The integration at a glance
Using Workpath’s integration with Azure DevOps, you can link the strategic Goals of your organization to the everyday work of your teams in Azure DevOps Boards:
Link Azure DevOps work items to your Goals and Key Results directly from within Workpath
See all work items linked to a Goal, together with the status of their child work items
Keep titles, statuses and owners in sync automatically, without double work
Linking happens per user: you connect your own Azure DevOps account once, and from then on you can link the work items you have access to to the Goals you can edit.
Two ways to connect
There are two ways to connect Workpath and Azure DevOps. They can be used in parallel:
Personal sign-in (recommended). Each user signs in to Azure DevOps with their own account. This is the easiest way to get started and is set up entirely from within Workpath. The rest of this article focuses on this method.
The Azure DevOps extension. An optional extension installed in Azure DevOps that lets your teams link work items to Goals and Key Results from within Azure DevOps and shows which Goals and Key Results a work item is linked to. See The Azure DevOps extension below.
Prerequisites
Before you can sign in, an admin needs to enable Azure DevOps in your organization’s settings. Depending on your Azure DevOps configuration, the admin may also need to approve the Workpath application in Azure DevOps — see Granting Permission for Microsoft Applications. If you do not see an option to sign in to Azure DevOps anywhere in Workpath, please ask an admin to enable the integration.
Signing in to Azure DevOps
Once the integration is enabled, there are two places where you can sign in.
From a Goal
Open any Goal you have edit access to. You will see a banner inviting you to “Link your Azure DevOps work items”. Click Sign in to connect your Azure DevOps account. Once you are signed in, the banner’s button changes to Link work items, and you can start linking right away.
From your connection settings
Go to your user settings and open My Connections. There you will see every integration your admin has enabled, including Azure DevOps, along with your current connection status:
Connected – you are signed in and ready to link work items.
Reconnect required – you were signed in previously, but your connection could not be refreshed and needs to be renewed. This should be rare. Click Reconnect to restore it.
Not connected – you are signed out. Click Connect to sign in.
From here you can also Disconnect Azure DevOps at any time.
Linking work items
Once you are signed in, you can link Azure DevOps work items from the banner on a Goal. The linking dialog walks you through a few steps:
Choose one of the Azure DevOps organizations you have access to.
Choose a project within that organization.
Search and filter the work items. The most recently edited work items are shown automatically. You can narrow them down by title, by work item type (such as Epics), and by status. Because statuses in Azure DevOps depend on the work item type, you need to select a type before you can filter by status.
Select one or more work items and click Link. They will appear as linked Initiatives on your Goal.
Linking from a table view
You can also start linking from any table view that lists Goals or Key Results. Open the row menu of a Goal or Key Result and choose Add Initiative from Azure DevOps. The same dialog opens, and the selected work items are linked to that Goal or Key Result.
A work item can be linked to several Goals and Key Results at the same time, including several Key Results of the same Goal. Every link is independent: removing one does not affect the others.
Linking with the Workpath Companion
Once you have signed in to Azure DevOps, you can also explore and link your work items by chatting with the Workpath Companion, our AI assistant. The Companion uses your personal connection, so it can only ever see the work items you have access to in Azure DevOps.
To save you from starting from scratch, the Companion looks at the projects and work item types your team has recently linked and uses them as the starting point for its search. You can always ask it to look in other projects or for other work item types you have access to.
Tell the Companion what you are looking for, and it will search Azure DevOps and show you the matching work items. Once you confirm which ones to link, it creates the links as Initiatives on your Goal for you.
Companion linking for Azure DevOps is being rolled out gradually. If you do not see it yet, it may not be available for your account.
What you see in Workpath
Linked work items appear as Initiatives on the Goal you linked them to. Open the Goal and look at the Initiative (output) section to see everything linked to it. If a work item is linked to several Goals, it appears as an Initiative under each of them.
For an Epic, or any work item that contains children, the detail view also shows the status of its child work items. These children are pulled in automatically from Azure DevOps so you can see progress at a glance, but they are not listed as individual Initiatives, to keep the view uncluttered.
The following information is kept in sync from Azure DevOps. When you change it in Azure DevOps, it is reflected in Workpath within a few minutes:
Work item title
Work item status
Owner (set from the Azure DevOps assignee when the work item is first linked)
Click a work item’s title to open it in Azure DevOps for full details.
Visibility and permissions
A few rules keep your data safe:
You can only see and link the Azure DevOps work items your own account has access to.
You can only link work items to Goals you have edit access to.
Once linked, a work item takes on the same visibility in Workpath as the Goal it is linked to. It becomes visible to any Workpath user who can see that Goal. If work item titles contain sensitive information, consider making the Goal private.
The Azure DevOps extension (optional)
In addition to personal sign-in, your admin can install the Workpath extension for Azure DevOps. It is optional and works alongside personal sign-in. Links are shared between the two: a work item you link in Workpath shows as linked in Azure DevOps, and the other way round.
The extension adds a Workpath panel to the work item form in Azure DevOps Boards. It appears on the work item types your admin has configured, typically Epics. The panel has two sections:
Linked Goals lists every Goal and Key Result this work item is linked to, together with the number of links. Click Unlink to remove a single link.
Link to Workpath lists the Goals of the current cycle for your teams and the teams you coach, grouped by team, together with their Key Results. Click Link next to a Goal or a Key Result. Use the search box or the Teams filter to narrow the list.
A work item can be linked to several Goals and Key Results at the same time. Linking a parent work item such as an Epic also brings in its child work items, whose status you can then see in Workpath.
Good to know
You can only link Goals you may edit in Workpath. For other Goals the panel shows “You cannot link Goals of this Team in Workpath.”
The panel lists team Goals. If a work item is linked in Workpath to a Goal that is not owned by a team, such as an organization-wide Goal, that link is not shown in Azure DevOps.
The extension updates automatically in your Azure DevOps organization. No action is needed to receive new versions.
For how to install and configure the extension, see Setting up the Azure DevOps Integration.