channel can only link to one Azure Boards project at a time. To link to a different project, you must first unlink the current project using @azure boards unlink command.

Unlinking a project deletes all the subscriptions along with added area paths from the channel. If the channel has no subscriptions, any user can unlink a project. However if a channel has subscriptions, only project admins can unlink a project from a channel.

The Teams channel threads notifications so as to logically link and reduce related notifications in the channel. All notifications linked to a particular work item are linked together.

Compact view of threaded notifications

Compact thread

Expanded view of threaded notifications

Expanded thread

Azure Boards command reference

The following table lists all the @azure boards commands you can use in your Microsoft Teams channel.

Command Functionality
@azure boards link [project url] Link a project to this channel to create work items and receive notifications
@azure boards subscriptions Add or remove subscriptions for this channel
@azure boards create Create a work item
@azure boards addAreapath [area path] Add an area path from your project to this channel
@azure boards sign in Sign in to your Azure Boards organization
@azure boards sign out Sign out from your Azure Boards organization
@azure boards unlink Unlink a project from this channel
@azure boards feedback Report a problem or suggest a feature

Configure Azure DevOps Services tabs in Microsoft Teams

  1. To bring your Kanban board or Dashboard into Microsoft Teams, select the '+' ('add new tab') button on the top nav of your team channel.

    The Add a tab dialog displays. Icons are arranged typically according to most recent access. You can select A-Z for an alphabetized list.

    Screenshot to add a new tab to Teams channel.

  2. Choose the Azure DevOps icon and authenticate your identity. Optionally, you can choose the Website icon and add the URL of your Kanban board or dashboard to the channel.

  3. Choose the organization whose board or dashboard you want to add.

  4. Complete the form presented. For example, here we add a dashboard for the Azure DevOps team for the TechnicalContent project.

    Dialog to add a team dashboard to a Teams channel.

  5. The Kanban board or dashboard you selected displays.

Multi-tenant support

In your organization if you're using a different email or tenant for Microsoft Teams and Azure DevOps, complete the following steps to sign in and connect based on your use case.

Case

Email ID and tenant in Microsoft Teams

Email ID and tenant in Azure DevOps

Steps to take

1

email1@abc.com
(tenant 1)

email1@abc.com
(tenant 1)

Sign in using Sign in button.

2

email1@abc.com
(tenant 1)

email1@abc.com
(tenant 2)

  • Sign in the Azure DevOps account
  • In the same browser, start a new tab, go to https://teams.microsoft.com
  • Run the signin command and choose the Sign in button.

3

email1@abc.com
(tenant 1)

email2@pqr.com
(tenant 2)

Sign in using Sign in with different email address, in the email ID picker use the email2 to sign in to Azure DevOps.

4

email1@abc.com
(tenant 1)

email2@pqr.com
(non default tenant 3)

This scenario isn't supported today

Troubleshoot errors

If you're experiencing the following errors when using the Azure Boards App for Microsoft Teams, follow the procedures in this section.

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

The Azure Boards app uses the OAuth authentication protocol, and requires Third-party application access via OAuth for the organization to be enabled. To enable this setting, go to Organization settings > Security > Policies, and set the Third-party application access via OAuth for the organization setting to On.

Enable the Third-party application access via OAuth for the organization setting

Configuration failed. Please make sure that the organization '{organization name}' exists and that you have sufficient permissions.

Sign out of Azure DevOps by going to https://aka.ms/VsSignout using your browser.

Open an In private or incognito browser window and go to https://aex.dev.azure.com/me and sign in. In the dropdown under the profile icon to the left, select the directory that contains the organization containing the project that you want to link.

Select the directory that contains the organization that contains the project

In the same browser, start a new tab, go to https://teams.microsoft.com/. Run the @azure boards signout command and then run the @azure boards signin command in the channel where the Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams is installed.

Select the Sign in button and you'll be redirected to a consent page like the one in the following example. Ensure that the directory shown beside the email is same as what was chosen in the previous step. Accept and complete the sign-in process.

Consent to the requested app permissions

If these steps don't resolve your authentication issue, reach out to us at Developer Community.