Unlocking Azure DevOps with the A400 Certification: A Comprehensive Guide

hey this is Andrew Brown your favorite Cloud instructor bringing you another free Cloud certification course and this

time it's the a400 this is specifically for the Azure devops engineer um and we're making this available on free Camp

as always so the way we're going to get the certification is by doing labs in our own Azure account uh lecture content

and as always we provide you a free practice exam and I want to tell you that our exam simulator has case studies

which is the most important component when we're looking at these expert certifications with Azure um so if you

want to support more free courses like this one the best way to do that is to purchase the additional study materials

over on exampro doco that's where you get the cheat sheets additional practice exams uh the content is layered um and

again it helps produce these courses if you don't know me I've taught a lot of courses here um I've taught ads Azure

lots of azure uh gcp kubernetes terraform you name it I've taught it so you're in good hands and I will see you

soon okay hey this is Andrew Brown I just wanted to tell you that in this video course I am utilizing my synthetic

voice uh synthetic voices is when you utilize software that emulate your voice the reason why I utilize synthetic voice

is a couple reasons this is when uh the real Andrew not the synthetic voice Andrew has lost his voice and this

happens to me because I have muscle tension dysphonia and so if I use my voice a lot aggressively I can lose my

voice and so I have to uh be careful when I'm recording a considerable amount of content and right now when this video

is being made I am recording a lot of adus content and so you know I've ask my support team to just generate out my

words and Stitch the video together and this the reason for that is that I don't want my content to go stale so when I

create content it has to get shipped uh whether my voice is ready or not um so this is the case for the ac400 otherwise

this course would just go stale and you wouldn't get it for like 6 months to a year but um you know that's the

trade-off that we have when I'm a single content creator and I'm trying to get all this content out so I just want to

point out that the content is made by me it's just utilizing a synthetic voice so it's not like it's somebody else doing

100% everything else otherwhere but there you go okay hey this is Andrew Brown from exam

Pro and we'll be going over an introduction of the a400 certification the Azure devops Engineer Expert is an

expert level Microsoft certification for the pre-requisites you must earn at least one of the following the Microsoft

certified Azure administrator associate or the Microsoft certified Azure developer associate the key topics

covered in this course design and Implement processes and Communications such as GitHub flow and Azure boards

design and Implement traceability and flow of work configure collaboration and communication designed and Implement a

source control strategy such as branching strategies pull request workflows design and Implement build and

release pipelines design and Implement a package management strategy like GitHub packages develop a security and

compliance plan and Implement an instrumentation strategy like Azure Monitor and log analytics so who is this

certification for the certification is designed for individuals who are interested in learning how to design and

Implement devops practices for continuous integration continuous delivery and infrastructure is codee you

may consider this certification if you are new to devops and want to learn the fundamentals and benefits of devops

practices you are a software developer systems administrator or IT professional you want to understand the capabilities

of azure devops and GitHub including building pipelines implementing Source control strategies and managing security

and compliance you are a senior devops engineer or in a related role who needs to reset or refresh your knowledge after

working for multiple years so what's the Azure devops Engineer Expert road map like well the most common route that

people take to reach the devops Engineer Expert is to start at the Azure fundamentals it's not mandatory but it

helps build a solid foundation then you take the Azure developer associate for Designing building testing Azure

applications and eventually take the Azure Dev Ops Engineer Expert another common path is to take the Azure

administrator associate and then the Azure Solutions architect you can also take the Azure Solutions architect after

the devops Engineer Expert to further enhance your Microsoft Azure skills and widen your career prospects other

popular associate level certifications may include the aszure AI engineer Azure database administrator and the Azure

security engineer and many more so that's a general outlook on the road map to Azure devops Engineer Expert how long

this study to pass for beginners so if you've never used Microsoft Azure or any cloud provider have no prior experience

with devops practices or no Tech background or experience you're looking it around over 50 hours you shouldn't

take this exam if you're a beginner you'll need to pass the prerequisites and build a solid foundation if you're

experience with Microsoft Azure or any Cloud providers have experience with devops practices and tools and have a

strong background in technology you're looking at about 15 hours the average study time is about 25 hours you should

dedicate around 50% of the time to lecture in labs and 50% of the time to practice exams we recommended to study

around 1 to 2 hours a day for 20 days what does it take to pass the exam watch video lecture and memorize key

information do handson labs and follow along within your own account do paid online practice exams that simulate the

real exam sign up and redeem your free practice exam exam guide content outline the exam has a total of five domains

each domain has its own waiting this determines how many questions in a domain that will show up skills measured

design and Implement processes and communic ation design and Implement a source control strategy design and

