In Azure DevOps, managing external service connections for pipelines and deployments can become complex, especially when you have multiple projects. Sharing service connections across projects in Azure DevOps not only streamlines pipeline configuration but also enforces consistent security policies.
In this post, I’ll show you how to share service connections across multiple projects. But let me first explain what service connections actually are.
What is a service connection in Azure DevOps?
Azure DevOps uses service connections to allow pipelines to communicate with external services like Azure, AWS, Docker registries, GitHub, and more. These connections store credentials, allowing seamless integration with external systems without hardcoding secrets in your pipelines.
You can configure service connections at the project level by going to Project Settings > Service connections.
If you click on New Service Connection, you get a list a possible connection types:
How to share service connections?
By default the service connection you’ve created is only accessible in pipelines for your current project. But often multiple team working on different projects are accessing the same resources(e.g. a SonarQube/SonarCloud instance).
If every project manages its own service connections individually, it can lead to:
- Duplication of Effort: Teams configure the same connection multiple times.
- Inconsistent Security Policies: Different projects might set varying permission levels for the same resource.
- Management Overhead: Updating credentials or access policies in each project manually.
By sharing service connections across multiple projects, you centralize control, reduce duplication, and ensure consistency across teams.
So let me show you how to do this:
- Go to the Project Settings of the project where the service connection is set up.
- Select Service connections and click on the service connection you wish to share.
- In the service connection’s details, click Security.
- Scroll down to the Project Permissions section.
- In the Project Permissions section, add the other projects that need access to the connection.
- That's it!
Once shared, users in other projects can use the service connection in their pipelines.