Modernized Navigation For Visual Studio Team Services

Recently, VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services) has announced new navigation-related updates for a  modernized and flexible UI.

The new design was inspired by the Fluent design language. You can see the design improvements in the navigation. The goals of the new design language are to be clear, UI-friendly, and faster.

To activate the new navigation in your VSTS account, please select your picture from the top-right and from the menu, select Preview features.

Set New Navigation as shown in the below screen.

 

You can see the entire new navigation for VSTS for selected Project, as shown in the below screen. 

Dashboard Homepage

Once you are logged in and navigate to the Project Dashboard, there is a quick access to projects and recent projects to navigate quickly in the Project account. You can quickly search all of your projects and create a new project from this screen.

 

Project Navigation

Project Navigation has moved to the left side pane from the top navigation so that there is a better separation between the project and global spaces.

To enhance the way of finding, they have included Service icon with shading highlights alongside the "New Section" icon.

• Create Project - You can create a project quickly from here.
• Breadcrumbs - This shows the hierarchy of the page by displaying the account, project, service, and hub.
• Search - You can search across work items, code or Wiki articles.
• My Work - You can quickly view your work items and favorites.
• Marketplace - Link to the marketplace to discover the extension. 
• User Profile - View My Profile, Settings, and Help section.

There is a new global header on top of every page, having quick access links that will make user navigation very easy.

  

The left navigation with collapsed feature is great since now, we have more space to work. This is mainly used while doing planning and task updates using a Kanban board.

 

Here, they have addressed one challenge,  that is pinpointing where specifically you are within VSTS. 

We also have summary, dashboards, and Wiki under Overview so that we have a clear alignment of shared functionality along with ensuring that these features remain discoverable if an individual service is disabled.

Create New

A very cool new feature is the 'Create New' button next to the project name . This helps to create something from anywhere in the project.

 

My work: From the My work items Tab, users can easily manage work items, pull requests, and access  favorite items as shown in the below screen. 

 

My Work tab is available at the upper right of every page, it provides quick access to the items you care about, no matter where you are in VSTS.

 

Settings

The navigation was confusing previously, so to solve that VSTS has introduced a different navigation within settings and grouped them by their associated service. You can turn individual services on and off in each project as well.

Reference: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/06/19/new-navigation/

Thank you for reading this, I hope you will find this helpful.