How to create an Organization in Azure DevOps

With this post am kicking off a blog post series on working with Azure DevOps . The subjects covered by this series are organized into three categories:

• Azure DevOps Fundamentals
• Azure DevOps Advanced
• Azure DevOps Expert

Starting with the basic of basics of Azure DevOps Fundamentals :

How to create an Organization in Azure DevOps?

Since it much more fun to do research and play with technology in collaboration with others, Wesley Camargo will be covering some of the topics on he’s blog , while other topics are covered by my here. Naturally the all related posts will be referenced between the two blogs.

For a quick guide you can also check out the video version of this post.

What is an Azure DevOps Organization

An Organization within Azure DevOps can be considered a logical container used to organize and group projects. This logical container is the highest level at which the following types of configuration is applied;

• Managing projects
• Managing Permissions
• Setting up billing
• Global notifications
• Configuring Auditing
• Installing and managing extensions
• Configuring Azure Active Directory integration
• Managing Policies
• Setting up board process
• Global pipeline configuration
• Artifact storage configuration and billing

Create an Azure DevOps Organization

Prior to jumping ahead and creating an Organization it is strongly advised to consider planning an organizational structure and als to determine what type of account is most suitable for your implementation .

With that mentioned, lets start with the hands-on part and walk trough the required steps to create an Azure DevOps organization.

1. Login into Azure DevOps https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=307137 using a Microsoft account

   

   After a successful login you will be presented with the ‘Get Started with Azure DevOps’ screen

2. On the ‘Get Started with Azure DevOps’ screen select your country/region and click the Continue button. This will be used to preselect a Microsoft region which you can change in the following steps.

   

3. On the next screen decide if you desire to receive information tips and offers and again click the Continue button.

   

4. On the ‘Almost done’ verify and adapt the following fields

   

   1. The name of the organization. It is possible to change the name at a later stage, however the name is used as part of the URL which could have impact on accessibility.
      quote

      Currently, you can only use letters from the English alphabet in the Organization name. Start the Organization name with a letter or number, followed by letters, numbers or hyphens, and the name also must end with a letter or number.
   2. The desired region. Make sure you are aware of any regional data sovereignty that might apply to your Azure DevOps Organization as choosing the the desired region will impact it. In Addition, moving an Organization from one region to another is possible but limitations apply
   3. Challenge validation
      When done, again press the Continue button

5. The organization will be created, this usually takes a couple of minutes

   

6. When a new organization is created you are presented with the screen to continue by creating the first project. This is a separate topic which I will handle in the next post of the Azure DevOps Fundamentals category . For the creation of an Azure DevOps Organization all steps are done!!!

   

Get started managing your Azure DevOps Organization

After creating the first Azure DevOps Organization it is important to consider finalizing the configuration of the following topics:

• Add users to your organization
• Set up billing
• Manage security and permissions
• Enable preview features for your organization
• Install and manage extensions
• Adjust time zone and other organization settings
• Configure DevOps settings
• Customize work-tracking processes
• Alert users with information banners
• Review and update notifications

However, due to the complexity of these topics you can expect more details in a future post part of the Azure DevOps Expert category.

Wrapping up

And there you have it, How to create an Organization in Azure DevOps. If you are interested in the reference material used to make this post, please visit the following links.

• Create an organization
• Plan your organizational structure
• Organization management overview

As always, a big thanks for reading this post. If you liked it, don’t be shy and have a look at my other posts .