A Branch Manager hub in the Repos section of Azure DevOps, giving your team a single view of every branch in a repository.
Especially useful if you have a standard branch naming policy that includes user initials and work item IDs:
path/AA-12345-doing-my-work
Features
Branch list
- Branch — click the branch icon to copy the full name to the clipboard; use the column header button to copy all currently visible branch names
- Last commit — SHA link, relative date, and author avatar
- Behind / Ahead — clickable counts comparing each branch against the repository's default branch
- Pull requests — active PR chips with status badges (draft, building, blocked, awaiting, ready); completed PRs; and a shortcut to create a PR for branches that are ahead
- User column — initials extracted from branch name are resolved to real user profiles
- Work item column — work item extracted from branch name is displayed
- Delete — remove branches directly from the list (with confirmation)
Filters
| Filter | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free text | — | Matches branch name, author, WI title, WI ID, or user display name |
| Owner | multi-select | Names from user mappings; Not owned for unmapped branches |
| WI State | multi-select | Work item states; No work item for branches without one |
| Area | multi-select | Work item area paths |
| Iteration | multi-select | Work item iteration paths |
| Sync | multi-select (AND) | Behind, Not behind, Ahead, Not ahead |
| PRs | multi-select | Has active PR, Has completed PR, No PR |
Configuration
Go to Project Settings → Branch Manager to configure:
Branch naming regex
A regular expression applied to each branch name. Must include named capture groups:
(?<user>…)— extracts two-letter initials mapped to a user(?<id>…)— extracts a work item ID
The settings page includes a live test: type any branch name to see what user and id values are parsed.
Default:
(?:^|\/)(?:[^\/]*\/)?(?:(?<user>[a-z]{2})-)?(?:(?<id>\d+)-)?(?:[^\/]+)?$
User mappings
Map each set of initials to a user, so their details can be shown against their branches.