Implement build and release pipelines which consists of 50 to 55% of the course develop a security and compliance

plan Implement an instrumentation strategy where do you take the exam you can take the exam at an inperson test

center or online from the convenience of your own home you can use CER aort or Pearson view a proctor is a supervisor

or person who monitors students during an examination the passing GR is about 700

out of 1,000 you need to get around 70% to pass Microsoft uses scaled scoring there are about 50 to 55 questions you

can afford to get roughly 12 to 14 questions wrong there is no penalty for wrong questions form bet of questions

multiple choice multiple answer drag and drop yes and no keep in mind that there's usually one labp with about

eight questions that you do on the Azure portal and the exam is open book but you can only access the Microsoft

documentation is the resource the exam duration is 2 hours you get about 2 minutes per question exam time is 120

Minutes C time is 150 minutes C time refers to the amount of that you should allocate for the exam it includes time

to review instructions Show online Proctor your workspace read and accept NDA complete the exam provide feedback

at the end the certification is valid for one year you can renew the certification for free Within 6 months

or before the expiration date so that's an introduction to the Azure devops engineer expert

[Music] certification hey this is Andrew Brown from exam Pro and we'll be going over a

quick overview of the exam guide you can find the exam guide by searching for study guide for exam a400 on Google so

as we scroll down it will show you the five domains covered and it'll be broken down into more sections I won't be able

to go through all of it so I'll just go through some of the key topics that I think you should focus on for the exam

design and Implement a structure for the flow of work including GitHub Flow Design and Implement integration for

tracking work including GitHub projects Azure boards and repositories you need to know the flow of work such as cycle

times time to recovery and lead time configure release documentation including release notes and API

documentation design and Implement a strategy for managing large files including get large file storage and get

fat recommend package management tools including GitHub packages registry and Azure

artifacts design and Implement quality and release Gates including security and governance select a deployment

automation solution including GitHub actions and Azure pipelines design a deployment strategy

including blue green Canary ring Progressive exposure feature flags and a b

testing Implement feature flag Flag by using azzure App configuration feature manager design and Implement desired

State configuration for environments including Azure automation State configuration Azure resource manager

bicep and Azure autom manage machine configuration Implement and manage GitHub authentication including GitHub

apps G token and personal access tokens Implement and manage Secrets keys and certificates by using Azure key Vault

automate container scanning including scanning container images and configuring an action to run codic L

analysis in a container configure Azure Monitor and log analytics to integrate with devops

tools configure collection of telemetry by using application insights VM insights container insights storage

insights and network insights inspect distributed tracing by using application insights interrogate logs using basic

custom query language queries so that's a quick overview of the exam guide for the a400

[Music] hey this is Andrew Brown from exam Pro and we'll be starting off asking the

most important question first what is devops devops is an approach that brings together software development and it

operations with the goal to enhance the speed and reliability of software delivery it focuses on continuous

Improvement Automation and collaboration between teams that were once siloed aiming to shorten the time from

development to operation the process includes frequent code versions which allows for for incremental improvements

to applications and systems the ultimate goal of devops is to create a culture and environment where building testing

and releasing software can happen rapidly frequently and more reliably so why devops devops eliminates the

inefficiencies miscommunications and delays that arise from the traditional gap between development and operations

teams it creates a collaborative culture that accelerates and improves software delivery some of the key challenges

addressed by devops include this communication and collaboration gaps enhances communication and collaboration

reducing misunderstandings and accelerating the release process conflicting goals aligns the goals of

Dev and Ops teams towards quick reliable and high-quality software delivery manual processes in Bottle X advocates

for automation to decrease manual effort errors and delays and streamline processes automation leads to fewer

errors shorter deployment times and improved software quality so what's the role of a devops engineer a devops

engineer facilitat this collaboration in automation focusing on continuous integration and continuous delivery

establishing pipelines that automate code integration testing and deployment ensuring rapid Reliable Software

releases infrastructure is code managing and provisioning infrastructure through code to increase efficiency and

consistency monitoring and operations implementing Monitoring Solutions to track application and infrastructure

performance ensuring High availability and reliability transition to Cloud infrastructure many organizations are

transitioning to Cloud infrastructure such as a WS Google cloud or Azure to cut costs and improve manageability

offering intuitive tools for network and security settings but necessitating knowledge of platform specific features

some of the tools and technologies that will be used in Dev Ops are Version Control such as get essential for

managing code changes and facilitating team collaboration agile and lean techniques for planning Sprint isolation

and capacity management containerization such as Docker enables scalable deployments with lightweight containers

that are faster and simpler to configure than traditional virtual machines orchestration like kubernetes

efficiently manages containerized applications that scale CI CD tools such as Jenkins and get lab CI automate the

software delivery process from code integration to deployment IAC tools like terraform and anible automate the

provisioning and management of infrastructure monitoring and logging such as Prometheus provides insights

into application performance and operational health and public and hybrid Cloud streamline operations offering

scalable infrastructure with iOS for Seamless app migration and platform as a service to enhance productivity through

sophisticated tools some examples of devops Technologies across the different devops stages mainly related to

