TFS Workitems always leave 'Closed By' blank - tfs

We have a TFS workitem workflow where developers set workitems to be 'done'. It is largely our of the box with little custom configuration. This populates the 'Closed Date' but not 'Closed By'. The workflow continues as testers assign it to themselves and set the state to be 'Tested', but now I can no longer see on a report which developer closed the item.
How can I get a report of who did the work?

Given that you have a "Tested" state, it seems that the transitions have been customized. Ensure that all transitions to the "Closed" state have the correct rule on them to update the "Closed By" field. The Closed By definition on the transition should look something like this:
<STATE value="Closed">
<FIELDS>
....
<FIELD refname="Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ClosedBy">
<ALLOWEXISTINGVALUE />
<COPY from="currentuser" />
<VALIDUSER />
<REQUIRED />
</FIELD>
....
</FIELDS>
</STATE>
More information on customizing work item transitions can be found here and here.

Related

Can you add validation for swimlanes in TFS 2018?

I have a "Blocked" swimlane that I would like to add validation to. Specifically, I'd like to make a field required to be filled in when a backlog item is moved into this swimlane. Is this possible in TFS 2018? I've looked in the "TFS Process Template Editor" extension but I can't see how to do this. Thanks
Yes, it's possible, I prefer to do it with exportwitd and importwitd.
Export the work item XML with exportwitd.
Add a transition with your Blocked state and make a field required.
<TRANSITION from="In Progress" to="Blocked">
<REASONS>
<DEFAULTREASON value="Fixed"/>
</REASONS>
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="MyCorp.SomeField" >
<REQUIRED />
</FIELD>
</FIELDS>
</TRANSITION>`
Import the XML again to TFS with importwitd.
Now when a user moves the work item from "In Progress" to "Blocked" the field "MyCorp.SomeField" will be required.
You can find good documenation regarding above here, here and here.

TFS Assign Work Item By STATE ... with conditions

Our TFS is currently set up to assign a work item to our Tester (by capacity planning role) when the item goes from Active to Resolved state.
This is great, but it doesn't go far enough. When the Tester moves the item from Resolved to either Closed (tested and verified fixed) or Active (failed testing) I want to reassign the item back to whoever most recently transitioned it from Active to Resolved.
This way the person who fixed it is still associated with it when the defect is closed (get credit for your work) or if you didn't pass testing it gets reassigned back to the person that will be re-doing the work.
How can this be done?
Yes, your requirement can be achieved.
Automatically change AssignedTo field to a user when State field changes from Active to Resolved.
Assuming you have installed TFS Power Tool. You can modify the Transition from Active to Resolved (my example is from To Do to In Progress) by adding AssignedTo field and rules to this Transition:
The XML file should be like:
<Transition from="To Do" to="In Progress">
<ACTIONS>
<ACTION value="Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.StartWork" />
</ACTIONS>
<REASONS>
<DEFAULTREASON value="Work started" />
</REASONS>
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="System.AssignedTo">
<DEFAULT from="value" value="{Tester}" />
</FIELD>
</FIELDS>
</Transition>
In my example, when the State changes from To Do to In Progress, the AssignedTo field will change to Tester.
When the Tester changes State from Resolved to Active, the AssignedTo field will change back to whoever most recently change it
from Active to Resolved.
First, you need to customize a field to get ChangedBy value. In my example, I've customized a field named copy, the XML file looks like:
<FieldDefinition name="copy" refname="copy.copy" type="String">
<COPY from="field" field="System.ChangedBy" />
</FieldDefinition>
Then, similar to the item 1 above, you need to modify the Transition from Resolved to Active to (my example is from In Progress to To Do), the XML file looks like:
<Transition from="In Progress" to="To Do">
<ACTIONS>
<ACTION value="Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.StopWork" />
</ACTIONS>
<REASONS>
<DEFAULTREASON value="Work stopped" />
</REASONS>
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="System.AssignedTo">
<COPY from="field" field="copy.copy" />
</FIELD>
</FIELDS>
</Transition>
In my example, when the State changes from In Progress to To Do, the AssignedTo field will change to the user who change it most recently.
Might be there Solution for your question, but what I know is you don't need that just to see the person will be associate with it .
This is because if you see on right pane,when someone check-in the code for that work-item, or makes changes to that and saves the work-item ,automatically TFS shows in arrow with Steps continuously what have been done and by whom with date
and after failed testing. Developer who checked-in the code or try to solve that issue you can just select that developer name on dropdown on assign
I guess you were almost wanting similar the way i told but again if not forgive me.
Thanks,

