Search Work Items Query - tfs

After using the 'Search Work Items' plugin for TFS 2010, I am struggling with the seeming limitations of the similar tool in TFS 2012.
My teams use this ad-hoc query to quickly search across all team projects to find work items based on a number of fields. I have been unable to find a way to modify the query to search additional fields and remove the #Project limitation. In TFS 2010 using the "--Template" string to open and modify the query was the ticket. Is there a similar solution in TFS 2012?
It is possible to manually specify all the extra fields every time using the search syntax (painful) - but how to remove limitations such as #Project etc?

You should just be able to open a query in Team Explorer and remove the #project designation. You however will not be able to remove the #project limitation from the search box now on the TFS 2012 Web Access UI as it will only search across a single Team Project.
I would recommend that you read:
http://blog.hinshelwood.com/project-of-projects-with-team-foundation-server-2010/
http://blog.hinshelwood.com/one-team-project/
I think as you go forward you will find more and more that you are running into the Team Project boundary.

Related

Is there any way to get a diff of particular fields in TFS?

I'm working on a large software project that uses TFS for Backlog management. We're using the Scrum 2.2 template in TFS 2012. Are there any tools out there that will give diffs of particular fields (e.g. Description, Acceptance Criteria) so that I can see how these fields have changed over time and who made them ? Sort of like the 'Annotate' feature in the Source Control explorer, but for Backlog Items instead ?
You can create your own tool to highlight differences between revisions of a specific work item field with TFS API. You need to work with WorkItem.Revisions property.
There is one tool available with which you can have a reference to get started quickly, see: http://gethistory.codeplex.com/

TFS 2013 Custom dashboard widget

I have been tasked with creating a custom planning view from TFS.
I have a reasonable amount of experience with the TFS Api but I want to try and avoid having to create and maintain a new application for this.
I have looked at SSRS for TFS but I am unable to access all of the data I need (tags etc.) so this is not an option (as it will invalidate support).
I would ideally like to create a "widget" to appear on one of the TFS dashboards but am not sure where to start. The widget would also need to allow access to the TFS api to gather the data it needs to generate.
Please can someone advise where I may look to start or an alternative approach.
You may want to take a look at http://integrate.visualstudio.com where you can find documentation for the TFS API. The REST API works for TFS 2015 and above.
While you can extend the web interface with Extensions (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/) in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), this feature is not yet available in TFS on-premises as of TFS 2015 Update 1.
You can check the published feature timeline for updates, but at this time extensions for TFS are marked as "TBD".
If you're working with TFS2013 + Update2 or a higher version of TFS, it is allowed for Team Administrators to customize TFS dashboard via pinning items to the homepage without writing any code.
For example, if you would like to add a chart into the dashboard, you just need to go to the query’s Charts page and pin it to the home page. See the following image (quoted from this MSDN article)

Get list of bugs linked to workItems in TFS

What would be the query to get list of all bugs linked to particular workitem in TFS 2012?
or any other way to get list?
The process template is MSF for Agile Software Development v6.0.
Thanks!
Here is an example for looking for work items that have a bug linked to them:
Make sure you change the query type to work Items and Direct Links. You can filter down either the main query, or for the linked work items.

Are there any TFS 2010 Dashboards that support multi-project queries?

Does anyone know of a TFS 2010 Dashboard that is able to utilize multi-project queries? Our group has several distinct projects that must be managed at the same time. TFS itself supports this. Simply by excluding the Project = #Project (or whatever) we can get back the results we're looking for. Our issue is that we would like to find a nice dashboard (like Telerik Work Item Manager) that also supports this.
As it turns out the Telerik Work Item Manager does support this (just not by default or design). The issue was that by default it filters on Area / Iteration. By removing the filter we see everything that we need to.

Can you create a Runtime Query in TFS?

Is there any way to create a query in TFS that prompts you for query parameters at runtime?
E.G. A query named "[TeamMember] Undone Tasks" where TFS prompts you for the team memeber at runtime?
Sorry - this is not possible at the moment in TFS 2008 and I haven't seen that feature in any of the TFS 2010 beta's either. I have seen it asked for before though so I'm sure the team know that it would be a nice thing to have.
You could use the API, a query in Excel or hook Excel into the datawarehouse to give you that type of data if you wanted it.

Resources