Microsoft Azure include for planning we have Azure boards GitHub and alassian jira continuous integration Azure repos

GitHub repos sodar queet selenium owp new get and npm continuous delivery Azure pipelines GI Hub actions bicep

terraform Jenkins Red Hat anible chef and puppet operations Azure monitor Azure Automation and Microsoft powerbi

and for collaboration and feedback there's Azure devops wikis GitHub wikis GitHub discussions Microsoft teams and

slack overall devops revolutionizes it by merging development and operations enhancing delivery speed and fostering a

culture of Rapid continuous innovation [Music] the next topic we'll be covering are the

differences between devops and traditional it in terms of time devops teams spend onethird more time improving

systems to avoid Tech issues than traditional it less time is needed for administrative tasks because devops uses

more automated tools and helpful scripts this save time allows for a 33% increase in enhancing their Tech infrastructure

they also have 15% more time for Learning and training boosting their skills for Speed and data Dev op groups

are typically small and adaptable driven by creativity and speed one of the main goal of devops is agility aiming for

Swift completion of tasks traditional it operations typically have less feedback data focusing only on the immediate task

it operations often have to handle unexpected Downstream issues they didn't see coming cloud devops is more

effective in delivering business applications due to its quick Pace traditional it must strive to keep up

with the rapid changes and demands of the business World regard St ing recuperation and crunch time devops

teams focus on Readiness for failures and have strategies like ongoing testing and realtime alerts these strategies

mean they can address issues quickly and keep systems running smoothly traditional it may need more time to

recover from setbacks because they might not of these proactive measures in place fast recovery and devops has often

helped using automated systems and flexible infrastructure setups for software distribution devops teams take

roughly 37 minutes to deploy software traditional it operations typically need about 85 minutes for the same task this

indicates devops teams can release software more than twice as quickly as traditional it

teams next we'll quickly go over a few key aspects that devops has an advantage over traditional it product reliability

reduce likelihood of failure adaptability enhance flexibility and support Market responsiveness decrease

time to Market team productivity greater efficiency in teams Vision clarity more defined product Vision within teams so

that's an overview of devops versus traditional it the next topic will be covering is

agile and Agile development agile is a philosophy and software development that emphasizes incremental progress

collaboration and flexibility it revolves around the idea of breaking down large projects into smaller

manageable sections called iterations or Sprints teams work in these short bursts to produce tangible results regularly

allowing for frequent reassessment and adjustment this approach enables a quick response to change and promotes

continuous Improvement both in the product and the process used to create it the term agile methodology refers to

the specific Frameworks and practices that embody the agile philosophy such as scrum and campin these methodologies

provide the structure and tools for teams to execute agile principles effectively they include techniques for

planning and tracking progress such as standup meetings Sprints and visual boards all designed to enhance team

coordination and project transparency Agile development encompasses various methods that follow

the agile Manifesto core ideas it's about teams working together managing themselves and using practices that best

suit their Project's needs to gradually improve their software in Agile development teams aim to produce fully

working and highquality parts of the software at the end of every Sprint this means they must write code test it and

make sure everything is of good quality within each Sprint short time frame the key success factors for Agile

development teams include diligent backlog refinement integrating early and often and minimizing technical debt

diligent backlog refinement this means organizing the list of upcoming work prioritizing the most important tasks

and clarifying them product owners are key in preparing for future Sprints by providing clear goals integrating early

and often by using continuous integration continuous delivery teams automate their workflows which speeds up

coding testing and deployment this helps catch and fix problems early minimizing Tech technical debt just like unwanted

financial debt technical debt happens when taking shortcuts which may later require code fixes it's important to

find a good mix of adding new features and fixing these issues needing careful planning and discipline so that's an

overview of agile and Agile [Music] development hey this is Andrew Brown

from exam Pro and in this section we'll be going over two popular agile Frameworks or methodologies called scrum

and camben scrum is an agile framework designed for managing complex projects by breaking them down into small

manageable tasks completed in short phases called Sprints the key roles in scrum include a product owner guides

what and why the team builds prioritizes the work backlog a scrum Master facilitates scrum processes supports

team Improvement and removes obstacles and a development team Engineers the product ensuring its quality in scrum a

team self- manages its Sprint tasks with daily standup meetings to ensure progress and address impediments they

track work using a task board and a Sprint burndown chart and at the Sprint's end they showcase their

