| title | Navigate in Visual Studio Team Explorer |
|---|---|
| titleSuffix | Azure DevOps |
| description | Work with Team Explorer in Visual Studio. Build and manage pipelines from the Web Portal and Task Board, maintain project files in Git or TFVC, and download Azure DevOps clients. |
| keywords | Download Azure DevOps clients |
| ms.subservice | azure-devops-new-user |
| ms.assetid | fd7a5cf7-7916-4fa0-b5e6-5a83cf377a02 |
| ms.author | chcomley |
| author | chcomley |
| ms.topic | concept-article |
| monikerRange | =azure-devops-2022 |
| ms.date | 05/01/2025 |
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You use Team Explorer to coordinate your code efforts with other team members to develop a software project. Team Explorer is a plug-in that installs with Visual Studio. You can manage any work assigned to you, your team, or your projects. Developers can effectively collaborate with Team Explorer connected to projects hosted on Azure DevOps Services or an on-premises Azure DevOps Server.
Prepare one of the following configurations to start working with Team Explorer:
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Connect to a project in Azure DevOps without running Visual Studio by installing the free Visual Studio Community.
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Install the latest version of Visual Studio clients from the Visual Studio downloads page.
As needed, explore the following options for connecting to Azure DevOps Services:
For more information about compatibility across client and server versions, see Requirements and compatibility.
To work with projects in Team Explorer, you need the following access permissions:
[!INCLUDE prerequisites-project-member-only]
Team Explorer connects Visual Studio to projects in Azure DevOps. You can manage source code, work items, and builds. The operations available to you depend on the source control option you select to manage your source code when you create the project. The options are Git or Team Foundation version control (TFVC).
Tip
If you open Visual Studio and don't see the Team Explorer pane, select View > Team Explorer.
From the Team Explorer Connect page, you can select the projects you want to connect to and quickly switch connection to a different project or repository. For details, see Connect to a project.
::: moniker range="azure-devops-2022"
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2022-te/manage-connections.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot of the Team Explorer pane in Visual Studio 2022 showing the Manage Connections option highlighted.":::
::: moniker-end
The Git and TFVC repos support different pages and functions. For a comparison of the two version control systems, see Choosing the right version control for your project.
Team Explorer provides the Web Portal and Task Board features to support team member collaboration for your projects. These features are available under the Project group in Team Explorer.
::: moniker range="azure-devops-2022"
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2022-te/web-portal-task-board.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot of Team Explorer Home page for Visual Studio 2022 showing Web Portal and Task Board features highlighted.":::
::: moniker-end
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Web Portal: Project users can connect to the Azure DevOps web portal by using a supported web browser. For more information, see Navigate the Azure DevOps web portal.
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Task Board: Project members can manage work items and tasks by using the project Taskboard. The board is hosted on Azure DevOps Services or an on-premises Azure DevOps Server. For more information, see Update and monitor your Taskboard.
Project users can access specific content in the Work Items and Builds sections. These features are available under the Project group in Team Explorer.
::: moniker range="azure-devops-2022"
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2022-te/work-items-builds.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot of Team Explorer Home page for Visual Studio 2022 showing the Work Items and Builds features highlighted.":::
::: moniker-end
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Builds: Project members can work with builds for your project based on their access-level permissions. For more information, see the following resources:
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Work Items: Project members can track features, requirements, known issues or bugs, and more by using work items. In Visual Studio 2019 and later, you can switch between the Default and Legacy views of the Team Explorer Work Items page. The default view aligns with the web portal Boards > Work Items page. The legacy view retains the familiar layout from earlier versions of Visual Studio. For more information, see the following resources:
::: moniker range="azure-devops-2022"
For Visual Studio 2019 and later (Default), see the following resources:
::: moniker-end ::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
For all Visual Studio versions (Legacy), the following resources are available:
- Add and manage work items
- Define a work item query
- Manage and organize queries
- Set query permissions
- Open queries in Microsoft Excel
- Send email with a work item or print
- Create reports from a query in Excel
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range="azure-devops-2022"
In Visual Studio 2022, the Git features are located on separate panes from Team Explorer. You can open the Git Changes and Git Repository panes from Team Explorer:
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2022-te/git-changes-no-open-repository.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot of Visual Studio 2022 showing the Team explorer pane, the Git Changes pane, and the Git Repository pane." lightbox="media/vs-2022-te/git-changes-no-open-repository.png":::
You can also open the panes from the View menu or by using the keyboard shortcuts: Git Changes (Ctrl+O, Ctrl+G) and Git Repository (Ctrl+O, Ctrl+R).
::: moniker-end
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Visual Studio supports the following Git actions for use with Team Explorer:
- Git Changes: Save work with commits
- Git Branches: Create work in branches
- Pull Requests: Review code with pull requests
- Sync: Update code with fetch and pull
- Tags: Work with Git tags
To learn more about working with Git for version control, see the following articles:
If you prefer to use TFVC for centralized control of your project, you can access the TFVC features on the Team Explorer Home pane:
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2019-te/team-foundation-version-control.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot of Team Explorer Home page for Visual Studio 2019 showing the Team Foundation Version Control features highlighted.":::
Visual Studio supports the following features when you connect to a TFVC repository:
- My Work: Configure your workspace, Suspend, or resume work, Conduct a code review
- Pending Changes: Manage pending changes, Find shelvesets, Resolve conflicts
- Source Control Explorer: Add/View files and folders, Add check-in policies,
To learn more about working with TFVC for version control, see the following articles:
You can configure administrative features for a project or project collection by selecting Settings on the Team Explorer Home pane:
::: moniker range="azure-devops-2022"
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2022-te/settings.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Team Explorer Home page for Visual Studio 2022 showing the Settings option highlighted.":::
::: moniker-end
The following sections provide links to resources for configuring settings for your project or project collection.
Note
Not all settings are available from the Team Explorer plug-in for Eclipse.
For more information, see About team, project, and organizational-level settings.
For more information about managing settings for your project, see the following articles:
- Security, Group membership
- Security, Source Control (TFVC)
- Work Item areas
- Work Item iterations
- Portal settings
- Project alerts
For information about managing settings for a collection of projects, see the following articles:
If you use Git source control for your project, the following settings are available:
Sometimes you need to refresh Team Explorer to ensure that the visible data for the current project is up-to-date across all clients and Azure DevOps.
If data doesn't appear as expected in Team Explorer, refresh your client, which updates the local cache with any changes made in other clients or in Azure DevOps.
To refresh Team Explorer, try the following actions:
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To refresh the current page, select :::image type="icon" source="../boards/media/icons/te-refresh-query-icon.png"::: Refresh (or use the keyboard shortcut F5).
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To refresh the selected project, select :::image type="icon" source="media/work-team-explorer/IC547418.png"::: Home, and then select :::image type="icon" source="../boards/media/icons/te-refresh-query-icon.png"::: Refresh or F5.
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To refresh the set of teams defined for the selected project, select Connect, and then select :::image type="icon" source="../boards/media/icons/te-refresh-query-icon.png"::: Refresh or F5.
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