Adding WIT to TFS - to the whole collection? - tfs

Question

I'm trying to modify a WIT and import it afterwards with witadmin.
From what I've seen, it's possible to import the WIT only to specific projects but not to the whole team project collection.
Is there really no way to do it?
On the same note - I'd also like to share a query to all project at once. Is it impossible as well?
Thank you!

Answer 1

You are correct: Work item modifications have to be individually applied to team projects, as do custom work item queries.

Answer 2

Just as Daniel said, it's project level based. There was nothing built in to achieve what you want.
However, you could use some workaround. One method is automating your WIT export\import with batch files (ExportWITDs.cmd, ImportWITDs.cmd). Then use the Checkin.cmd example to check-in the changes to a dedicated folder for WITs on the source control.
More detail steps you could refer this blog: How to Customize Work Item Types

Answer 3

First of all: You are right - you can't provide Wit's to Collections. The whole process configuration is defined on Teamproject level. But you can ease the task of updating all Teamprojects at once.
To share a WorkItemQuery or WorkItemType to several project you can write a batchfile where you import your modified file to one project after another.
I'm using this simple batch file to import changed Wit's to all of my projects (just pass in the path to the wit.xml file you want to import):
witadmin.exe importwitd /collection:http://servername:port/tfs/collectionName/ /p:ProjectName1 /f:%1
witadmin.exe importwitd /collection:http://servername:port/tfs/collectionName/ /p:ProjectName2 /f:%1
witadmin.exe importwitd /collection:http://servername:port/tfs/collectionName/ /p:ProjectName3 /f:%1
... add more projects here
On the Developer command prompt for VisualStudio call the *.bat file like this:
import.bat c:\temp\task.xml
As witadmin.exe doesn't provide the feature to import/export WorkItemQueries you can use wiqadmin instead. You can find it here.