Improved pipeline security and administrator control

With this update, we improved pipelines security resources critical to building and deploying your applications. In response to your feedback, we've also made the Copy Dashboard feature easily accessible.

Check out the release notes for details.

Azure Boards

• New save comments permission

Azure Pipelines

• Red Hat 6 will no longer receive Pipeline agent updates
• Pipeline stages side panel
• Restrict opening protected resources to resource administrators

Reporting

• Copy Dashboard

Azure Boards

New save comments permission

The ability to save only work item comments has been a top request in the developer community. We are excited to let you know that we have implemented this feature. To begin, let's review the most common scenario:

"I want to prevent some users from editing work item fields but allow them to contribute to the discussion."

To accomplish this, you need to go to Project Settings > Project Configuration > Area Path. Then select the area path of choice and click Security.

Notice the new permission "Edit work item comments in this node". By default, the permission is set to Not set. Meaning, the work item will behave exactly like it did before. To allow a group or users to save comments, select that group/users and change the permission to Allow.

When the user opens the work item form in this area path, they will be able to add comments, but unable to update any of the other fields.

We hope you love this feature as much as we do. As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know.

Azure Pipelines

Red Hat 6 will no longer receive Pipeline agent updates

Pipeline agents running Red Hat 6 will no longer receive updates after agent version v2.214.2. If you are still using Red Hat 6 upgrade or replaced Red Hat 6 agents with a compatible operating system version. To alert you of running the last agent version released for Red Hat 6, an agent knob is required to be set for continuous agent operation.

For more details and answers to frequently asked questions please visit our blog post .

Pipeline stages side panel

YAML pipelines can have tens of stages, and not all of them will fit on your screen. While the pipeline run overview icon tells you the overall state of your run, it is still hard to know which stage failed, or which stage is still running, for example.

In this sprint, we've added a pipeline stages side panel that lets you quickly see the state of all your stages. You can then click on a stage and get directly to its logs.

Restrict opening protected resources to resource administrators

To improve the security of resources that are critical to your ability to securely build and deploy your applications, Azure Pipelines now requires resource-type administrator role when opening up access to a resource to all pipelines.

For example, a general Service Connections Administrator role is required to allow any pipeline to use a service connection.. This restriction applies when creating a protected resource or when editing its Security configuration.

In addition, when creating a service connection, and you don't have sufficient rights, the Grant access permission to all pipelines option is disabled.

Also, when trying to open access to an existing resource and you don't have sufficient rights, you'll get a You are not authorized to open access for this resource message.

Reporting

Copy Dashboard

Back in Sprint 204 we announced the GA release of Copy Dashboard. However, you needed to turn it on in the preview features list. In this sprint, we removed it from the preview features list. It is now available to all users at all times.

Next steps

Head over to Azure DevOps and take a look.

How to provide feedback

We would love to hear what you think about these features. Use the help menu to report a problem or provide a suggestion.

You can also get advice and your questions answered by the community on Stack Overflow.

Thanks,

Rajesh Ramamurthy