Azure DevOps Server (formerly TMS) Reviews

Easier interface.

Less drop downs and tabs.

Email notifications.

Copy/Paste functionality could be improved

Ability to see all team members more clear visually

Sort feature on columns could be better

Reporting

Code integration

Project Management integrations

For managing Agile projects, web-based navigation is terrible. There's no easy drop-down menu system you have to hunt and peck around to try and find pages to manage your hours.

Our management needs the ability to predict when development may finish a project. Azure DevOps fails here because it doesn't easily provide a feature to let you predict an end date and it doesn't easily provide you with a feature to export the data to Excel so you could plug-in a formula to calculate an end date.

The menu options for code management are sparse. It would be great if they had a feature to let you simply drag and drop folder structures.

I wish I could default to a specific dashboard on load.

Can add more build templates for specific technology requirements

Can have more features in dashboards which can help dev teams stream line their tasks and priorities

Can have raise alarm feature in case of any sort of failure in devops pipeline execution

The way it uses workspaces is non-intuitive. I required help from our resident expert to get TFS set up initially.

Don't forget to refresh again and again. Yes, of course, you want the latest changes - you shouldn't have to remember to keep hitting that button.

Even though it uses a Microsoft SQL Server database to store its data, it uses the database in a non-standard way. Don't try to do the usual MS SQL backups - let TFS handle the backups.

There is a little window tells you small jokes and information. It just annoys me.

The UI might use more careful design. it can be confusing when you want to find the thing you want.

There are small things can be added to improve productivity, such as cloning the whole agent job.

Most of the companies use AWS, GitHub, etc. and generally the support on the internet is relatively less.

Being a Microsoft service, it works very well with Microsoft apps.

Since we are new to using Azure DevOps since this year, we are trying to find areas that could be improved.

Azure DevOps server would be beneficial if it could be used with all technologies/programming languages.

Having a way to use Azure DevOps server with Oracle or Stored Procedure packages would be beneficial.

Need more templates.

Can be confusing to use at first.

Reporting could be better.

TFS UI could improve like some of its major competitors with fewer options on the same UI page. TFS tries to offer too many options on the same UI.

Development in branches is hard to achieve and TFS has a room for improvement.

Integration with non-Microsoft is difficult. TFS could provide easier integration with other product lines to improve acceptability.

Searching through code can be somewhat cumbersome. It would be nice if there was a way to do general searches in certain areas of the system.

Without proper training, the system can be confusing to navigate. This issue can be prevented with good training but it is something to be aware of.

Navigation can be clunky at times depending on where you are in the system. For power users, this is not a huge deal but it is a tad bit annoying.

Bad UX and UI in the web interface

Merging code is a very hard task

Development in branches is also hard to achieve

Not so easy to upgrade server version

Team Foundation Server could be improved in the Task and Backlog Managment for smaller Teams. E.G.: It's hard to quickly write down Tasks during a meeting because you have to fill in lots of Fields per WorkItem. It is hard to push the Items around.

Compare versions of SSIS can be improved

Merging of the SSIS Code can also be improved

You must avoid getting stuck with check-in

Developers must avoid overwriting

The developers must be at minimum coordinated among themselves during the developments

The project management/scrum piece is hard to learn.

The Wikipedia functionality it provides isn't very useful for lack of features.

It takes a REALLY long time to check in a large number of newly added files.

If your file paths get too long, TFS gives you errors.

Integration between our help desk system and TFS was possible but not as easy as I would expect considering both are Microsoft products

Advanced reporting for dashboards could be made easier

Web interface - While the web interface is certainly very feature rich, there's just no substitute for a good desktop interface sometimes. The test side has Microsoft Test Manager as a desktop application counterpart, but almost everything else is done via the website. Some project management tasks could be simpler in a desktop environment.

There is no real ability to work offline. You need to be actively connected to it in order to see history.

Having many hands in the same project/file can cause conflicts that can be hard to resolve.

having a "master" branch is difficult in TFS, it can be done but it is slow and cumbersome and not an intuitive process.

Simplify automation testing, too much repetitive code with recording

Easier access to Code reviews - our development team struggles with this

Shelving and un-shelving details - development struggles in this area

The older versions of TFS are more lacking in the web version-- if you aren't updated to 2015 or above I believe, a lot of the web features are not available (like bulk update). You really have to keep up to date with TFS for the best features, and it's no simple task to migrate your entire instance of TFS from an older version to a newer version.

VSTS is supposed to be a virtual version of TFS that we've been looking into, but it severely limits customization options for ticket templates and workflows. It would be nice for VSTS to eventually carry that customization over so we could feel more comfortable switching to "the cloud" so to speak.

Queries are a very powerful tool, but normal business users struggle to understand how they can best utilize this tool to analyze tickets. Because of the permissions structure in all companies I have been a part of, I've never been able to save my custom queries to a public folder in TFS for business/project users. Instead, I have to take time to train these users and give them guidance on how to best create queries for their needs. This is admittedly a business process issue, but it could potentially also be resolved with some good training/guidance around queries provided by TFS themselves.

Visual Studio Team Services just about solves all of the criticisms I had of TFS.

Release Management is overly complicated and changes constantly, hard to keep up. I use Octopus Deploy as an alternative.

I think if old coding languages were easier to migrate and keep in TFS as a archive and easy to access then that would be a huge improvement.

Easier to create dashboards within TFS of the approvals for projects.