10 Essential Azure DevOps Tools
Azure DevOps is a standout end-to-end development platform that facilitates and streamlines every step of the software development lifecycle. From planning and project management to testing, reporting, and automation, Azure DevOps offers tools and solutions for every challenge along the development pipeline. But no tool can meet every need, so what do you do when the tools aren’t quite what your project demands?
Because of the popularity of Azure DevOps, there are a lot of additional tools available to expand its capabilities. Let’s take a look at some of the best ones and what they can do for you and your team.
The 10 best Azure DevOps tools for your workspace
Unito
Unito is a no-code, two-way sync platform that keeps your data up-to-date and in sync between tools. That way, you’re always working with the most recent information, no matter where in your digital ecosystem you’re working from. With deep, customizable integrations, you can define precisely how Azure DevOps fields sync with other tools. When integrating other tools with Azure DevOps using Unito, you can open up a world of workflow customization and automation without any code.
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Azure Pipelines for Slack
Slack is the bread and butter of day-to-day operations for many organizations, serving as their hub for collaboration. Hosting meetings, broadcasting updates, and facilitating every kind of digital teamwork users might need. Beyond the excellence the tool already offers, Azure Pipelines for Slack lets users subscribe to updates from Azure DevOps right in Slack, providing them with instant notifications when critical stages are reached, or actions are taken. Centralizing these updates within a tool that everyone is already monitoring for notifications, means that fewer updates are missed and your team stays up to date with ease.
Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server. It handles and automates a number of different steps in the development cycle. Usually, these automations are configured to trigger when code changes in a repository, though there are a number of other options. Jenkins provides pre-made plugins for Azure, as well as the option to create your own with Python should none of the already existing plugins meet your needs. This makes Jenkins a flexible solution for expanding the continuous development capabilities of DevOps.
Docker
Docker is a platform with a suite of tools designed around lightweight containerization. These containers are designed to facilitate and streamline testing by removing the need for virtual machines. These containers have built-in tools and automations, and multiple containers can be run at the same time. Running lightweight containers in parallel, instead of virtual machines, reduces testing time significantly.
Ansible
Ansible is a command line tool that focuses on providing quick and effective control over your systems in one place. The tool is as minimal as can be without sacrificing capability or usability. Ansible can do system configuration, software deployment and updates, and manage or support complex workflows. Ansible Playbooks are collections of premade automations that can easily be repeated, shared, and stored. Playbooks help execute tasks repeatedly, facilitate multi-machine tasks, run loops, be used to create blocks of tasks, and more.
Nagios
Nagios is an open-source monitoring and alert tool that keeps track of all sorts of services. Administrators can configure Nagios to send alerts via email, sms, and more. Nagios is modular and supports plugins, with a library of premade plugins as well as supporting custom plugin development. Nagios is a fantastic choice for increasing real-time awareness of your Azure DevOps environment.
New Relic
New Relic is a web-based full-stack monitoring tool. It tracks numerous software and services, including ADO, in real time. This monitoring can then be used for analysis and reporting straight from New Relic. New Relic splits its tracking into four types: Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces. When paired with Azure DevOps, you get a powerful monitoring solution to top off your live development cycles, whose scope can be expanded to include a much larger digital workspace environment.
Azure DevOps for Jira
No tool in software development is as ubiquitous as Jira. Integrating Jira with ADO breaks down the silos around development and DevOps, allowing both sides of the workflow to have a clear and up-to-date understanding of projects at all levels. One specific feature of this integration that users have found most valuable is the ability to track and sync Issues from Azure to Jira. Providing the freedom to work with either or both tools on the same task lets your team use the best tool for the job.
GitHub
GitHub is as ubiquitous as Jira when it comes to software development tools. GitHub provides a digital space for storing code and documentation, tools for sharing and collaborating on projects, and tracking and version management that simplifies testing and iteration. There are a number of integrations available to connect GitHub to Azure. The most popular integration connects Azure Boards to GitHub repositories. This lets work items on boards connect directly to their respective repos, allowing for all sorts of automations, like automatic updates, access management, and more.
BitBucket
Bitbucket is a Git-based tool that expands its scope and capability. With collaboration and integration built in, Bitbucket’s goal is to support every part of a software team. Native Jira and Trello integrations provide project management tools out of the box. Azure DevOps can be integrated with Bitbucket Cloud Repositories to add even more capability, allowing for integration between PM and Issue tracking tools, repos, and Dev Ops tools.
How to connect other tools with Azure DevOps using Unito
Native and API integrations are excellent ways to streamline your digital workspaces, but often these integrations are limited in scope or features or require coding to implement. When your use case demands more than a one-size-fits-all solution, Unito has the answer.
Unito is a no-code sync tool with in-depth integrations for any use case.
Unito gives you the flexibility to sync DevOps to whichever tool you need. With two-way updates, and five-minute sync times (live sync for Enterprise plans) your data stays up to date no matter where it’s being worked on. Whether it’s creating and automating roadmaps or linking DevOps to the ever popular ClickUp for task and project management, Unito makes it possible.