increment in a review and identify improvements in a retrospective scrum short repeatable Cycles facilitate

continuous learning and adaptation making it a practical framework for teams adopting agile

principles on the other hand campin is an agile methodology focused on visualizing work limiting work in

progress and maximizing efficiency Cam and boards are used to display work at various stages of the process using

cards to represents tasks and their stages highlighting work in progress and facilitating team flexibility cumulative

flow diagrams visually track a Project's workflow over time showing task distribution across stages the

horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis represents task volume with each color marking at different

work stage cfds highlight Trends progress and bottlenecks parallel colored areas indicate balanced workflow

bulges suggest bottleneck needing attention for smooth project continuation let's go over a quick

comparison between scrum and cambon while broadly fitting Under the Umbrella of Agile development scrum and cin are

quite different scrum focuses on fixed length Sprints while cin is a continuous flow model scrum has defined roles while

cambon doesn't Define any team roles scrum uses velocity as a key metric while cin uses cycle time teams often

blend scrum and cambon features to optimize their workflow they continuously refine their approach to

find the best fit focusing on Simplicity and regular value delivery to us [Music]

the next topic we'll be covering are some of the key flow metrics you'll need to know for devops processes and for the

exam starting with velocity velocity and Azure devops is a metric that tracks the amount of work a team completes during a

Sprint helping teams estimate how much work they can handle in future Sprints it's represented in a chart that

visualizes work items completed over several Sprints offering insights into the team's work patterns efficiency and

consistency by analyzing velocity teams can adjust their planning for better predictability and productivity

consistent velocity metrics can help at identifying the impact of process changes and guiding strategic decisions

to enhance overall team performance next we have Sprint burndown chart the Sprint burndown is a graph

that plots the daily total of remaining work typically shown in hours the burndown chart provides a visual way of

showing whether the team is on track to complete all the work by the end of the Sprint it also helps in identifying any

bottlenecks or issues in the workflow that may need attention before the Sprints end moving on to lead time and

cycle time the lead time and cycle time widgets indicate how long it takes for work to flow through your development

pipeline lead time measures the total time elapse from the creation of work items to their completion cycle time

measures the time it takes for your team to complete work items once they begin actively working on them the following

diagram illustrates how lead time differs from cycle time lead time is calculated from work item creation to

entering a completed State cycle time is calculated from first entering an in progress or result State category to

entering a completed State category these measures help teams plan spot variations in efficiency and identify

potential process issues the lower the lead in cycle times the faster the throughput your team has so these are

some of the key flow metrics you'll need to know for the [Music]

exam hey this is Andrew Brown from exam Pro and in this section we'll be covering Azure board boards Azure boards

is a web-based service designed for planning tracking And discussing work throughout the development process

supporting agile methodologies for a customizable and efficient workflow key hubs and Azure boards Azure boards

include several key hubs each serving distinct project management needs work items Hub manage work items based on

specific criteria boards Hub visualize workflow using cards ideal for cambon the backlogs Hub plan and organize work

items including backlogs for project and portfol folio management Sprints Hub handle Sprint specific work items

incorporating scrum practices queries Hub generate custom work item lists and perform bulk updates delivery plans Hub

track cross team deliverables and dependencies in a calendar view analytics views Hub create powerbi

reports for detailed project analysis hey benefits of azure boards include scalable Simplicity easy to

start with predefined work item types scalable for growing teams visual tools VIs ual I progress with Canin boards

scrum boards and delivery plans customization configure boards task boards and plans including custom Fields

built-in communication capture real-time communication and decisions within work item forms cloud storage support for

Rich Text inline images attachments and comprehensive change history efficient search and notifications tools for quick

work item searching and customizable alerts dashboards and analytics access to dashboards and analytics service for

for reporting integration and support GitHub and office integration connects with GitHub repositories and supports

import export with Microsoft Office autonomous team support tailor to Independent teams integrates with

Microsoft teams in slack and offers a variety of marketplace extensions so that's an overview of azure

boards the next topic we'll cover is traceability traceability allows tracking connections and dependencies

among different parts of a software system it helps teams grasp the effects of changes handle risks and comply with

regulations defining and managing requirements a key part of traceability is documenting and overseeing

requirements effectively Azure devop says tools like Azure boards for handling requirements and tracking their

progress linking requirements to related items like tasks or bugs this tracking clarifies each requirements progress and

its influence on the project Version Control and change management for Trace ility a solid Version Control System to

monitor modifications to code in files is essential Azure Dev opsis get repositories let developers manage their

work efficiently by using branches for features or releases you can track changes and understand their role in the

