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Azure DevOps (Server) - Exempt from policy enforcement

Last week a colleague asked me to explain the concept of Pull Requests using our Azure DevOps Server instance. I followed the steps as described here to active a branch policy on their master branch. Then I did a local change, committed it and tried to push it to the master branch, but instead of getting an error stating that I couldn’t push to this branch, it succeeded! I tried it a few times and every time I was able to push no matter what policies I activated.

Was it a bug? Or did I do something wrong? Turned out it was neither.

Let’s find out what happened:

  • Go to the Code –> Branches section inside Azure DevOps(TFS).

  • Click on the 3 dots … and choose Branch Security.

  • On the Security screen, I clicked on my user account and had a look at the permissions on the right.

  • I had the Exempt from policy enforcement permission enabled. This overrules are policies and explained why I was able to push my changes.

Some extra notes from the documentation:

There are several permissions that allow users to bypass branch policy. In TFS 2015 through TFS 2018 Update 2, the Exempt from policy enforcement permission allows users with this permission to perform the following actions:

  • When completing a pull request, opt-in to override policies and complete a pull request even if the current set of branch policies is not satisfied.
  • Push directly to a branch even if that branch has branch policies set. Note that when a user with this permission makes a push that would override branch policy, the push automatically bypasses branch policy with no opt-in step or warning.

In Azure DevOps Services, the Exempt from policy enforcement permission is removed and its functionality divided into the following two new permissions:

  • Bypass policies when completing pull requests
  • Bypass policies when pushing

Users that previously had Exempt from policy enforcement enabled now have the two new permissions enabled instead.

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