Azure Pipelines play a pivotal role in modern software development by enabling automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and efficient collaboration among development, testing, and operations teams. Their capabilities contribute to faster development cycles, higher code quality, and better overall software delivery.

Keeping in mind all of the above, ZigiOps now offers its users the possibility to utilize the full capacity of their system integrations with Azure Pipelines. With ZigiOps, enterprises can get information from Azure DevOps build pipelines and report it to an external system like an ITSM, for example. Also, ZigiOps users can now easily get access to all Azure DevOps releases through the Pipelines release functionality and based on specific criteria  report them to an external ITSM system.

What are Azure Pipelines and what are the advantages of using them?

Azure Pipelines is a cloud-based solution offered by Microsoft that streamlines software development workflows through continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices. They automate the process of building, testing, and deploying applications across various platforms and environments. By enabling teams to define pipelines as code, Azure Pipelines facilitate version-controlled, consistent, and repeatable workflows. This tool plays a pivotal role in accelerating software delivery, enhancing collaboration, and ensuring the reliable release of high-quality applications.

With such a critical role in the well-being of the enterprises IT infrastructure safe functioning, Azure Pipelines offers a lot of advantages:

• Easy automation
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
• Project Scalability
• Version Control Integrations
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Support
• Easy Artifact Management
• Cross-platform deployment happens smooth and easily
• Seamless Integration with Azure Services
• High Monitoring and Insights functionalities
• Easy Cross-team Collaboration

How to choose the right tool for integrating Azure Pipelines into the IT ecosystem?

To function properly and to get the best of the systems incorporated into their IT infrastructure, companies must decide on the best solutions that will enable them to seamlessly transfer data and sync their IT teams. That's why outsourcing the right tool for their needs is critical. This activity is even more important when it comes to a solution like Azure Pipelines.

When selecting tools to integrate Azure Pipelines into your IT ecosystem, begin by evaluating your specific integration requirements across systems such as source control, testing frameworks, and more. Investigate Azure Pipelines inherent features and extensions for established tool integrations. For aspects not encompassed, research third-party integration tools with proven compatibility and APIs.

Prioritize tools with an intuitive configuration process, the capacity for customization, and scalability to accommodate future expansion. Addressing security and compliance is crucial; assess each tools adherence to your organizations standards.

Additionally, consider factors like initial and long-term costs, flexibility, and evaluating the reputation of tool vendors. Through pilot testing, you can verify the tools suitability and ensure alignment with your business goals and long-term strategies, facilitating a seamless and secure integration process.

Using the ZigiOps no-code integration solution

ZigiOps is a seamless fit for the integration requirements of enterprises and large organizations. Our clients frequently express the need for unrestricted connections and synchronization, a user-count without bounds, and a blend of adaptability and dependability. Here's why ZigiOps is the preferred choice for numerous major enterprises, including over 60 Fortune 500 companies:

• Effortless No-Code Integrations: Even those without technical expertise can establish integrations in just a few clicks and in under 15 minutes.

• Advanced Data Mapping: Match standard, custom, and associated fields as per your needs. Customize limitlessly, apply filters, and set conditions.

• Scale and Flexibility: Generating new integrations takes minutes, and modifying existing ones is straightforward and without a fuss.

• Independent Platform: the ZigiOps platform operates via APIs, negating the need for any system adjustments or plugin installations.

• Security: Our adherence to the highest security standards ensures data integrity. ZigiOps doesn't store your data and doesn't employ a database.

• Uninterrupted Operations: ZigiOps guarantees 99.9% uptime, supporting high availability. This safeguard extends protection even if any of your systems encounters issues.

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Here are the most common use case scenarios ZigiOps coves with its Azure Pipelines (Build and Release Pipelines) integrations:

Azure Build Pipelines: Focus on continuous integration, compiling, testing, and packaging code changes.

