Move work items from one team to another team
Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019
When you add a team or your teams undergo reorganization, you may need to move work items assigned to one team to new Area Paths owned by another team. All work items are assigned to an Area Path, even if it is at the top of the hierarchy for the project.
Work items that belong to the Requirements category appear on a team's backlog based on their assignment to the Area Path(s) owned by a team. Assigning other work items to a team's Area Path(s) support queries based on team ownership.
To learn how to add a team, see Create or add a team.
Prerequisites
- To change the Area Paths of work items, you must be a project member and have permissions to view and edit work items under the Area Path nodes. To learn about these permissions, see Set work tracking permissions, Create child nodes, modify work items under an area or iteration path.
- To use Azure CLI commands, you must first install Azure CLI as described in Get started with Azure DevOps CLI.
- To change the Area Paths of work items, you must be a project member and have permissions to view and edit work items under the Area Path nodes. To learn about these permissions, see Set work tracking permissions, Create child nodes, modify work items under an area or iteration path.
Move work items under teams
From the web portal, you can perform bulk updates of the Area Path.
Create a query of all work items you want to reassign.
Multi-select those items, which belong to each team, and bulk edit the area path.
After you bulk modify, do a bulk save.
Move a work item using Azure CLI
You can use the az boards work-item update to move a single work item by updating it's Area Path.
az boards work-item update --id
[--area]
[--assigned-to]
[--description]
[--discussion]
[--fields]
[--iteration]
[--open]
[--reason]
[--state]
[--title]
Parameters
- id: Required. The ID of the work item to update.
- area: Optional. Absolute path of an area. Example: --path \ProjectName\Area\AreaName.
- assigned-to: Optional. Name of the person the work item is assigned to Jamal.
- description: Optional. Description of the work item.
- discussion: Optional. Comment to add to a discussion in a work item.
- fields: Optional. Space separated "field=value" pairs for custom fields you want to set.
- iteration: Optional. Absolute path of an iteration. Example: \ProjectName\Iteration\IterationName.
- open: Optional. Open the work item in the default web browser.
- reason: Optional. Reason for the state of the work item.
- state: Optional. State of the work item, for example, Active.
- title: Optional. