Create a project in Azure DevOps and TFS
Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2019 | TFS 2018 | TFS 2017 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2013
This article describes how to use Azure DevOps to create a project and establish a repository for source code. Teams and groups of developers can plan, track progress, and collaborate on building software solutions. Each project you create provides boundaries to isolate data from other projects. Managed and structured each project to support your business needs. To learn more about projects and when to create one, see About projects and scaling your organization.
Note
This article is about creating a project in Azure DevOps or a Team Foundation Server. If instead you want to create Azure DevOps Projects, see Azure DevOps Projects.
If you have a project already, see Get Started with Azure Repos and Visual Studio.
Note
If you don't want to manage an on-premises server, you can sign up for Azure DevOps Services and create a project. For more information, see Quickstart: Create an organization or project collection.
Prerequisites
- You create a project within an organization. If you haven't created an organization yet, create one by following the instructions in Sign up, sign in to Azure DevOps, which also creates a project. Or see Quickstart: Create an organization or project collection.
- You must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group or have the Create new projects permission set to Allow. If you're the Organization Owner, you're automatically added to the Project Collection Administrators group. If you aren't a member, get added now. For more information, see Set permissions at the project- or collection-level.
- You create a project within a project collection. If you haven't created a project collection yet, do that now. See Create a project collection.
- You must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group or have the Create new projects permission set to Allow. If you aren't a member, get added now. For more information, see Set permissions at the project- or collection-level.
You create a project within a project collection. If you haven't created a project collection yet, do that now. See Create a project collection.
You must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group or have the Create new projects permission set to Allow. If you aren't a member, get added now. For more information, see Set permissions at the project- or collection-level.
Ask your TFS administrator about the following resources and get additional permissions as needed:
Which project collection should you connect to when you create your project? If you installed TFS using the Basic Server Configuration Wizard, you have only one project collection named DefaultCollection. Unless you support hundreds of projects, you should create all your projects within a single project collection. If you need to create additional collections, see Manage project collections.
Have you configured SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services for the deployment? If so, ask your administrator to add you as a member of the Team Foundation Content Managers group. You must be a member of this group on the server that hosts SQL Server Reporting Services. Without these permissions, you can't create a project. For more information, see Grant permissions to view or create SQL Server reports in TFS.
Have you configured a SharePoint Web application for your deployment? You can configure a SharePoint portal when you create your project. To do so, contact your SharePoint administrator to give you Full Control permissions on the server that hosts SharePoint Products. Otherwise, you can skip this step and configure a portal at a later time.
Important
To create a public project, or to make a private project public, see Create a public project in your organization or Change the project visibility, public or private. Additional policy settings must be enabled to work with public projects.
Create a project
When you create a project, specify the following options:
- The organization or project collection where the project is defined. For guidance, see About projects and scaling your organization.
- A project name. Your project name can't contain special characters, such as
/ : \ ~ & % ; @ ' " ? < > | # $ * } { , + = [ ], can't begin with an underscore, can't begin or end with a period, and must be 64 or fewer characters. - An optional project description.
- The type of repository used for initial source control, either Git or Team Foundation version control (TFVC). Git is the default. You can add any type of repository later to your project. For guidance, see Choosing the right source control for your project.
- The process that determines the work item types available for tracking work using Azure Boards. If you don't specify a process, the default is Agile. For guidance, see Choose a process.
Note
To enable the new user interface for the Settings page, see Enable preview features.
Select Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.
Choose the organization, and then select New project.
Enter information into the form provided. Provide a name for your project. Choose the visibility, initial source control type, and work item process. For guidance, see Choosing the right version control for your project and Choose a process.
Select visibility of either public or private. If you choose public visibility, anyone on the internet can view your project. With private visibility, only people who you give access to can view your project. For details on public projects, see Create a public project in your organization. If the Public option is not available, you need to change the policy.
Select Create. The welcome page appears.
Select one of the following options to get started:
- Invite to add others to your project. See Add users to a project or team. You can only invite users who are already in your organization. For more information, see Add members to projects.
- Boards to add work items. See View and add work items using the Work Items page.
- Repos to clone or import a repository, or initialize a README file for your project summary page. See Clone an existing Git repo.
- Pipelines to define a pipeline. See Azure Pipelines documentation.
- Test Plans to define test plans and test suites. See Create test plans and test suites.
- Artifacts to discover, install, and publish NuGet, npm, and Maven packages. See the Azure Artifacts overview.
- manage your services to disable the visibility of services. See Turn a service on or off.
Select Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.
Then select Create Project.
In Create a new project, provide a name for your project, and optionally a description. Expand Advanced to select the initial source control type and work item process.
For guidance, see Choosing the right version control for your project and Choose a process.
Select Create. The welcome page appears.
Select one of the following options to get started:
- Boards to add work items. See View and add work items using the Work Items page.
- Repos to clone or import a repository, or initialize a README file for your project summary page. See Clone an existing Git repo.
