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Get started with permissions and access

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TFS 2018

In this article, learn about how you can manage access levels and permissions via inheritance, security groups, roles, and more in Azure DevOps. Get started by understanding the following key concepts.

  • About permissions:

    • All users added to Azure DevOps are added to one or more default security groups.
    • Security groups are assigned permissions, which either Allow or Deny access to a feature or task.
    • Members of a security group inherit the permissions assigned to the group.
    • Permissions are defined at different levels: organization/collection, project, or object.
    • Other permissions are managed through role-based assignments, such as team administrator, extension management, and various pipeline resource roles.
    • Administrators can define custom security groups to manage permissions for different functional areas.

  • About access levels:

    • All users added to Azure DevOps are assigned to an access level, which grants or restricts access to select web portal features.
    • There are three main access levels: Stakeholder, Basic, and Basic + Test Plans.
    • Stakeholder access provides free access to an unlimited number of users to a limited set of features. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.

For example, most Azure DevOps users are added to the Contributors security group and granted Basic access level. The Contributors group provides read and write access to repositories, work tracking, pipelines, and more. Basic access provides access to all features and tasks for using Azure Boards, Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, and Azure Artifacts. Users who require access to manage Azure Test Plans need to be granted Basic + Test Plans or Advanced access.

Administrators should be added to the Project Collection Administrators or Project Administrators group. Administrators manage security groups and permissions from the web portal, primarily from Project settings. Contributors manage permissions for objects they create from the web portal as well.

For an overview of default permissions, see Default permissions quick reference.

Security groups and membership

With the creation of an organization, collection, or project—Azure DevOps creates a set of default security groups, which are automatically assigned default permissions. More security groups are defined with the following actions:

  • When you create custom security groups at the following levels:
    • Project-level
    • Organization- or collection-level
    • Server-level (on-premises only)
  • When you add a team, a team security group gets created

You can't create an object-level security group, but you can assign a custom group to an object-level and assign permissions to that level. For more information, see Set object-level permissions.

Default security groups

The following security groups are defined by default for each project and project collection. You typically add users or groups to the Readers, Contributors, or Project Administrators groups.

The following list indicates the latest groups defined for TFS 2017 and later versions. For earlier versions of Azure DevOps, the list may differ. Only add service accounts to Azure DevOps service account groups. To understand valid user groups, see Valid user groups later in this article.

Project level Collection level
- Build Administrators
- Contributors
- Project Administrators
- Project Valid Users
- Readers
- Release Administrators
- TeamName Team		 - Project Collection Administrators
- Project Collection Build Administrators
- Project Collection Build Service Accounts
- Project Collection Proxy Service Accounts
- Project Collection Service Accounts
- Project Collection Test Service Accounts
- Project Collection Valid Users
- Security Service Group

For users tasked with managing project-level features—such as, teams, area and iteration paths, repositories, service hooks, and service end points—add them to the Project Administrators group. For users tasked with managing organization or collection-level features—such as, projects, policies, processes, retention policies, agent and deployment pools, and extensions—add them to the Project Collection Administrators group. For more information, see About user, team, project, and organization-level settings.

For a description of each group and each permission, see Permissions and groups reference, Groups.

Membership, permission, and access level management

Azure DevOps controls access through these three inter-connected functional areas:

  • Membership management supports adding individual user accounts and groups to default security groups. Each default group is associated with a set of default permissions. All users added to any security group are added to the Valid Users group. A valid user is someone who can connect to a project, collection, or organization.

  • Permission management controls access to specific functional tasks at different levels of the system. Object-level permissions set permissions on a file, folder, build pipeline, or a shared query. Permission settings correspond to Allow, Deny, Inherited allow, Inherited deny, System allow, System deny, and Not set. For more information, see Permission inheritance and security groups later in this article.

  • Access level management controls access to web portal features. Based on what has been purchased for a user, administrators set the user's access level to Stakeholder, Basic, Basic + Test, or Visual Studio Enterprise (previously Advanced).

Each functional area uses security groups to simplify management across the deployment. You add users and groups through the web administration context. Permissions are automatically set based on the security group that you add users to. Or permissions get based on the object, project, collection, or server level to which you add groups.

Security group members can be a combination of users, other groups, and Active Directory groups or a Workgroup.

You can create local groups or Active Directory (AD) groups to manage your users.

Active Directory and Microsoft Entra security groups

You can populate security groups by adding individual users. However, for ease of management, it's easier if you populate these groups by using Microsoft Entra ID for Azure DevOps Services and Active Directory (AD) or Windows user groups for Azure DevOps Server. This method enables you to manage group membership and permissions more efficiently across multiple computers.

If you only have to manage a small set of users, then you can skip this step. However, if you foresee that your organization may grow, you may want to set up Active Directory or Microsoft Entra ID. Also, if you plan on paying for extra services, you need to set up Microsoft Entra ID for use with Azure DevOps to support billing.

Note

Without Microsoft Entra ID, all Azure DevOps users must sign in using Microsoft accounts, and you must manage account access by individual user accounts. Even if you manage account access using Microsoft accounts, you need to set up an Azure subscription in order to manage billing.

To set up Active Directory for use with Azure DevOps Server, see the following articles:

Install Active Directory prior to installing Azure DevOps Server.

Valid user groups

When you add accounts of users directly to a security group, they're automatically added to one of the valid user groups.

  • Server\Team Foundation Valid Users: All members added to server-level groups.
  • ProjectCollectionName\Project Collection Valid Users: All members added to collection-level groups.
  • ProjectName\Project Valid Users: All members added to project-level groups.

The default permissions assigned to these groups are primarily limited to read access, such as View build resources, View project-level information, and View collection-level information.

