Access denied. Needs Use permissions for pool Default to perform the action

Question

I get following error when trying to save a release pipeline on Azure dev. What exact permissions do I need to ask from my administrator?

Access denied. <<user id>> needs Use permissions for pool Default to perform the action. For more information, contact the Azure DevOps Server administrator.

Answer 1

I found granting Admin to a pool very confusing (and time-consuming to resolve) but I think I can explain how I got it to work for my org. This is a further explanation, based upon what @Leo Lui-MSFT said, as that was not quite clear enough for me.

My problem: I wanted to give a user access to update a pool that the user had not created (ie, was not an Owner).

Attempted solution: Making the user Admin on the pool did not let the user do that.

Successful solution: I had to go to https://dev.azure.com/my-org/_settings/agentpools > Security > Add . I then added the user and assigned the Admin role.

This has the side effect of giving the user Admin on every pool in the org (which was not what I wanted to do). If this is not your desire then go into the pool you do not wish to grant Admin access to, set Inheritance off and then remove the user from that pool.

This feels wrong, to me. I should have been able to make a user an Admin of a single pool without granting org-wide Admin over all pools.

Also as all pools seem to be created with Inheritance defaulted to true then to remove that user as an Admin from all other pools could be time-consuming and when more pools are created then I would need to remember to turn inheritance off.

That is my experience. If I have missed something please let me know.