Set and enforce quality gates
TFS 2018
Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2022
Check-in policies are a mechanism for enforcing development practices across your development team. Check-in notes are a communication mechanism for collecting data from team members during the check-in process. Both of these mechanisms are customizable to meet the needs of a team. This section explains the purpose of these items and also describes how to configure them.
Check-in policies
Check-in policies are used to enforce mandatory software development practices. Policy is enforced during the check-in process after you select Check In on the Pending Changes page or My Work page in the Visual Studio Team Explorer window. If a user attempts to perform a check-in that violates a mandatory policy, the check-in is blocked. If necessary, these policies may be overridden. For more information, see Check in your work to the team's codebase.
Policies are configured and established in Settings on the Source Control page of Team Explorer. A sample policy constraint is You must associate your changes with one or more work items. This policy prevents users from submitting changes without associating a specific bug or feature they're working on.
When policies are violated, the Check In and Pending Changes pages of Team Explorer present the violations to the user during the source control check-in process. For more information, see Develop code and manage pending changes.
Check-in notes
Check-in notes are used for capturing specific pieces of information during the check-in process by prompting the user for specific data. Check-in notes can be configured and made mandatory in Settings on the Source Control page of Team Explorer. The information archived in check-in notes can be vital when viewing the details of a changeset. For more information, see View and manage past versions.
Check-in notes are presented to the user during the source control check-in process in the Pending Changes window. For more information, see Develop code and manage pending changes.