For organizations looking to improve communication and collaboration between support and development teams, the InvGate Service Management and Azure DevOps integration connects both sides of the house. It lets you link Azure DevOps Work Items to your service desk requests, so support agents can see the development work behind an issue and keep everyone aligned on progress.
Azure DevOps enables teams to work efficiently together in software development. Combined with InvGate Service Management, that collaboration extends to the support team working in the service Desk and the development team working in DevOps, streamlining IT operations through better information exchange and clearer visibility into requests.
Let's look at what the integration does and how to set it up.
Azure DevOps Integration: Add a Help Desk to Your Software Development Tool
What the integration does
With the integration in place, authorized users can link Azure DevOps Work Items — used to track features, requirements, code bugs, and project development issues — to InvGate Service Management requests. Once a Work Item is linked, the request displays:
- The status of the Work Item in Azure DevOps
- The ID of the Work Item
- The title of the Work Item, which links out to the Work Item in Azure DevOps (or, for users with the right permission, opens the full detail view inside InvGate Service Management)
You choose which users — agents, managers, or administrators — can link Work Items and which can view their details on your Service Desk instance. No extra Azure DevOps licenses are needed. InvGate Service Management users do not require a DevOps license to view the details of a linked Work Item.
Scope and limitations to keep in mind:
- It is a read-only, link-and-view integration, not a two-way sync. Work Items are pulled from Azure DevOps for reference inside requests; the integration does not push changes back to Azure DevOps.
- Linking is category-gated. Work Items can only be linked from requests that belong to the service catalog categories you enable for the integration.
- View permission in InvGate overrides Azure DevOps permissions. A user granted view access through the integration can see Work Item information from InvGate Service Management even if they do not have the same access in Azure DevOps directly.
Azure DevOps actions available in workflows
Linking Work Items to requests is not the only way to bring Azure DevOps into InvGate Service Management. Azure DevOps is also available as a built-in action connector for Workflows — a handy way to bring live development data into a process without any coding. These read-only connectors let admins pull data straight from Azure DevOps inside InvGate's no-code workflow builder, so there is no need to build custom web service stages.
To use one, go to Workflows > stage > Action > Built-in action connectors, then pick Azure DevOps and choose the action. Here are the actions available:
- Get a work item
- List work item queries
- List projects
- List teams
- List iterations
- List repositories
- List builds
A Change Enablement process for a software release, for example, can surface the status of a related Azure DevOps Work Item or the latest builds at the review stage. A Problem Management record tied to a code defect can pull in the Work Item tracking the fix. In both cases, the development context lives right inside the InvGate Service Management process, with no tool-switching required.
InvGate Service Management and Azure DevOps integration setup
Setting up the integration of both tools takes only two steps: Obtaining your personal access token from Azure DevOps and configuring the integration on InvGate Service Management.
Step 1: Obtain the Personal Access Token from Azure DevOps
The first thing you have to do is obtain the personal access token from Azure DevOps. For this, log into the tool’s website and choose your organization. Then, click on the User settings menu (located in the right corner of the screen) and select “Personal access tokens.”
Once you are there, press on “New Token”, where you will find a configuration form that has to be filled in with the following information:
- Name: Define a name for the token.
- Organization: Select the organization for which you want to generate the token.
- Expiration: Choose an expiration date for the token. It’s recommended to set the maximum date (of one year) to avoid frequent updates.
- Scopes: Select “Custom Defined”, then click on “Show all scopes”, and add the “Read” permission both for Work Items and for Graph.
To finish, press on “Create”, and you will obtain your access token.
Note: Your token will only appear once, so make sure you copy it at the moment, as you will need it for the next step and otherwise, you will have to start from scratch.
Step 2: Integration configuration
To set up the integration, log into InvGate Service Management as administrator and go to Settings > Integrations > Applications. There, click on the add button for Azure DevOps.
The configuration screen is divided into three sections:
- Configuration: Define a name to identify the integration, write a description, and select the service catalog categories from which Work Items can be linked.
- Authentication: Enter the name of the organization created in Azure DevOps and paste the access token you generated in Step 1. Click on "Test" to validate the credentials.
- Permissions: Define the roles that can link Work Items to requests and the roles that can view Work Item details within a request. Remember that each role also includes the roles above it.
To link a Work Item, open a request in one of the enabled categories, click the + icon for relationships in the right module, choose "Add External Entity," select Azure DevOps, and enter the Work Item ID.
Once you have it running, the integration joins InvGate Service Management's full list of integrations, giving your service desk more visibility into the development work behind each request.
FAQs
Can I link more than one Work Item to a single request? Yes. Work Items are added through the relationships module on the request, one at a time. Open the request, click the + icon, choose "Add External Entity," select Azure DevOps, and enter the Work Item ID — then repeat the action for each additional Work Item you want to link.
Who can link Work Items to requests? Only the users you authorize in the Permissions section of the integration, defined by role. Agents includes agents, managers, and administrators; Managers includes managers and administrators; Administrators includes administrators only. The request also has to belong to one of the service catalog categories enabled for the integration.
Are changes to a Work Item reflected in real time? The linked view reads directly from Azure DevOps, so the status, ID, title, and (for users with view permission) the full fields, description, and comments reflect the current data pulled from the Work Item in Azure DevOps.
