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In order to establish a connection between StoriesOnBoard and Microsoft Azure DevOps first, please open the tool integration menu in the desired story map. You can find it in "Manage /  Integration settings". Then select "Azure DevOps Services" from the tool selection drop-down.

Please note, that for the DevOps setup, you don't need to create the access token manually, it will be automated.

Now you can paste your Azure DevOps account URL and click on the "Connect" button. 

An authentication window should pop up to allow the connection between the tools.

If everything went fine, now you will be able to select an Azure DevOps project. When it's done, just click on the "Link project" button. 

For the TFS integration you'll need a TFS server collection URL and a Personal access token.

The server collection URL can be copied from the browser. To get the Personal access token, you need to open the security menu in TFS located in the upper right corner.

Then click on add.

Here, you need to do four things.

Give a description to the token, set the expiration period, in the "Selected scopes" area check the "Work items (full)" box and click on "Create Token".

Your new token will appear, you can copy/paste into StoriesOnBoard and click on the "Connect" button.

If everything went fine, now you will be able to select a TFS project. When it's done, just click on the "Link project" button. 

In case of a successful connection, the project setup screen will appear.
In these settings, you can set up various things regarding the synchronization.
Let's see them.

The first part is the Export options. Here you can decide if you like to sync the board hierarchy between the tools, or just like to work with the story card issue type.

Please note, that if the hierarchy sync is turned on, StoriesOnBoard can handle only the first 3 levels in DevOps.

The next part is the hyperlink support if this option is checked, you can go back to StoriesOnBoard cards directly from DevOps. Clicking on the link will open up a new browser window showing the details of the card in StoriesOnBoard.

On the "Import filter with status mapping" area, you can set up and match the statuses used in DevOps with the ones used in StoriesOnBoard.
Please note that the Status mapping options are reduced if you are using the hierarchy sync.

With Additional import settings, you can allow editors to import work items from DevOps or ignore the import of closed work items to prevent overloading the story map with cards that aren't relevant anymore.

There is one more important thing to mention and that's the "Advanced import filter" menu. There you can select pre-defined DevOps queries to filter the work items ready for import. 

Please make sure that in DevOps you are using "Flat list of work items" because at the moment that type is the only one supported by StoriesOnBoard to import.

On the next part, you can set up which kind of card information you like to keep in sync between the tools. These options are quite self self explanatory:

Release synchronization makes it possible to sync StoriesOnBoard releases with DevOps iterations. In DevOps, users are allowed to make multi-level releases, in StoriesOnBoard there is only one release level but in the integration settings you can select which the path/level you wish to push your StoriesOnBoard releases. In case of any changes happening on iteration level, that will also be synced. However, it is important to note that, if you change iterations on DevOps, you must perform an import and sync changes on StoriesOnBoard to stay updated.

Please note that release sync needs additional permission in DevOps.

The last option is the Impersonation, enabling it will allow  DevOps to log changes made by individual users. Otherwise, the changes made by any user will show in DevOps as made by the user who did the integration setup process. 

Clicking on the Save button will finalize the setup and you are ready to go.
Congratulations! Your story map is connected to an Azure DevOps project!

In case you receive the error message below when you try to connect Azure DevOps, you need to change your settings in order to make this work.

To resolve this issue, open your Azure DevOps and visit Organization Settings got o Security and select Policies. Make sure that Third-party application access via OAuth is enabled.

💡 Tips - Learn more about:

Azure DevOps Hierarchy Synchronization Options
Product Discovery in Azure DevOps
How to add story points in Azure DevOps?