About Wikis, READMEs, and Markdown

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TFS 2017 | TFS 2015

To support your team or contributors to your project, use Markdown to add rich formatting, tables, and images to your team project. You can use Markdown format within content you add to a dashboard, your team project README file, or other repository README file.

Markdown

Markdown makes it easy to format text and include images. You can also link to documents within your project pages, README files, dashboards, and pull request comments.

You can provide guidance to your team in the following places using Markdown:

For supported syntax, see Syntax guidance for Markdown files, widgets, wikis, and pull request comments.

READMEs

You can define a README file or multiple files for each repo or team project. Write your README in Markdown instead of plain text.

Use README pages to orient contributors to working within your project. Consider adding the following guidance:

  • Project focus
  • Prerequisites
  • Setting up the environment
  • Tips for getting things done within the project
  • Purpose or use of specific files
  • Project-specific terms and acronyms
  • Workflow guidance about committing or uploading changes and adding branches
  • Project sponsors or contacts

Here are some great READMEs that use this format and speak to all audiences, for reference and inspiration: