Share azure devops variables across projects - azure

Question

I am trying to share linked variables across projects.
I read that is was not possible but I found this API endpoint that may do the trick.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/distributedtask/variablegroups/share-variable-group?view=azure-devops-rest-6.0
When I call this API:
PATCH https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/_apis/distributedtask/variablegroups?variableGroupId={variableGroupId}&api-version=6.0-preview.2
with this Body:
{
"variableGroupProjectReferences":[
{
"description":"test1",
"name":"test1",
"projectReference":{
"id":"50f7c113-de21-4e19-b910-b37ebffa984f",
"name":"Customer Services"
}
}]
}
I get this response:
{
"$id": "1",
"innerException": null,
"message": "Value cannot be null.\r\nParameter name: variableGroupProjectReferences",
"typeName": "System.ArgumentNullException, mscorlib",
"typeKey": "ArgumentNullException",
"errorCode": 0,
"eventId": 0
}

Answer 1

Value cannot be null.\r\nParameter name: variableGroupProjectReferences
The request body seems to have issue.
You can refer to the following sample:
[
{
"variableGroupProjectReferences":
{
"projectReference": {
"id": "ProjectID",
"name": "ProjectName"
},
"name": "variablegroupname",
"description": ""
}
}
]
But it will show the error: Sharing of variable group is not allowed.
The cause of this issue is that the variable group property： "isShared": false
You can get the variable group property with the Rest API: Variablegroups - Get
But currently it seems that we cannot change this property. So we couldn't share the variable group.
Refer to this feedback ticket: VariableGroup cannot be shared via REST API.
I suggest that you can report the issue to Developer Community.