App Developers Now Have Access to Free Stakeholder License for Microsoft Visual Studio Online

A few weeks ago Microsoft mentioned a providing a new “stakeholder license” for Visual Studio Online. Now the license option is available and any number of users in an account can be assigned a stakeholder license at no charge.

The new license allows developers to invite business stakeholders (non-core project sponsors and end users) to access their team project space and use specific Visual Studio Online features to track and participate in the overall development of the project.

Stakeholders have access to the project home page and most of the “work” related functionality. This includes the ability to view the backlog, add and edit items, run work item queries and more.

With a Visual Studio Online Stakeholder license, anyone on a team can check project status and provide feedback. Stakeholders can track project priorities and provide direction, feature ideas, and business alignment to a team.

- View, add, and modify items on the backlog

- View team home pages and portfolio backlogs

- View, create, and modify work items such as stories, features, and bugs

- View, create, and save queries

- Sign up and receive alerts when changes are made to work items.

To access the following requires a basic or advanced license:

- Change the priority of backlogs 

- Create new tags to group work items

- Create shared queries, view charts, and modify the home page

- Access the full set of features of the Code, Build, and Test hubs

- Participate in team rooms, which capture interactive, detailed conversations about the project

- Access administrative pages that support managing membership, permissions, area and iteration paths and licensing.

Visual Studio Online connects to Visual Studio, Eclipse, Xcode, and other Git clients to support development for a wide variety of platforms and languages.In the last 6 months, Microsoft has added new capabilities including Java build support, rich integration with 3rd party services via REST APIs and service hooks, Active Directory support for enterprise users and project welcome pages.

Visual Studio Online includes developer services across the full range of the application lifecycle including:

- Unlimited cloud-hosted, private source code repositories using Git or TFVC

- Agile project management with sprint backlogs, Kanban boards, and work item tracking

- Cloud-hosted build, either on-demand or as part of an automated continuous integration strategy

- Application Insights (in preview) for understanding an application’s operation, usage, and performance across both clients and servers.