All users that you add to one project can view the objects in other projects within a collection. If you need to restrict view access, then you can set restrictions through the area path node.

If you remove or deny the View instance-level information permission for one of the Valid Users groups, no members of the group are able to access the project, collection, or deployment, depending on the group you set.

Access levels

Access levels control which features are visible to users in the web portal. Access depends on user licenses.

If you want to give a user access to Agile portfolio management or test case management features, change access levels, not permissions.

Setting the access level for users or groups doesn't provide them access to a project or the web portal. Only users or groups added to a team or security group can connect to a project and the web portal. Make sure your users have both the permissions and the access level they need. You do so by making sure they're added to the project or a team.

Permissions

As shown in the following image, security groups defined at the project and collection-level can be assigned to permissions assigned at the object, project, and collection level. You can only define server-level security groups to server-level permissions.

Conceptual image of security groups and permission levels, TFS-2018 and earlier versions

For a description of each default security group, see Security groups, service accounts, and permissions.

Permission states

A permission can have the following assignments. They grant or restrict access as indicated.

User or group has permissions to perform a task:

  • Allow
  • Allow (inherited)
  • Allow (system)

User or group doesn't have permission to perform a task:

  • Deny
  • Deny (inherited)
  • Deny (system)
  • Not set
Permission state Description
Allow Explicitly grants users to perform specific tasks, and isn't inherited from group membership.
Allow (inherited) Grants group members to perform specific tasks.
Allow (system) Grants permission that takes precedence before user permissions. Uneditable and stored in a configuration database, invisible to users.
Deny Explicitly restricts users from performing specific tasks, and isn't inherited from group membership. For most groups and almost all permissions, Deny overrides Allow. If a user belongs to two groups, and one of them has a specific permission set to Deny, that user can't perform tasks that require that permission even if they belong to a group that has that permission set to Allow.
Deny (inherited) Restricts group members from performing specific tasks. Overrides an explicit Allow.
Deny (system) Restricts permission that takes precedence before user permissions. Uneditable and stored in a configuration database, invisible to users.
Not set Implicitly denies users the ability to perform tasks that require that permission, but allows membership in a group that does have that permission to take precedence, also known as Allow (inherited) or Deny (inherited).

In some cases, members of the Project Collection Administrators or Team Foundation Administrators groups may always get the permission even if they're denied that permission in a different group. In other cases such as work item deletion or pipelines, being a member of Project Collection Administrators group doesn't bypass Deny permissions set elsewhere.

Warning

When you change a permission for a group, it changes that permission for all users who are members of that group. Depending on the size of the group, you might affect the ability of hundreds of users to do their jobs by changing just one permission. So make sure you understand the potential effects before you make a change.

Permission inheritance and security groups

Some permissions are managed through a hierarchy. Within this hierarchy, permissions can be inherited from the parent or overridden. Security groups assign a set of permissions to those members of the group. For example, members of the Contributors group or Project Administrators group are assigned the permissions that are set as Allowed to those groups.

If a permission isn't directly allowed or denied for a user, then it may be inherited in the following ways.

  • Users inherit permissions from the groups to which they belong. When a user has a direct or group membership Allow permission, a direct or group membership Deny permission overrides it.

    Members of Project Collection Administrators or Team Foundation Administrators retain most allowed permissions, even if they belong to other groups that deny those permissions. Work item operation permissions are the exception to this rule.

  • Object-level permissions that are assigned for nodes of a hierarchy - areas, iterations, version control folders, work item query folders - are inherited down the hierarchy. That is, a user's permissions that are set at area-1 get inherited by area-1/sub-area-1, if the same permission isn't explicitly allowed or denied for area-1/sub-area-1. If a permission is set explicitly for an object, like area-1/sub-area-1, then the parent node isn't inherited, regardless of whether it's denied or allowed. If it's not set, then the permissions for that node are inherited from the closest ancestor that has the permission explicitly set. Lastly, in the object hierarchy, specificity trumps inheritance. For example, a user whose permissions are explicitly set to Deny on 'area-1' but are also explicitly set to Allow for 'area-1/sub-area-1' receives an Allow on 'area-1/sub-area-1'.

To understand why a permission is inherited, you can pause over a permission setting, and then choose Why? To open a Security page, see View permissions.

The preview user interface for the Project Permissions settings page isn't available for Azure DevOps Server 2020 and earlier versions.

Best practices for permissions

Do:

  • Use Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, or Windows security groups when you manage lots of users.
  • When you add a team, consider which permissions you want to assign to team leads, scrum masters, and other team members. Consider who creates and modifies area paths, iteration paths, and queries.
  • When you add many teams, consider creating a Team Administrators custom group where you can allocate a subset of the permissions available to Project Administrators.
  • Consider granting the work item query folders Contribute permission to users or groups that require the ability to create and share work item queries for the project.

Don't:

  • Don't add users to multiple security groups, which contain different permission levels. In certain cases, a Deny permission level may override an Allow permission level.
  • Don't change the default assignments made to the Valid Users groups. If you remove or set the View instance-level information permission to Deny for one of the Valid Users groups, no users in the group are able to access the project, collection, or deployment, depending on the group you set.
  • Don't assign permissions that are noted as 'Assign only to service accounts' to user accounts.

Role-based permissions

With Role-based permissions, you assign user accounts or security groups to a role, with each role assigned one or more permissions. Here are the primary roles and links to more information.

Members of the Project Administrators or Project Collection Administrators groups can manage all team tools for all teams.

Preview features

Feature flags control access to select, new features. Periodically, Azure DevOps introduces new features by placing them behind a feature flag. Project members and organization owners can enable or disable preview features. For more information, see Manage or enable features.

Next steps

Default permissions and access