If you are currently using Azure DevOps or have used it in the past, you know what an awesome product it is, you can use it to do pretty much anything you could dream of when it comes to project management, and it supports all steps of your development flow. However, since it has so many tools, many people find it too complicated to allow end customers into Azure DevOps, meaning that many companies will spilt up their workflows, having Azure DevOps to handle all the development, and then using a second system to handle project management and dialog with the customers 😔. But what if I told you that you can let your customer create Bugs, Tasks, or feedback directly from their Business Central web client? Well, this is indeed possible and without having to write any code and only a minimal amount of setup 😌.
First, you must add the users that you wish to allow to create Tasks in your Azure DevOps backlog, to do this the user must have a Microsoft account, next you must add them to your Azure DevOps organization, to do this click the Organization Settings in your Azure DevOps.
Go to users and click add user
Next fill out the email address of the user that you wish to add, set their access level to Stakeholder and choose whatever projects that you wish the user to have access to.
It is important that you choose stakeholders since they are free, they also have a limited access, but enough for creating and following Tasks and bugs in Azure DevOps. Next the user must go to Chromes Web shop and install the extensions called Test & Feedback https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/test-feedback/gnldpbnocfnlkkicnaplmkaphfdnlplb?hl=da
Once it is installed you should see a beacon icon in your browser click it and go to settings
Insert the URL to your Azure DevOps, it will then ask the user to login, afterwards you will see a list of available projects, choose the one that is desired. And the setup is done now to start using it you must press the play button.
You now have the ability to take screenshots either of your browser or even of your desktop, and you can also record videos, and all of these will be added to your Azure DevOps task, a flow could be as follows.
Press the screenshot button and take a snippet of some part of your browser (or desktop)
Make the edits that you wish to use.
Then click the create bug button.
As you can see the image has been added to your bug, and you can then add some description, and if you take another screen snippet or record a video this will also be added to the bug, you then give it a name and click save.
And your bug is created, now if you go back to your Azure DevOps and go to boards you will see that My New Bug has been added to my backlog.
And if you open it, you not only see the screenshot and the comments, but also all the system information.
And the bug is ready to follow your flow, and since your customer now has a user, you can assign the bug back to the customer when it is ready to test. Which will send an email to the customer telling them what has happened, with a link to the bug 🤩.
And that is it, I hope this shows you that you can indeed use Azure DevOps as your ticket system towards your customers and with the plugin, it could not be any easier to create well-documented tasks and bugs for Business Central as well as for NAV 😇. Well, that was it for this post so until next time stay safe. 😷