Friday, June 24, 2016

Creating Work Items in Team Foundation Server/Visual Studio Online

I have been working with Team Foundation Server Work Items for quite some time and one of the things that has always been frustrating to me has been the disparity in web-based work item functionality between different views in Team Foundation Server.

For example, if you go into the Home Dashboard of Team Foundation Server, you will be presented with the following view:






This Dashboard view allows you to readily any type of Work Item such as a Bug, Epic, Feature, Impediment, Product Backlog Item, Task or Test Case.

However, as soon as I switch to the Work section of Team Foundation Server, I am presented with these 2 views instead!


In these views, I can only add a Feature, Product Backlog Item or a Bug! 


There is no default view in the Work section that allows me to easily add any of these other Work Items: Epic, Impediment, Task or Test Case.  Instead, if I want to add any of these other Work Item types, I have to add a new Link to an existing Work Item and then create these other types of Work Items from there:





This is especially annoying if you want to create a parent record directly such as an Epic which will include multiple Product Backlog Items or Features.  But, unfortunately, the Epic Work Item type cannot be created directly from the Work section of Team Foundation Server and must either be done this way or through the Home Dashboard!

Of course, if you are managing Work Items through Visual Studio Team Explorer, all Work Item types are immediately available to you!






Hopefully, Microsoft will correct these web-based Work Item usability problems in a future release of Team Foundation Server/Visual Studio Online, but for now, the best solution is to work through the web-based Home Dashboard!!

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