Azure DevOps Build Pipelines  ServiceNow incidents Use Case

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Integrating Azure DevOps Release Pipelines with ServiceNow, a popular IT Service Management (ITSM) platform, can offer several advantages in terms of streamlining the software release and incident management processes. ServiceNow is used for managing IT services, incidents, change requests, and more.

With ZigiOps no-code integration platform, enterprises can easily transfer reports for:

• Azure DevOps (Build Pipelines) to ServiceNow (Incidents)

A company has two separate IT teams managing ServiceNow (for handling issues and requests) and Azure DevOps pipelines (to manage their development processes and tasks). The lack of connectivity between the two is usually expressed in significant slowdowns and data silos. As a result, IT teams remain stuck on tasks  manually transferring information from Azure Pipelines to ServiceNow. Errors are unavoidable in this case.

What ZigiOps Azure Pipelines ServiceNow integration does is ease the prolonged and often frustrating process of information transmission. When deployed, the ZigiOps no-code tool automatically fetches the existing Azure DevOps builds and creates a corresponding ServiceNow incident to match it. Depending on the IT teams needs, ZigiOps makes it possible only for specific pipelines to be transferred like latest or failed, for example. That's possible thanks to the platforms advanced filtering functionalities.

Azure DevOps Release Pipelines  ServiceNow incidents Use Case

In this use case, ZigiOps allows companies to transfer seamlessly:

• Azure DevOps (Release Pipelines) data to ServiceNow (Incidents)

An enterprise has both Azure Release Pipelines and ServiceNow in its tech stack. The Azure Release Pipelines is used by the companys DevOps team to build and test code-related projects. The help desk manages incoming tickets and requests via ServiceNow. In those cases when there is no connection whatsoever between those two systems, anytime there are failed pipelines into the Azure system, that need to be entered into ServiceNow incidents, the responsive DevOps team member must manually log all the data. It takes time and valuable resources and is often accompanied by unintentional human errors.

With ZigiOps Azure Release Pipelines ServiceNow integration, the data extraction from Azure Release Pipelines happens fast and automatically. No need to manually go back-and-forth between the systems. No faulty data and no bottlenecks. ZigiOps advanced pre-defined filtering functions allow users to determine what data to be transferred  time, state, failed job/task, type, name, description and more.

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Azure DevOps Build Pipelines  Jira issues Use Case

Integrating Jira and Azure Pipelines, specifically, the build pipelines aspect, offers a streamlined approach to managing the development lifecycle, enhancing collaboration, and ensuring efficient software delivery. Jira is a widely used project management and issue tracking tool, while Azure Pipelines is a part of the Microsoft Azure DevOps suite, providing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities. Our no-code integration platform allows the seamless transfer of:

• Azure DevOps (Build Pipelines) to Jira (Issues)

A company has embedded both Azure Pipelines and Jira into its IT infrastructure and has teams dedicated to operating them. Tasks, issues, workflow optimization, and even code testing are executed on a daily basis through those systems. But in order for the teams managing the two systems to handle their tasks on time (without delays that affect the rest of the internal IT processes), both teams must work in alignment and have a clear line of communication. And that requires teams to work in alignment and share critical information easily. And it's all achievable through successful integration between Azure Pipelines and Jira. As a result, critical issues will immediately be reviewed and resolved by Jiras DevOps team.

Thanks to ZigiOps Azure DevOps build pipelines Jira integration, the Azure team can easily log data into Jira as issues, along with their corresponding details. It all happens instantly upon enabling the integration and is automated. With ZigiOps pre-defined filtering capabilities, IT teams can pick the specific time, status or even result that needs to be fetched by the Azure Pipelines and send it to Jira directly.

Azure Release Pipelines  Focus on continuous delivery and deployment of tested and approved code changes to different environments.

Another segment of the Azure Pipeline services that ZigiOps offers for integrating is the Release Pipelines. In the following lines, well check some of the most common integration scenarios that prompt the need for Azure Release Pipelines integrations through the ZigiOps no-code platform.