Project's bigger picture building and release management traceability must include build and

release processes Azure pipelines facilitates building testing and deploying apps linking build artifacts

and code changes to specific tasks showing what changes made it into each build

test management and quality assurance for software quality traceability is crucial tools like Azure test plan

support detailed test management linking test cases to requirements or user stor shows how well the testing process

covers the initial needs ensuring thorough validation auditing in compliance traceability also supports

meeting standards and regulations Azure Dev ops's auditing features track and log changes providing details on who

changed what and when supporting accountability and Regulatory Compliance overall by setting up a clear

traceability system organizations can make sure that any changes during the software development process are

properly tracked recorded and [Music] checked hey this is Andrew Brown from

exampro and in this section we'll be going through how to get started with Azure devops and some of the basics of

azure boards so the first thing you want to do is search for Azure devops on Google then you want to click on the

link that leads you to the Azure devops page which is used the first link on this page you want to click on the TR

for free button I'm assuming everyone already has a Microsoft account or Microsoft Azure account already set up

otherwise you wouldn't be taking the a Z400 level expert certification if not you should create one before clicking

here so we'll enter in our email and click on sign in enter in our

password and enter in the authentication code if you have one now you'll want to sign up and

create your own Azure devops organization I'll be hosting the projects in

Canada I'll name the organization something like exam Pro one you can name this whatever you

like also enter in the Capt is requested then press continue the first thing they want you

to do is to create a project so we'll name this something like exam Pro test of course you can name this whatever you

want such as your name or or project and so on so now we're on the main page of the

exam Pro test project on Azure devops so here you can see the overview so we'll quickly go through

some of the blades starting off with Azure boards then we have

repos after that there's pipelines next is test plans and then there's

artifacts we'll be going through most of these in the course so that's how to get started with

Azure [Music] devops hey this is Andrew Brown from

exam Pro and in this section we'll be covering how to create or add new users in your Azure devops

organization the first thing you want to do is to go to organization settings after that you want to click on policies

under the security category under the user policies you want to toggle and turn on external

guest policies this will allow you to invite users from outside the organization to access and collaborate

on your Azure devops projects and resources after that you want to click on users under the general category on

the right side you want to click on ADD users here is where you can add new users or service principles so for

example We'll add Cindy at exam Pro . Co we'll keep the access level to basic we'll want to add the user to the exam

Pro test project we created earlier we can also set a role for the user such as project readers project

contributors or project administrators but we'll leave it at project contributor for now then click on ADD

after a short wait the user should be added to the organization the user is sent an invitation to join to org and

they'll have to accept to join We'll add another user this time it'll be Peter exampro

doco we can keep the access level at basic add the user to the exam Pro test project and this time we'll assign the

user the project administrator's role then click on add another thing you can do is add

members to a specific project so from the projects tab you can click on the project exam Pro

test click on teams click into exam Pro test after that click on the ad button

and we'll search for Peter exampro doco click on the user and then click on the save button

below and there we go the user is now added to the exam Pro test project team so that's a general overview on how you

add users to your organization in a specific project the next thing we'll be covering

is how to create work items so so first you'll need to be at the boards Tab and then you'll need to click on work items

on the top right here we'll click on new work item we have three options here there's epic issue and task epic is

simply a large body of work that can be broken down into smaller more manageable pieces of work this is also known as

user stories so we'll click on Epic as an example now we'll have to fill out some fields to define the work item so

starting with the title we'll call it something like test new login feature right below it we can assign people to

the item this can be one or many but we'll select only one for this example so let's choose Andrew Brown for the

state we'll leave it at to-do for the area it's already set at exam Pro test the iteration is set to exam Pro test

Sprint one we would want to give the work item a description to help understand what

it's about for this example we can write something simple like conduct a series of tests on the new login features

for the priority we can adjust the importance of the work item one being highest priority and four is the lowest

we'll keep it at two so it's about medium priority we can set a start date so we

can just use the current date as of this recording for the tags they already have some suggestions for us so we'll use

testing login feature and security which matches the item we don't really need to set the

link for this example so we'll click on the top right and hit save after that we can head back to the work

items page and we should see the work item we just created with all the information we provided for it such as

the title user assignment state area path and so on another thing we can do is click on

boards this is an easier way to visually view the items so we have three columns that work items can be placed in to do

doing and done which are all pretty self-explanatory on the top right here we can filter to epics or

issues and and we can drag and drop the work item from to-do to doing and eventually we can place it and done when

the item is complete so that's a general overview of how to create a work item in Azure

[Music] boards hey this is Andrew Brown from exam Pro and in this section we'll

quickly go over how to create a Sprint first on this page we have three work item examples that were created

beforehand and we'll want to click on the Sprint tab on the board section here we don't have any Sprints created yet so

we'll need to create a new Sprint by clicking on the top right we'll need to give the Sprint a name so let's just

call it Sprint one and we'll need to identify a start and end date for the Sprint so we'll start it on Monday April

