I'm using TFS for task tracking in a team of ~40 people. We create Backlog Items with child Tasks. I'd like to implement some kind of automatic notifications or alerts when Tasks under a Backlog Item is closed.
For example, we have a Backlog Item like "Build a Cart", with a few child tasks:
Server - Build a Cart (Assigned to Dev1)
Client - Build a Cart (Assigned to Dev2)
Content - Add content to the Cart (Assigned to Des1)
QA - Test the Cart (Assigned to QA1)
When the first task "Server - Build a Cart" is closed, I'd like to make sure all other members (Dev2, Des1, and QA1) are alerted somehow. Some people are in different geographic locations, so automating the notification is what I'm looking for.
Is there some kind of plugin or way I can configure things to automate more alerts or notifications?
I'm afraid that it cannot be achieved by the default TFS notification system since you need to filter the parent work items. And there isn't any plugin for this as far as I know. I would recommend you to create a service hook event for work item changed event and then create a web service to listen the event and send out email notifications base on your request.
Related
we have a TFS with many tasks and want to see them on the TFS delivery plan, how can I do it?
in the delivery plan I can only see stories and bugs, but I'm more interested on tasks..
Generally, only the selected backlog level work items can be displayed in delivery plans. But Task is not in any of the backlog level categories (Epics-Microsoft.EpicCategory, Features-Microsoft.FeatureCategory, Stories-Microsoft.RequirementCategory).
So, to display Task in Delivery plans, you can try to add Task to Microsoft.RequirementCategory. You need to edit the Task WIT definition to support planning tools. See Add a WIT to track it like a requirement for details.
But it will conflict with the original/default behaviour of Task work item. So, if you insist on display Task in delevery plans you can try add a new type work item based on the existing Task wit, then custom it as needed.
At my daily work, I have to follow multiple Team foundation tasks or user stories. Sometimes, I create a task to other teams and they change status of this task to verified level unexpectedly. But after I control this task and realized that its not working correctly.
NOTE: I tried to use custom alerts but could not find anything about related work items.
NOTE2 : TFS 2015.
Is there any way to be notify when someone changes your task's status to verified before telling me?
Yes, you can create a work item alert (if email is enabled on the server) and specify a query where you can set "Created by" == #me as query to get email.
Go to notifications or alerts (depending on your TFS version) and create a new work item based alert. Then create a work item query that lists the work items you want to be notified about.
In TFS 2017 and VSTS you can also "follow" a work item:
I'm on update 4. I want to let business users submit "tickets" in TFS for research. However, they less rights to the project and aren't part of the contributors role. In addition, TFS documention indicates that once you deploy a "team alert" that the "#ME" variable changes to actually referring to the team, and not the person.
What is the approach to take to ensure that someone with less permissions, and not part of contributor group, will always get notified when a work item they created gets changed.
NOTE: TFS 2013 UPDATE 4 -- ON PREMISE
Related item: TFS 2013 (Update 2) Team Alerts not sending emails
* this doesn't help as I can't add them as contributors, need narrowing security permission.
UPDATE 2016-02-22
In looking through the alerts section, as an admin I see I can actually search and find an individual and setup an alert for them on the workitem change. However, this is a manual process, and I would like to do this in bulk. I will work on tracing the query execution that is called when the alert is created and see if I could replicate with a sql command to insert alerts for all users. However, I'd like to avoid running a direct sql query to do this if possible, if there is some bulk processing functionality that allows an individual alert to be deployed to each person on a team without doing it manually.
Anyone aware of any extensions, scripts, or other functionality that does this?
According to the comments of this issue TFS 2013 Update 2 Team Alerts not sending emails.This issue is not fixed with TFS 2013 UPDATE4. So, if you can't add the users as contributors, then they can't receive an email.
As a workaround, you can use events of team room. Adding events lets your team know when builds finish, source code is checked in, work items are updated, and requests for code reviews occur. This can be visible to all members of the team room. Detailed steps and more info from MSDN Collaborate in a team room
Is there any way to restrict one user from the team to get the alerts for the work items or any changes done in work item?
I was trying to add some new alerts under Team project alerts section in Project->Settings->Alerts->Team Alerts, but can not find any way to do it.
You will need to setup individual alerts to exclude one person.
You can also use a distribution list as the target that you can control independently.
Or you can create another "ghost" team that does not have that user and setup the alerts there.
I have team web site & I want to make task in this application the team leader assign task & Every Employee see his task hoe can I do that?
Give the team leader full control in the list
Have team leader create task
Click into newly created task
Click Edit Permissions on toolbar at top of task display
Grant permissions to all employees (or better still, leverage SharePoint's groups).
To have this done automatically, I'd suggest creating a feature with a custom list derived from the Task List and create event handlers for the list that automatically delegate permissions appropriately.