T-SQL Tuesday #127 – Create your own Azure DevOps organization

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My T-SQL contribution for this month is about how you can create your own Azure DevOps organization. Because I think this can be very useful.

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kenneth Fisher. Kenneth invites us all to share a non-SQL related tip or trick. Which is why I am sharing this tip about creating your own Azure DevOps organization.

You can read more about the invite in detail by clicking on the T-SQL Tuesday logo above.

Just to be clear, when I say Azure DevOps in this post I mean the Azure DevOps cloud service.

Why create your own organization?

A lot of people around the world use Azure DevOps now. With this in mind, there are various reasons why you would want to create your own Azure DevOps organization.

For instance, you might use Azure DevOps at work and want a clean area to test things in. For example, changing permissions somewhere or testing your own Azure DevOps Agents.

In addition, if you work for a larger company you might have limited permissions within your Azure DevOps organization at work.

So, if you create your own organization you can test that you don’t have permissions to do at work. For example, if you want to test changing the process that your team uses and customize it.

Plus, it means you are able to install and test extensions from the marketplace before requesting them within your enterprise. Like the retrospective item that I talked about in a previous post here.

How you can create your own organization

Now there’s a couple of ways I usually recommend that people use to create their own Azure DevOps organization.

First way applies to people who have an active Visual Studio subscription. If you go to your Visual Studio Subscription benefits page here and then click on the Azure tab then you can create your own organization there.

One reason I recommend this is because if you happen to have a Visual Studio Enterprise subscription you get a ‘Basic plan + Test plans’ license for Azure DevOps. Which is better than the basic license you can get because you are able to create Test Plans in your own Azure DevOps organization as well.

Second way I recommend is by using the generic sign-up page here. Which I tend to recommend to everybody who does not have a Visual Studio Subscription.

In reality, both ways are good. However, I tend to recommend the Visual Studio Subscription way first purely because there’s a chance people can get a slightly better license.

Microsoft also provides a Quick Start page on how you can sign in to Azure DevOps. Which you can read in detail here.

Final word about creating your own Azure DevOps organization

I hope you enjoyed my tips about how you can create your own Azure DevOps organization.

I truly believe this is very useful for anybody who wants to test doing things within Azure DevOps. Because it gives people more confidence about experimenting without fear.

Of course, if you have your own views about this post then feel free to comment.