Question

Your organization stores code in GitHub and manages sprint planning in Azure Boards. Developers work in GitHub using GitHub Flow, opening feature branches and pull requests. Product managers want work item state in Azure Boards to automatically move to 'Closed' when the linked pull request is merged, without developers manually updating boards. You have installed the Azure Boards app on the GitHub organization. Which configuration achieves automatic state transition on PR merge?

Accepted Answer

Add an 'AB#<id>' mention in the PR description or a commit message using a state-transition keyword (e.g., 'Fixes AB#123'), which the Azure Boards GitHub integration uses to close the linked work item on merge to the default branch.

Answer

Configure a branch policy in Azure Repos requiring linked work items, which will automatically close the item when the GitHub PR merges.

Answer

Enable the 'Automatically close work items' toggle in Azure Boards Project Settings > GitHub connections, then link the PR with AB# and closure happens regardless of keyword.

Answer

Create a GitHub Actions workflow triggered on 'pull_request closed' that calls the Azure DevOps REST API with a service connection to update every referenced work item state.