I'm encountering a strange issue with branch policies in my anization. For a specific branch, we have 2 required reviewers, and for a specific file path, we require approval from a team with the minimum number of reviewers set to 1.

One of my team members is part of the required team for the file path, but when they approve a PR, it doesn’t satisfy the "required team" approval. Instead, their approval is marked under the optional approver group.

Here’s what I suspect might be happening: This user belongs to both the optional and required teams for this file path. When they approve the PR, their approval counts toward the optional team but doesn’t fulfill the requirement for the required team. This forces us to get an additional approval from another member of the required team.

Is there a way to have this team member’s approval count toward the required approver instead of the optional approver without removing any of the groups from the branch policy.

I'm encountering a strange issue with branch policies in my anization. For a specific branch, we have 2 required reviewers, and for a specific file path, we require approval from a team with the minimum number of reviewers set to 1.

One of my team members is part of the required team for the file path, but when they approve a PR, it doesn’t satisfy the "required team" approval. Instead, their approval is marked under the optional approver group.

Here’s what I suspect might be happening: This user belongs to both the optional and required teams for this file path. When they approve the PR, their approval counts toward the optional team but doesn’t fulfill the requirement for the required team. This forces us to get an additional approval from another member of the required team.

Is there a way to have this team member’s approval count toward the required approver instead of the optional approver without removing any of the groups from the branch policy.

• azure-devops
• azure-repos

1 Answer 1

I tested the issue in my pull request. I have 2 required reviewers, and for a specific file path, I set a required approval from a team with the minimum number of reviewers set to 1, an optional approval from another team with the minimum number of reviewers set to 1.

When a user who is in both teams approved the PR, it will show that the two approvals are done.

When I tried to complete the PR, it shows the count of approved reviewer is 1.

You should verify that the team member is correctly listed in the required team and not just in the optional approver group. If the user is the creator of the PR, you should enable "Allow requestors to approve their own changes".