15th 2024 and end the Sprint on Monday April 22nd 2024 so that's one week length then click on

create next we can click on the schedule work button from your product backlog or create new work

items on the right we have our Sprint one and we can drag and drop the work items to include them in a Sprint so

let's drag some of the work items created earlier into Sprint one we can also create new Sprints by

clicking on the new Sprint button below Sprint one so for this Sprint we can call this Sprint two and for the date

range we can set the start for Monday April 29th 2024 and end the Sprint on Monday May

6th 2024 then click on create we can do a quick refresh so

Sprint two appears let's add one of the work items to Sprint

two so if you click into Sprint one you can see that we added two of the work items on the backlog from

earlier if you want to delete a Sprint you can go to Project settings on the bottom

left under the board section click on Project configuration and as an example we'll delete Sprint 2 so we'll click on

the three dots next to Sprint two and keeping it at exam Pro test is fine then we'll click on

delete so after that we can go back to the backlogs or Sprints and we can simply add the other

work item into Sprint one when we go to Sprint there are additional tabs such as taskboard

backlog capacity and analytics we'll quickly go to capacity we can assign days off activity and capacity per day

we'll just assign an activity for both of the users such as deployment and design and for the analytics tab there's

the burndown trend that shows a visual graph of data such as the amount of work that has been completed in a project

versus the total amount of work that was planned so that's pretty much a quick overview of how to create a Sprint and a

few of its features [Music] the next thing we'll be covering is how

to connect Azure boards to GitHub first you want to click on the project you're working on then on the bottom you want

to click on Project settings and under the board section click on GitHub connections after that under the connect

GitHub with Azure boards click on connect your GitHub account next thing you'll need to do is to log into your

GitHub account so sign into account using your username or email address or password and click on side on

after confirming the information click on authorize Azure boards now you'll need to select a

GitHub repository that you may want to use with your Azure boards click save after choosing

that then after confirming all of this information click on approve install and authorize you can choose to add more

repositories or remove them you can remove connections as well you can also add new GitHub connections as well so

that's a really quick and simple walkthrough of connecting Azure boards to

[Music] GitHub hey this is Andrew Brown from exam Pro and in this section we'll be

going through an overview of custom Azure boards dashboards centralize with custom dashboards custom dashboards and

Azure boards are crucial for presenting a comprehensive overview of your project status and key metrics by tailoring

these dashboards to highlight crucial data your team can streamline workflows and improve decision- making customize

with widgets widgets are the heart of azure boards dashboards presenting diverse data from progress charts to

work item queries select and tailor widgets that best display the team's critical information ensuring essential

insights are readily accessible monitor backlogs with query widgets incorporate query widgets to filter and display work

items based on defined criteria like outstanding tasks per team member this enables efficient task management and

helps in setting clear priorities track progress with burndown charts use burndown chart widgets to graphically

track project progress helping to identify any delays regular review of these charts keeps the team's progress

aligned with project goals visualize performance with charts enrich your dashboard with charts that convey

performance metrics such as bug Trends or team velocity providing a clear picture of the team's Dynamics and

highlighting areas for improvement enhanced team engagement share dashboards with your team and

stakeholders to offer a live view of the project status fost a culture of transparency and Collective

accountability the image on the left shows an example of a dashboard customized to the way of the devops team

or stakeholders this shows information such as the velocity Sprint burnd down backlogs completed and active work items

and so on so that's an overview of custom Azure boards dashboards the next topic we'll be

covering is Wiki for documentation Wiki offers a collaborative space for team members to compile and share crucial

details about a devops project here's a simple guide to leveraging wikis for Effective project documentation start

with an overview page Begin by setting up an overview page this should introduce the project its goals and the

team working on it mention the Technologies tools and methods your project employs keeping it broad but

informative detail project requirements dedicate pages to outline the Project's requirements break down what the project

needs to do and how it should perform using clear and achievable language add user stories what needs to be true for

the project to be considered complete and any other elements that rely on each other architecture and design

documentation use the wiki to detail the project structure and design make a separate page for each part whether it's

a component a larger section or a service to help visualize how these parts interact include diagrams like uml

or system architecture sketches encourage team input get your team involved in the documentation process

allowing everyone to edit and update Wiki pages not only promotes teamwork but also helps keep the information

current make sure to use the wiki version tracking to monitor changes and roll back if

needed so let's take a quick look at where this is in Azure devops so at the overview section we'll need to click on

