Manage notifications for your team, project, or organization

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server | Azure DevOps Server 2022

You can manage email notifications for your team, project, organization, or collection and receive notifications when changes occur to work items, code reviews, pull requests, source control files, and builds.

For example, when a high priority work item is assigned to your team's area path, a notification email is sent to the team. For more information, see Notification types.

Prerequisites

Create email subscription

A subscription lets you control the activity events that trigger notifications and how the recipients receive the messages. For more information, see notification types.

1. Sign in to your organization (https://dev.azure.com/<organization>).

2. Select Project settings > Notifications:

   

3. On the Notifications page for the project, select New subscription:

   

4. Select the Category and the Template type to use in the new subscription, and then select Next. For a list of supported templates, see Default and supported notifications.

   

   

5. Enter a Description to help you identify the subscription later:

   

6. Identify which team members should receive a notification:

   

   

   1. Expand the Deliver to dropdown list and select the delivery option for the notification:

      • Members of <Name> Team by role: Only certain team members associated with the event are notified. For example, for work item changes, you might want only the Current Assignee of the work item to receive a notification.

      • Team preference: Use the team's default delivery preference. For more information, see Manage delivery settings.

      • Custom email address: Send email to a specified email address.

      • Members of <Name> Team: Send individual email to each member of the team.

      • SOAP: Send email notifications to subscribers of the SOAP service.

   2. As needed, expand the Roles dropdown list and select the checkbox for any applicable role for the message recipients.

      For the Members of <Name> Team by role delivery option, the Creator and Reviewers roles have self-explanatory names. The name of the role matches closely with the role purpose. The other two roles need a bit more explanation:

      • The Changed reviewers role applies to any reviewer who is added or deleted as a result of policies defined for the set of files. Suppose a push is made to a pull request and the push introduces a change to the Task1.cs file. If the repo has a policy that requires Person A to review changes to the Task1.cs file, then Person A has the Changed reviewers role for that iteration of the pull request.

      • The Reset reviewers role is related to the "Reset votes" policy. Suppose the same repo has the "Reset votes on new pushes" policy. Also, Person B is set as a required reviewer for the pull request, and they approve the PR. Because the repo defines the "Reset votes" policy, the vote for Person B is reset. As a result, Person B has the Reset reviewers role for this iteration of the pull request.

   3. As needed, update the Skip initiator option.

      For certain activities, when you select the Members of <Name> Team by role option, you can choose to have the user that initiated the activity receive a notification. This notification is controlled by the Skip initiator option. By default, the option is enabled (the box is checked), which means the user that starts the change isn't notified.

      Tip

      If you don't want to receive a notification for an event you initiated, enable the Skip initiator option. For more information, see Exclude yourself from notification emails for events that you initiate.

7. For the Filter option, specify whether you want to receive notifications for activity in Any team project or only A specific team project:

   

8. As needed, use the Filter criteria section to configure conditional clauses for your notification conditions. For any fields that require a user as a value, such as Created By, enter the username or email address of the user.

   

9. Select Finish to save the new subscription.

Manage global delivery settings

Global notifications apply to all projects defined for an organization or collection. Choose to allow or block delivery of emails for all subscriptions owned by a team or a group. This value is a default setting that applies only if the team or group doesn't explicitly set the option. For more information, see Global notifications.

Unsubscribe (opt out) from team or OOB notification subscription

You can unsubscribe or opt out of receiving notifications for specific team notification subscriptions, including out-of-the-box (OOB) subscriptions:

1. Sign in to your organization (https://dev.azure.com/<organization>).

2. Select User settings , and then select Notifications.

3. In your list of Notification subscriptions, locate the notification you want to disable.

4. To unsubscribe from the notification, move the State toggle to the Off position, which changes the toggle color from blue to gray.

The following example shows the user unsubscribed from the "Build completes" notification subscription:

Disable work item notifications for project

To override organization settings and disable all work item notifications for a project in Azure DevOps, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to your project (https://dev.azure.com/<organization>/<project>).

2. Select Project settings > Notifications.

3. In the Notification list, select the work notification you want to disable, which highlights the row.

4. Select User settings and then select Delivery settings.

5. Select Do not deliver, and then select Save.

Use AI to manage team and project notifications

If you use GitHub Copilot, the Azure DevOps MCP Server can help you configure and optimize notification subscriptions for your team, project, or organization through natural language prompts.

Example prompts for notification management

Related content

• Set your notification preferences
• Review default and supported notifications
• Follow a specific work item