Brian Harry announced today some exciting changes coming to the set of Visual Studio Online licensing plans. Long story short, they (Microsoft) will be adding a new Stakeholders license license for Visual Studio Online – and, making this an even better announcement, the Stakeholders license will be completely free!
Here is the list of features that will be supported by the Stakeholders license for Visual Studio Online (once available – currently planned for mid-August, 2014):
- Full read/write/create on all work items
- Create, run and save (to “My Queries”) work item queries
- View project and team home pages
- Access to the backlog, including add and update (but no ability to reprioritize the work)
- Ability to receive work item alerts
Some features that are explicitly excluded from this license include:
- No access to Code, Build or Test hubs.
- No access to Team Rooms
- No access to any administrative functionality (Team membership, license administration, permissions, area/iterations configuration, sprint configuration, home page configuration, creation of shared queries, etc.)
In addition to the new Stakeholders license, Brian also announced that the Test Hub functionality will become available in the Visual Studio Online Advanced plan. This will alleviate the need to purchase Visual Studio Test Professional for many scenarios.
The following table lets you compare the features available across the various Visual Studio License offerings (click the image to view a larger version):
Read the full details on Brian’s blog here.