Wiki and we already created an example Wiki with proper documentation so this is what it'll pretty much look like

using markdown we can click on the edit button on the top right this will allow you to edit the wiki to your

fitting you can also create more than one Wiki if you want so we can name it like example Wiki

2 so that's an overview and guide to using Wiki for documentation the next thing will'll be

covering our process diagrams for documentation process diagrams are visual guides that show the steps in a

process making it easier to see how everything connects especially in devops projects here's a simplified guide on

using them effectively pinpoint essential processes first identify the main processes in your devops project

such as managing source code integrating changes continuously testing automatically deploying and monitoring

break down these processes into smaller parts make flowcharts or bpmn diagrams which stands for business process model

and notation use software like Microsoft Visio draw. or Lucid chart to create diagrams that map out the process these

diagrams should clearly show where the process starts and ends include decision-making points and outline the

steps in order these visual tools are effective for mapping out the workflow making complex processes easier to

understand and follow on the right we have a process diagram or flowchart that outlines the customer support procedure

it begins with a ticket submission followed by case assignment if during business hours the support team responds

otherwise and on call technician is alerted at assign tickets prompt reminders while assigned ones are

prioritized for review and resolution by the support team the process Cycles until issues are resolved culminating in

ticket closure and a follow-up email detail what goes in and comes out for every step in your process note down

what you need to start which are the inputs and what you expect to get out of it which are the outputs this might be

Code test results deployment packages or anything else relevant it's important to show how each step is linked to the next

clarify who does what make sure your diagrams indicate who is responsible for each step this removes confusion and

makes sure everyone knows their responsibilities so that's a quick overview of process diagrams for

documentation the next topic we'll be covering is configuring release documentation release documentation is a

Cornerstone for the successful deployment of software releases within Azure Dev Ops focusing on the non-code

aspects that Define the scope quality and functionality of the release here are the key elements of release

documentation release notes these should highlight what's new what is issues have been resolved and any enhancements made

as well as outline any modifications to settings and their effects on existing features installation guides provide

clear detailed instructions for the setup process including a list of required software and system

prerequisites and post installation actions configuration changes document updates to configuration settings

clarifying any default settings and essential changes change log keep an accurate record of commits or work items

in the release using a consistent tracking method roll back plan and have a clear predefined plan for reverting to

an earlier software version if necessary creating release documentation in Azure Dev Ops Azure repos store your

marked out or text files alongside your code Version Control your documentation for consistency and traceability Azure

pipelines automate the generation of change logs and other documentation during the build and release processes

artifacts attach generated documentation to specific builds or releases as downloadable artifacts Wiki utilize the

built-in Wiki to share detailed guides and notes with the team and stakeholders on the right we have an example of a

release notes entry in Azure devops which displays all of the key Elements shown earlier this includes the new

features enhancements configuration changes node issues and roll back plan so that's an overview of configuring

release [Music] documentation next while covering API

documentation properly configured API document m mentation is essential for developers and stakeholders in

understanding and interacting with software interfaces this guide highlights the key steps and best

practices for creating and managing API documentation in Microsoft devop Solutions steps to generate API

documentation generate documentation utilize Visual Studio to generate API documentation access this feature via

the bill menu use tools like Swagger Azure API management or open API for automatic documentation generation from

your codebase documenting endpoints clearly Define and describe each API endpoint detailing the purpose and

functionality include information on request and response formats as well as any authentication requirements

selecting formats and styles decide on your output format and style ensuring it's readable and accessible for your

target audience integration and automation integrate documentation generation into your continuous

integration and deployment pipelines within Azure Dev Ops on the right we have an example of an API

documentation this API documentation details two endpoints for version 1 two 3 of a service the first endpoint is

post API login which authenticates users and returns a token upon successful login it requires a username and

password in the request body the second in point is get API users which retrieves a list of users both in points

provide example responses indicating successful operations with a 200 okay status best practices for API

documentation consistency use a consistent format for all API and points to make the

documentation easy to follow Clarity ensure that descriptions are clear and concise avoiding ambiguity Version

Control manage your API documentation within Azure repos for versioning and historical tracking regular updates keep

the documentation current with every release deprecating outdated information prly feack mechanisms include a process

for developers and users to provide feedback on the documentation for continuous Improvement

by focusing on these elements your API documentation will be an invaluable resource for your team and stakeholders

supporting the effective use and integration of your software's API so that's an overview of API

documentation with the rise of devops and get stronghold inversion control the manual slog of updating docs is given

way to automation now developers can create Dynamic documentation straight from their G history here's a guide on

how how to automate documentation using Azure Dev op Solutions and its Azure pipelines feature three requisites a git

repository hosted on platforms like GitHub or Azure repos an Azure devops account connected to this repository

