I have a tfs test server, and using a test account with a PAT issued by my TFS admin account, I wanted to see if it was possible to browse to the TFS web-portal using the PAT to authenticate.
Using:
curl -u Test:57qxqxxfdcvnFAKEthisisfakeFAKE https://tfstest.company.com/tfs/collectionname
I get some reasonably sensible html back that seems to indicate that it accepted the authentication. When I save this html to a file and open it, it displays what I might expect. I don't get the css, or anything but it appears to be the normal page coming back, without anything the browser would normally get when the html is expressed.
I can also use REST API's by specifying the proper URLs for those API's, and so I conclude that the PAT auth is working as expected.
But is it possible for me to open IE and browse to https://tfstest.company.com/tfs/collectionname, by some means, only using the PAT for auth ?
Thanks.
No, you are not able to directly use PAT to browser web portal.
Personal access tokens (PATs) are alternate passwords that you can use to authenticate into Azure DevOps.
Azure DevOps uses enterprise-grade authentication to help protect and secure your data. Clients like Visual Studio and Eclipse (with the Team Explorer Everywhere plug-in) also support Microsoft account and Azure AD authentication.
For non-Microsoft tools that integrate into Azure DevOps but don't support Microsoft account or Azure AD authentication, you must use PATs. Examples include Git, NuGet, or Xcode. To set up PATs for non-Microsoft tools, use Git credential managers or create them manually.
When you access TFS server for the first time through web portal, a Windows Identity dialog box appears. You need to fill in your account credentials and password choose the OK button.