Work Item query by category

Posted on 2 mins read

This is a really old functionality of TFS, but it turns out that sometimes some people missed it. When you create a query, you can add a condition on Work Item Type.

This image shows combo box rendered by the ui when you are using the equal operator

Figure 1: Add condition to Work Item Type

As you can see, you can require the Work Item Type to be equal to specific value, and the UI renders a nice combo box with all permitted values to help the user choose right value.

You can also use the in operator, to specify a comma separated list of allowed types.

In operator in Work Item Query allow to specify a comma separated query of values

Figure 2: The in operator in Work Item Query

Finally TFS has a nice concepts called Work Item Category to group togheter all Work Item Types that shared some common behavior. As an example, all types that represents a concept of requirement are shown on the Backload Board, while Work Items that represents a Task are represented in the Task Board. If you choose the in operator to specify a condition on Work Item Type, you can choose from Work Item Categories.

If you choose In Group operator you can choose between Work Item Categories instead of types

Figure 3: Query with the “in group” operator  allows you yo choose between Work Item Categories

There are many use case for this functionality, Microsoft Test Manager used Requirement category to create a generic query that lists “requirements” and is valid for all template. You can use this feature if you need to create query that spans multiple project with different project template.

image

Figure 4: Query for requirements on multiple Team Project

In Figure 4 I represented a simple query to list all requirements associated to me for every Team Project. As you can see from the result, I got Work Item Type “Requirement” from a CMMI Project and “Product Backlog Item” from a Scrum project.

Gian Maria.