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GitKraken + Azure DevOps

Join leading organizations using Azure DevOps with GitKraken

Streamline your workflow with Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services or VSTS) and the GitKraken Git GUI. These tips and resources will help you successfully deploy and scale Git across your organization.  

Get started using GitKraken for free with Azure DevOps

Take your team’s Git game to the next level with GitKraken’s robust features
like predictive merge conflict alerts, superior Diff view, and drag-and-drop pull/pull.
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How do teams use Azure DevOps and the GitKraken Git GUI?

Using Azure DevOps alongside the GitKraken Git GUI can be extremely powerful, but only if everyone on your team is leveraging all of Git’s benefits. The visual context offered by the central commit graph in GitKraken will help you verify actions made to your Azure DevOps repository, and advanced Git team features, like predictive merge conflict alerts, will give you a better return on your investment for both tools. 

GitKraken’s Azure DevOps integration allows developers to level up their Git workflow with the following features and abilities: 

Click on the links below to navigate to the related section on the page.

Generating Your Azure DevOps SSH Key

GitKraken will use your local SSH Config from SSH defaults to perform Git fetch and Git push actions, unless you set-up a specific Azure DevOps SSH key, or enable your local SSH Agent.  After you have connected Azure DevOps to GitKraken, you can easily generate an Azure DevOps SSH key and add it to your account. To get started generating your Azure DevOps SSH key, you will navigate to Preferences → Integrations. Next, you will click the Generate SSH key and copy to clipboard button, making it very convenient to add your SSH key to your Azure DevOps account.

Get started using GitKraken for free with Azure DevOps

Without the convenience of GitKraken, the process of generating an Azure DevOps SSH key and adding it to your account can be complicated and easy to get wrong. Let GitKraken do the heavy lifting so you can worry about the code.
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Clone Your Azure DevOps Repository with OAuth

The Azure DevOps integration offered by the GitKraken Git GUI gives you and your team helpful and powerful insight into your Azure DevOps repositories. 

GitKraken gives you the ability to search through your existing Azure DevOps repositories when you want to Git clone a repo.

Add Remotes for Your Azure DevOps Repository

GitKraken makes it very intuitive to add remotes for your Azure DevOps repos, and will present a list of forks for the current Azure DevOps repository during the process, so you have additional, helpful visual context. 

Alternatively, you also have the option to manually enter the URL for an Azure DevOps repository.

Connecting to Multiple Azure DevOps Accounts

With the multiple profile support offered with GitKraken Pro and GitKraken Enterprise, users have the ability to quickly and seamlessly switch between profiles associated with different Azure DevOps accounts. 

Azure DevOps Pull Requests

Git pull requests are fundamental to team collaboration in Git, and GitKraken makes it easy and intuitive to create Azure DevOps pull requests directly in the Git client. Plus, the ability to customize Azure DevOps pull request templates will help systemize internal team processes and improve code review.  

To begin the process of creating an Azure DevOps pull request in GitKraken, simply drag-and-drop one local branch from the central graph onto a remote branch in the left panel. From here, you can select  Start a pull request.

You may also click the green + icon from the PULL REQUESTS section in the left panel to begin the process of creating an Azure DevOps pull request in GitKraken. From here, you can select your target Azure DevOps repository and branch. 

Azure DevOps Pull Request Templates

The Azure DevOps integration with the GitKraken Git GUI supports Azure DevOps pull request templates. 

Once your Azure DevOps pull request template has been committed to your Azure DevOps remote, the template field will appear when you’re creating a new pull request.

If this is your first time working with Azure DevOps pull requests, you may want to review the following instructions for Azure DevOps pull request templates.  

Get started using GitKraken for free with Azure DevOps

The ability to customize pull request templates in GitKraken helps enforce contributor guidelines, so you can speed up and improve your code review process.
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Using Azure DevOps and GitKraken White Paper

In this white paper, you’ll learn how to tackle this challenge head-on! We’ll share best practices for how tens-of-thousands of teams have successfully deployed Git, Azure DevOps and the GitKraken Git GUI across their organizations. 

