When building pipelines, we will often need to integrate them with other tools. For source control systems, this is part of the flow when creating a pipeline and you are limited to the built-in options. For tasks, you can create references to any tool or location you want using service connections. An example of a task that uses a service connection to an Azure app service is shown in the following screenshot.
A service connection is a pointer to a third-party system, with a name and series of properties that differ for each type of service connection. Often, you will need to put in a URL to locate the other service and a mechanism for authentication. The following steps will help you configure your service connection:
- After defining one or more service connections, you can select the one to use from a drop-down menu:
- Service connections are managed in a central location as project settings. You can access them by going to the management view directly from the task you are currently configuring, as shown in the preceding screenshot. You can also do this by navigating to Project Settings and then to Service connections, as in the following screenshot (see label 1):
- In this view, you can then either add a new service connection or update an existing service connection (see label 2 in the preceding screenshot).
By default, service connections are scoped to the project level, meaning they are not available for everyone in the Azure DevOps organization. To encourage the reuse of service connections, Azure has made it possible to share them between projects since mid-2019.