automating documentation with Azure pipelines step one set up your pipeline in Azure Dev Ops select pipelines from

the project menu and click new pipeline take your code repositories platform in the repository itself choose the main

branch as the source for your Docs tailor your pipeline settings pick the right agent and decide when this

pipeline should run add tasks for building the code and another for generating

docs step two build the code and insert a build task into your pipeline to compile your code this can be net core

node.js Python and many more fine-tune this task to match your project this might mean different commands or scripts

depending on what you're building confirm a successful build before moving on step three generate the documentation

post build selected tool like docx tailored for net projects to parse your G history into documentation add a new

task in your pipeline for docx set this up with the correct paths and configurations and Let It Craft your

docs step four publish your work once your documentation is ready pick a spot to publish it this could be Azure blob

storage an FTP server or Azure pipeline's own artifact storage add a publishing task to the pipeline and

configure it with the necessary details deploy this task and see your document ation go live step five make it

automatic to really put your feet up configure triggers and Azure pipelines to run your documentation job on

autopilot you can set these to activate on new commits merges or even on a schedule once set your documentation

updates as your code does no extra input needed so this is a simplified overview for automating get history documentation

with Azure Dev [Music] Ops hey this is Andrew Brown from exam

Pro and in this section we'll be going over what are web hooks web hooks are userdefined HTTP callbacks triggered by

specific events like code pushes or comments on a blog when an event occurs The Source site makes an HTTP request to

a configured URL this allows for automated actions such as data transfer notifications or initiating other

workflows how web books work event occurs a specific event triggers the webook this event could be an update a

deletion or some activity like a user action or system event http request the source site makes an HTTP request to the

web books URL this request can be a post which is the most common get or any other HTTP method depending on what was

configured action taken the server that receives the webbook does something with the information like updating a database

notifying users or initiating other workflows some of the common uses of web hooks include automating workflows web

hooks can automatically update a testing server deploy applications or update a backup notifications they can notify

other systems or services in real time when events happen for example if someone posts a comment on a Blog a

webook could automatically tweet the comment or send an email Integrations many services offer web hooks to

integrate with other services without requiring a custom interface for example PayPal uses web hooks to notify your

accounting software when you receive a payment advantages of web hooks efficiency web books offer a more

efficient method for receiving data than continually pulling a service for updates they push data as a becomes

available minimizing latency and reducing the amount of bandwidth used realtime processing web hooks can

facilitate real-time data processing by triggering a reaction immediately after the event occurs so that's a quick

overview of web [Music] hooks as we mentioned briefly earlier

webs and Azure devops trigger HTTP notifications to a URL for events like code updates or build completions

facilitating integration with other systems so let's go over some of the steps to configure notifications with

web hooks select the event navigate to the project settings and then to the notifications tab as shown in the image

on the right identify the event you want to track for instance if you're interested in when a bill completes you

would select that event new subscription click on new subscription to create a new webook select the specific event you

want such as build completes configure action define the action that should happen when the event occurs this

typically involves sending a notific to an external service customize your webook you can

customize what information you send along with the webook Azure devops allows you to send specific data related

to the event authentication if needed if your inpoint requires authentication you will need to configure the appropriate

headers or payload with authentication tokens or Keys test the subscription once configured it's crucial to test the

webook to ensure it works as expected Azure devops typically allows you to test it through the interface Monitor

and adjust after after setting up monitor the notifications and ensure they're firing correctly you might need

to troubleshoot or adjust settings if you're not receiving the notifications as expected so that's a quick and

general overview of how to configure notifications with web [Music]

hooks hey this is Andrew Brown and we are taking a look at Version Control Systems which are designed to track

changes or revisions to code and there's been a lot of software over the years that helped us do that we had CVS abers

mercal and get so back uh in 1990s when we got CVS though even though we had it I don't

think a lot of companies were using it it took some time to adopt if you ever heard of like Doom or Wolfenstein you'd

be uh interested to learn they didn't use Version Control Systems and what they would do is they would literally

copy files onto floppies and hope that they don't lose their files but of course a Version Control Systems makes

it really easy to not worry about losing floppies or CDs or drives because they keep track of all the history then came

sub version in 2000 but the real game Cher was in 2005 when we were introduced to a new type of version control system

and we had Mercurial and get um but the key difference between the old ones and the new ones was the old ones were

centralized and the new ones were decentralized and these decentralized ones became very popular for very

specific reasons they had full local history and complete control of the repo locally they were straightforward and

efficient for branching and merging which was a really big deal uh better performance improve fall tolerance

flexible workflows work fully offline um and out of the two git was the one that won and there are reasons for that we'll

talk about that when we look at version control services um but uh yeah git is the one that everybody is using today