Azure DevOps Release Pipelines  Jira issues Use Case

Via the ZigiOps no-code platform, fetching Azure Release Pipelines and sending it directly to Jira as issues happens in a matter of seconds:

• Azure DevOps (Release Pipelines) to Jira (Issues)

The combination of Azure Release Pipelines and Jira is usually sought after by companies that aim to improve their overall workflows and speed up their operations.

So, its a common occurrence to have both Jira and Azure Release Pipelines embedded into the enterprises IT ecosystem. However, those two systems usually operate on their own without any communication between them. Lets look at the following:

The Azure team notices that there are failed pipelines. This requires the help of the development team. Its crucial for them to know exactly which pipelines have failed (when and which job/ task has failed, for example). In case there is a lack of connection between Azure Release Pipelines and Jira, the Azure team will have to manually pick and send each piece of data they think needs to be investigated by the developers. They will need to log it into Jira as issue/s. As a result, data leakages happen  leading to faulty data and misunderstanding between the departments.

All this info can be automatically transferred to Jira in real time and provide the necessary details to the right person from the team right away.

When used as an integration solution, ZigiOps automatically extracts Azure DevOps releases from the release pipelines and logs them in Jira as issues. Its fast, safe and easy. ZigiOps filtering capabilities make it possible for its users to define exactly what data (with its corresponding details) to be sent to Jira. Time, state, fail stage  all can be filtered and transferred.

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Azure DevOps Release Pipelines  OpsBridge Use Case

Another quite sought-after Azure Release Pipelines integration scenario includes Operations Bridge Manager (OpsBridge). Integrating Azure Release Pipelines (part of Azure DevOps) with Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) can bring about several advantages in terms of streamlining the software release and IT operations processes. OBM is an operations management and monitoring solution that helps organizations manage their IT infrastructure, applications, and services. To help companies achieve this, ZigiOps offers the integration, ensuring the seamless transfer of:

• Azure DevOps (Release Pipelines) -> OpsBridge (Events)

A company has Azure Release Pipelines and Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) in its IT infrastructure. Operations Bridge team manages the monitoring and issue-tracking operations, while the Azure Release Pipelines team manages various tests and project deployment processes. In a situation when the two systems are not connected and there are pipelines failures that must be logged as issues in OpsBridge to be remediated, setbacks may occur regularly. Additionally, the manual transmission of information may end up in errors or missing data.

ZigiOps Azure Release Pipelines OpsBridge integration resolves this problem. The integration platform automatically extracts the Azure Pipelines fails and sends them directly into the OBM system for resolution.

If you are using Operations Bridge Manager for monitoring and tracking issues in your system, and at the same time your DevOps team is using Azure Pipelines to test and deploy projects, you can boost productivity and improve your workflows by an OpsBridge Azure DevOps integration. Once inside OpsBridge, those pipeline fails (along with their corresponding details) are automatically transferred to the corresponding OpsBridge events. The advanced filtering capabilities of ZigiOps allow only the necessary pipelines to be reported to OBM.

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Conclusion

Azure Pipelines is a cornerstone of a company's IT ecosystem, offering comprehensive automation for software development and delivery processes. It enables continuous integration and deployment, fostering Agile and DevOps practices. With support for various platforms and languages, it accommodates diverse projects. By automating testing, release management, and infrastructure setup, it ensures code quality and reliability. Integration with third-party tools and monitoring capabilities further enhances its value. Overall, Azure Pipelines accelerates development, enhances collaboration, and promotes efficient, secure, and high-quality software delivery.

With ZigiOps Azure Pipelines Integrations, enterprises can easily transfer the desired data without a fuss. Project management, testing code or deployment happens in a matter of clicks and without obstacles. Productivity and cross-team communication are boosted, while IT teams work in alignment.

Book a free demo and see live how the ZigiOps integrations for Azure Pipelines work.