TFS User Can't Save Updated Work Item State

I have a user who is attempting to change the State of a TFS Change Request from Development to Testing but when he presses Save gets the following error:
Save failed: The field 'Changed By' contains a value that is not in the list of supported values
From what I can work out (please correct me if I'm wrong) Changed By relates to the History tab showing what has changed on the item.
So I've Exported the Work Item Types for our project, and opened the XML for Change Requests. When I searched for Test the State is listed as this:
<STATE value="Test">
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="System.AssignedTo">
<ALLOWEDVALUES expanditems="true">
<LISTITEM value="[project]\Contributors" />
</ALLOWEDVALUES>
</FIELD>
</FIELDS>
</STATE>
And the Transition from Development to Test is as follows:
<TRANSITION from="Development" to="Test">
<REASONS>
<DEFAULTREASON value="Signed Off" />
<REASON value="Executive Signed Off" />
</REASONS>
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="System.ChangedBy">
<ALLOWEDVALUES expanditems="true">
<LISTITEM value="[project]\Owners" />
</ALLOWEDVALUES>
</FIELD>
<FIELD refname="System.AssignedTo">
<REQUIRED />
</FIELD>
</FIELDS>
</TRANSITION>
I have checked both groups ([project]\Owners and [project]\Contributors). They are not a member of the Contributors group, but I checked another user who isn't having this issue and they are not either, so I think I can rule out that permissions group? And the Owners group has them listed (albeit under the group for their team) so I think that is correct.
The Field called ChangedBy populates from the Owners group and the user appears in that list (when checked from another point).
What could be causing this save issue? Am I missing something obvious?
Based on that XML, that says that only people in the Contributors group can save a WI in the Test state. If your user isn't a contributor that explains the error.
Try adding your user the Contributor group and try again.

TFS 2010 clear SystemAssignedTo in transition

We have introduced a "Code review" state for tasks, between "In progress" and "Done". When moving from "In progress" to "Code review" we would like to clear/unassign System.AssignedTo but I can't figure out how. Does anyone know where to put the logic in the WIT xml and what it should look like?
Thanks,
Mansos
Open your schema in an XML editor. Go down to the <TRANSITIONS> part and add
<TRANSITION from="In Progress" to="Code Review">
<FIELDS>
<FIELD name="Assigned To">
<EMPTY />
</FIELD>
<FIELDS>
</TRANSITION>
Make sure you don't have any <REQUIRED> for that field anywhere in the definition (there are a number of ways you can have that rule).
For reference, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337653%28v=vs.80%29.aspx

How can I prohibit State change from Proposed to Active in TFS Requirement work-item based on value of another field?

I've added department approvals to the standard CMMI-Template Requirement work-item. I'd like to limit the System.State field such that it can only be changed from Proposed to Active when all department approvals are set to "Yes".
I've tried the following change to Requirement.xml
<FIELD name="State" refname="System.State" type="String" reportable="dimension">
<WHEN field="Approval.Marketing" value="No">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
<WHEN field="Approval.Quality" value="No">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
<WHEN field="Approval.RD" value="No">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
<WHEN field="Approval.System" value="No">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
<WHEN field="Approval.ProgManagement" value="No">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
</FIELD>
This causes the State field to become READONLY if any of the approval fields are set to "No" which is what I want. However it causes problems when creating a new requirement since the approvals are all "No" initially and thus the initial "Proposed" default for State doesn't get set due to READONLY condition. What I'd like is to do is add logic to the WHEN conditions above to AND them with the condition System.State="Proposed". I tried nesting WHEN clauses such as
<FIELD name="State" refname="System.State" type="String" reportable="dimension">
<WHEN field="System.State" value="Proposed">
<WHEN field="Approval.Marketing" value="No">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
. . .
</WHEN>
</FIELD>
But this gets an error on import that WHEN clause cannot contain WHEN. How can I prohibit State change from Proposed to Active when any of the Approval fields are set to "No"
I spent some time figuring out if I could come up with a variation that would work since you cannot set a default value for System.State in the way you can other fields. I probably went through 50 or so variations before I came up with something that works. Granted, it is not ideal but it would solve your problem after the initial creation.
You could, inside each of the transition states, add your when clauses. For my example I was using the priority field and doing something like:
<State value="Proposed">
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ResolvedDate">
<EMPTY />
</FIELD>
...
<FIELD refname="System.State">
<WHEN field="Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority" value="2">
<READONLY />
</WHEN>
</FIELD>
</FIELDS>
</State>
You would have to add your clauses of course to the other states: active, closed and Resolved.
Once you do that, create a new Requirement. When you create a new requirement you have two options:
You can either set all the options to yes, set state to proposed and save. Then go back and set them to no and save.
Or
Change your custom fields all to default to yes.
Create Requirement and save. Edit it, switch all the values to no, Save.
Either way you choose to go, once this initial hurdle is over with the requirement creation. It will act how you wanted it to. In other words, if any of the values are no then it will make state readonly.
That was the best I could come up with given the restriction for the System.State field.

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