I am using Visual Studio Team Services. Part of Release Management is allowing users to approve a deployment environment or not. I have noticed that the list of approvers can only be of people added to VSTS. Is it possible to have approvers who are not added to VSTS.
I want to have the tracking of their inputs for approving, but they don't have any interest in seeing user stories, source code, etc.
If you don't want people to have access to work items and source code, restrict their access by defining security groups and adding them to these groups.
Yes — they will need at least a basic licence.
You can add the specific approver with a basic licence, then use the security settings to add them to either the approver group or give them specifically approval rights. (More info.)
You can also specify account (user) groups as approvers. When a group is specified as an approver, only one of the users in that group needs to approve in order for the release to move forward. If you are using Visual Studio Team Services, you can use local groups managed in Team Services or Azure Active Directory (AAD) groups if they have been added into Team Services. If you are using Team Foundation Server (TFS), you can use local groups managed in TFS or Active Directory (AD) groups if they have been added into TFS.
