Create a project in Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2020 | Azure DevOps Server 2019 | TFS 2018 - TFS 2013

Important

Creating a project from the web portal isn't supported for Team Foundation Server (TFS 2015) and earlier versions. Use Team Explorer to create a project.

This article describes how to use Azure DevOps to create a project and establish a repository for source code. You can manage and structure each project to support your business needs. Each project you create provides boundaries to isolate data from other projects. To learn more about projects and when to create one, see About projects and scaling your organization.

Important

Select a version from Azure DevOps Content Version selector.

To view the content available for your platform, make sure that you select the correct version of this article from the version selector which is located above the table of contents. Feature support differs depending on whether you are working from Azure DevOps Services or an on-premises version of Azure DevOps Server.
To learn which on-premises version you are using, see What platform/version am I using?

If you don't want to create a project in Azure DevOps, you can create Azure DevOps Projects.

Note

If you don't want to manage an on-premises server, you can sign up for Azure DevOps Services and create a project.

Prerequisites

  • You create a project within a project collection. If you haven't created a project collection yet, do that now. For more information, 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. For more information, 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 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.

    • 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

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.

Note

To enable the new user interface for the Settings page, see Manage or enable features.

  1. Select Azure DevOps logo Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.

  2. Choose the organization, and then select New project.

    Screenshot of Open Projects.

  3. Enter information into the form provided. Provide a name for your project. 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. Enter an optional description. Choose the visibility, initial source control type, and work item process. For more information, see Choosing the right version control for your project and Choose a process.

    Create new project form

    Select visibility of either public or private. When 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 more information about public projects, see Create a public project in your organization. If the Public option isn't available, you need to change the policy.

  4. Select Create. The welcome page appears.

    Project creation confirmation dialog.

    Select one of the following options to continue:

Choose the Current page tab for information on creating 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.

List and connect to projects

Note

To enable the new user interface for the Settings page, see Manage or enable features.

Connect to a project, collection, or server from your web browser.

  1. To view the projects defined for an organization, select Azure DevOps logo Azure DevOps to open the Projects page.

  2. Choose the organization to view the list of projects. The page lists the last two or three projects you connected to at the upper screen. Select any project to connect to that project.

    Screenshot of Open Projects, then select Create Project, preview page.

  3. Or, choose Organization settings and then select Projects to list all projects.

    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.

Choose the Current page tab for information on connecting to projects.

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.

  1. Select New repository.

    Create new repository

  2. Name the repository and select Create.

    Create new repository dialog

Add repositories to an existing project

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.

Next steps

Structure your project