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Quick reference index for Azure Boards settings

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Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

Use this index to quickly access concepts and tasks related to configuring and customizing Azure Boards. If you're new to the Azure Boards, see What is Azure Boards?.

Get started

You can start using Azure Boards without configuring or customizing anything. However, as your organization grows, you'll find it beneficial to add teams, define area paths and iteration paths. If you use GitHub for your source code repository, you may want to connect Azure Boards to GitHub. If you are tasked with administrating a project for several teams, we recommend you review the following articles.

Configure team tools

Each team administrator can configure the following elements for their team, backlogs, or boards. For an introduction to configuring team tools, see Manage and configure team tools.

General

Kanban boards

Process and project customization

You customize your work tracking experience to support your business and reporting needs. The most common customizations include adding a custom field, modifying a work item form, or adding a custom work item type. Process customization tasks must be performed by an administrator who has the necessary organization-level permissions, as they affect all users and teams within a project.

You customize Azure Boards work tracking using the Inheritance process model which uses a WYSIWYG user interface to customize work tracking objects and tools. For select organizations who migrated to Azure DevOps Services using the data migration tool for Azure DevOps, the Hosted XML process model is used. This model relies on modifying and importing process templates to customize work tracking objects and tools.

You customize Azure Boards work tracking using either the Inheritance process model or On-premises XML process model, depending on the selection made when creating the project collection on which the project is defined.

Inheritance process model

With the Inheritance process, you apply a process to a project.

The Inheritance process model supports the following customization tasks.

Fields

Work item types

Workflow customizations

Backlogs and boards

The Inheritance process model supports the following customization tasks.

Fields

Work item types

Workflow customizations

Backlogs and boards

Hosted XML process model

With the Hosted XML process model, you customize work tracking objects and Agile tools by modifying and importing a process template. Updates made to the process template are applied to projects that were created using that process.

Note

The Hosted XML process model is only supported for organizations that have migrated to Azure DevOps using the data migration tool for Azure DevOps.

Fields

Work item types

Backlogs and boards

Process templates

On-premises XML process model

With the On-premises XML process model, you modify the XML definition of work item types, the process configuration, categories, and more. You can also update the attributes of fields or exercise one of the witadmin commands.

Fields

Work item types

Backlogs and boards