The Azure DevOps Boards Hubs is basically a term for new improved “UX” of Azure DevOps Boards. The main principles and features in Boards remains the same, but the Boards Hubs improves the accessibility, readability and visualization of the Board pages. The feature affects Boards, Backlog, Sprints and Queries pages. The feature itself doesn’t bring anything completely new into table, only the UX improvements.
How to enable the new Boards Hubs?
As of today the Boards Hubs is a preview feature, that needs to be enabled from top right corner
Comparison of boards page
The new Boards page spreads the swimlanes across the whole right side of page. Font size is bigger and readability has improved a lot. One thing to note is, that “States” filter option was only visible to me with new the Boards Hubs, so that might be a new feature?
The view options from old Boards page is also gone. That only had selection for “live updates”, so it won’t be missed.
With 150% zoom we can see better what the changes actually are. The top navigation background is now gray and new item is now harmonized with the magnification glass icon, that also has box around it. The previous gray filter box is also put under the tabs and search box is white now (as it should, because it is a typeable text field).
Comparison of backlog pages
Backlog page has similar changes as Boards page. The font size is bigger, readability is better and the empty space is used better. The backlog page does not have any feature changes.
Comparison of sprints page
Sprint page follows the Backlog page. Font size is bigger and empty space is used better. The old green + icon for new work items is changed into gray downward arrow. I think the downward arrow is a bit weird icon choice for new items. It adds the new “row” under current ones, so it kind of makes sense, but still the global icon for new items is + -sign.
Comparison of queries page
The Queries page as interesting spacing on the left side that takes few pixels away from results and query editor, but it also has some nice readability improvements like more structured locations of tabs and increased font size. On query page the + -sign is again used for new items.
Summary
The Boards Hubs makes the Azure DevOps Boards feature more accessible and improves the readability. After using it a while I didn’t encounter any glitches, so you should definitely give it a try. The feature doesn’t change things drastically, so it is quite safe to be toggled on.
For more information, checkout the announcement from March https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/new-boards-hub-public-preview/