This white paper covers the following topics:

  • Benefits of Git
  • Migrating to Git from other source control methods
  • Challenges developers face adopting Git
  • Training and educational resources for learning Git
  • Best practices for large scale deployments of Git, Azure DevOps and the GitKraken Git GUI
  • How to deploy the GitKraken Git GUI with Azure DevOps to enhance your workflow
  • Maintaining security standards with Stand-Alone & Self-Hosted
  • Best practices for deploying Stand-Alone & Self-Hosted
gitkraken azure whitepaper preview
Download White Paper PDF

How to use Azure DevOps with the GitKraken Git GUI

If your team is using Azure DevOps to host your repositories, the GitKraken Git GUI can help streamline your workflow and make working with Git much more intuitive! Distribute this tutorial video to your team, and you’ll have everyone up and running with Git, Azure DevOps and the GitKraken Git GUI in half an hour. 

Get started using GitKraken for free with Azure DevOps

The more members of your team who are using GitKraken, the more benefits you will reap.
Avoid merge conflicts before they happen, systemize code review processes, and more. 
Learn more about Git team features

Training Resources

Why GitKraken preview

Why GitKraken (PDF)

GitKraken Cheat Sheet

GitKraken Cheat Sheet (PDF)

Learn Git With GitKraken previvew

Learning Git Tutorial Videos

Azure DevOps Integration (Docs)

Git Cheat Sheet

Jira Azure DevOps Integration

Integrating Azure DevOps with Jira can be a game-changer for organizations looking to streamline their development processes and improve collaboration across teams. By bringing these two powerful platforms together, developers can eliminate the need for context switching between tools, while project managers gain greater visibility into the status of each project. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the benefits of integrating Azure DevOps with Jira, demonstrate how to set up the integration using Git Integration for Jira, and explore a few ways development teams can immediately start leveraging it for dramatically better collaboration and visibility. 

Connect Azure DevOps with Jira

Linking Azure DevOps with Jira Issues

Create Azure DevOps Branch in Jira

Create Azure DevOps Pull Request in Jira

Jira Azure DevOps Webhooks

Want to integrate Jira with your GitHub or GitLab repos? Take a look at these related step-by-step guides:

What is Jira?

Jira is a widely used issue-tracking and project management platform among developers. It is agile friendly and can be very helpful for managing tasks, bugs, and assignments. Jira comes in two different versions–one that you host yourself, and the other which is cloud-hosted. The cloud-hosted version will be the focus of this article, but it’s worth mentioning that you have the option to self-host if you would prefer. Another great perk about Jira is that if your project happens to be open source, then utilizing Jira won’t cost you a dime!

What is Azure DevOps?

Azure DevOps allows developers to manage code versions, testing, automate builds, and release projects. Similar to Jira, it is widely used by developers for its compatibility with popular development environments like Visual Studio and Eclipse.

Why Integrate Azure DevOps and Jira?

Both developers and project managers (not to mention other non-technical stakeholders) gain immense value from integrating Azure DevOps and Jira. Having real-time access to the same Git information, like commits, branches, pull requests, and tags enables teams to work more collaboratively and efficiently. Plus, you can avoid excess status meetings and impromptu updates.

 Top Benefits For Developers

  1. Improved collaboration and communication: By integrating Azure DevOps with Jira, team members can view and update work item information in a centralized location, which can help to improve communication and collaboration across teams.
  1. Increased efficiency: By integrating the two platforms, team members can move seamlessly between Jira and Azure DevOps to complete their work, which can help to reduce context switching and the time and effort required to manage development projects.

Top Benefits For Project and Product Managers

  1. Stakeholders have a better understanding of the progress and status of an Issue, as they can see the work that has been completed via linked commits, builds, and other artifacts as well as identify what still needs to be done.
  2. Improved project planning: The integration can also help team members more effectively plan and track work, as they can use Jira to create and prioritize work items, and then use Azure DevOps to fill in the progress details as the work is completed.

Connect Azure DevOps With Jira

To get started integrating Azure DevOps with Jira, you’ll first need to install a Git integration app from the Atlassian marketplace. For this example we’ll use Git Integration for Jira – a highly rated app with over 10,000 installs that supports cloud and self-hosted versions of Azure DevOps and Jira.