- Pipelines to define a pipeline. See Azure Pipelines documentation.
- Test Plans to define test plans and test suites. See Create test plans and test suites.
- Manage your services to disable the visibility of services. See Turn a service on or off.
Select Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.
Then select New Project.
Fill out the form provided. Provide a name for your new project, initial source control type, work item process.
On completion, the project summary displays. To learn more, see Share your project vision, view project activity.
Important
When you create a project from the web portal, several process template files are ignored. Specifically, the files that would create a Report Manager site aren't supported. You can add reports later by following the instructions provided in Add reports to a teams project.
Creating a project from the web portal is supported for TFS 2015.2 and later versions. For earlier versions, use Team Explorer to create a project.
Important
When you create a project from the web portal, several process template files are ignored. Specifically, the files that would create a Report Manager site and a SharePoint project portal aren't supported. You can still set up Reporting and SharePoint manually after project creation.
If you want these features to be to be available, then create your project from Visual Studio/Team Explorer. For details, see Process template and plug-in files, Client support for project creation.
If you have TFS 2015.2 or a later version, select the gear button to open the Projects page.
Then choose New Project.Otherwise, for TFS 2015 or TFS 2015.1, open the administration overview page by choosing the gear button.
Then select Server settings and choose New project.Select the collection administration page for the collection you want to create the project in from the left pane. Select Create a new project.
Enter information into the form provided. Provide a name for your new project, a short description, and select its initial source control type and work item tracking process.
Creating a project from the web portal isn't supported for TFS 2015 and earlier versions. Use Team Explorer to create a project.
Note
For TFS 2018 and later versions, use the web portal. Creating a project from Visual Studio/Team Explorer is not supported for TFS 2018 and later versions, including Azure DevOps Server 2019 and Azure DevOps Services.
TFS 2018 and later versions no longer support native integration with SharePoint products. If you're planning to upgrade to TFS 2018, read About SharePoint integration to learn about the options available to you.
You can create a project from Visual Studio/Team Explorer after you've connected to an on-premises Azure DevOps Server.
Open the same version of Visual Studio as the version of TFS that you're connecting to. If you don't see the Team Explorer pane, select View > Team Explorer from the menu.
Download and install Visual Studio Community to get a free copy of the latest version.
Connect to the server and project collection where you want to create your project.
Connect from a client that is at the same version level as TFS. That is, you must connect to TFS 2015 from a version of Visual Studio 2015.
Tip
If you run Team Explorer from a server that hosts SharePoint Products and SQL Server Reporting Services, you might need to run Visual Studio as an administrator.
If it's your first time connecting to TFS, you need to add TFS to the list of recognized servers.
Open the New Project Wizard.
Name the project. Don't specify more than 64 characters.
Choose a process template. For a comparison of the default process templates, see Choose a process.
Choose your version control, either Git distributed repositories or TFVC, one centralized repository.
Not sure which system to use? To learn more, see Git and Azure Repos and Use Team Foundation Version Control.
After you've created your project, you can add repositories. See Add a repository to your project.
Unless your project collection supports a SharePoint project portal, you're done.
If the Next button is active, you can configure your project portal.
If you have a problem, you receive an error message and a link to the project creation log. See Troubleshoot creating a project for specific errors and exceptions.
When you're finished, you can see your project in Team Explorer. You can also choose the Web Access link to connect to your project from the web portal.
List and connect to projects
Note
To enable the new user interface for the Settings page, see Enable preview features.
Connect to a project, collection, or server from your web browser.
To view the projects defined for an organization, select Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.
Choose the organization to view the list of projects. The page lists the last two or three projects you connected to at the top. Select any project to connect to that project.
Or, choose Organization settings and then select Projects to list all projects.
You can choose a project to open project settings for that project on this page. For more information, see About settings at the user, team, project, or organization-level. Or, you can rename a project or delete a project.
To view the projects defined for a collection, select Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.
Choose the collection to view the list of projects. The page lists the last two or three projects you connected to at the top. Choose any project to connect to that project.
Or, select Admin settings and then choose Projects to list all projects.
You can choose a project to open project settings for that project on this page. For more information, see About settings at the user, team, project, or organization-level. Or, you can rename a project or delete a project.
Open the administration overview page by choosing the gear button and choose Collection settings.
You can choose a project to open project settings for that project on this page. For more information, see About settings at the user, team, project, or organization-level. Or, you can rename a project or delete a project.
Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio 2015
Add a repository to your project
From the admin context of the web portal, you can add additional repositories to a project. Add either Git (distributed) or TFVC (centralized) repositories. You can create many Git repositories, but only a single TFVC repository for a project. Additional steps to address permissions may be required. For more information, see Use Git and TFVC repos in the same project.
Select New repository.
Name the repository and select Create.
Note
The ability to work from both Git and TFVC repositories from the same project is supported when you connect to TFS 2015.1 and later versions.
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