Integration authentication can be performed using OAuth or a Personal Access Token. For this example, we’ll authenticate with OAuth.

  1. Install Git Integration for Jira app from the Atlassian Marketplace. Note: like all Marketplace apps, you will need to be a Jira Admin to install the app.
  2. From the top navigation bar in Jira, select Apps and then Git Integration: Manage integrations
  3. Select Add Integration button on the top right
  4. On the Git hosting service page, select Azure DevOps Repos for cloud or Azure DevOps Server for self-hosted. We’ll select cloud for this example.
  5. Select OAuth and then Connect Azure Repos from the bottom right.
  6. Follow the Azure DevOps flow and select Accept to authorize access to your repositories. Note: We recommend creating a new Microsoft user and setting specific permissions for use with Jira Cloud.
  7. Select the Azure DevOps repositories you wish to connect with Jira and then select the Connect Repositories button 

Now that you have connected your Azure DevOps repositories with Jira, you can begin linking Jira Issues with their associated development work. This is easily done by including the Jira Issue key in the commit message.

Example Git commit message: GLK-312 - moved the images down the page

In this case, the Jira Issue with the key GLK-312 will show the associated commit information.

Create Azure DevOps Branch in Jira

In Jira, open an issue and you will see a section titled Git Development. Alternatively, you can also click Open Git Integration from the Details panel. This will open a dialog box where the branch can be created.

  1. From the Repository drop-down menu, ensure your desired Azure DevOps repo is selected. 
  2. Select your desired source branch from the Source branch drop-down menu.
  3. Enter in a name for your branch under Branch name. The default format for this value is configured in General settings. Ensure you retain the Jira Issue key in the title.
  4. Select the Create branch button to finish the process.

Note: Default repository and branch can be changed on the User settings page or by clicking the Make default button.

At this point the branch will be created in your Azure DevOps repo and is associated with the selected Jira Issue. You will be able to see the branch in the Details panel under Development and Git integration.

Create Azure DevOps Pull Request in Jira

To make a pull request in Jira, you will follow a similar process to creating a branch. Open an Issue and select Create pull request under Git Development. This will open a dialog box where you can then make a pull request.

  1. Select your desired repository from the Repository drop-down menu.
  2. Select the source branch for your pull request from the Source branch drop-down.
  3. Choose where you would like to merge your branch to from the Target branch drop-down.
  4. Confirm or make changes to the title of your request. Ensure the Jira Issue key is in the title.
  5. Select the Create pull request button.

The pull request will be created on Azure DevOps and associated with the selected Jira Issue. From the Details panel, you will be able to see the pull request under Development or Git integration.

Jira Azure DevOps Webhooks

Webhooks are a great way to keep your Azure DevOps and Jira data synced in real time. Without webhooks enabled, repositories are reindexed on a fixed interval by default. To set up webhooks for your Azure DevOps repositories, complete the following steps.

In Jira

  1. Select Apps from the top navigation bar and then Git Integration: Manage integrations
  2. Select the Azure DevOps integration you wish to add webhooks to
  3. Select Feature Settings on the left side
  4. Copy the URL under Indexing triggers

In Azure DevOps

  1. In your Azure DevOps project, select Project settings on the bottom left
  2. In the left navigation pane, select Service hooks
  3. Select Create subscription
  4. Scroll down and select Web Hooks and then click Next
  5. Select the desired trigger (e.g. Pull request created)
  6. Filter on repository, target branch, or other options if desired and click Next.
  7. Paste in the webhook URL you copied from Jira and then click Finish.

This will create and enable your webhook. Repeat the process for other desired trigger events.

Integrate Jira and Azure DevOps Today

Integrating Jira and AzureDevOps is something every organization that uses the two tools should do. Team collaboration is greatly improved due to the visibility and accountability of having Git data like commits and pull requests easily visible for all development stakeholders. Plus, developers will be able to reduce context switching and improve efficiency by seamlessly performing actions between Jira and Azure DevOps.

Get started on your Jira Azure DevOps Integration today by trying Git Integration for Jira for free!

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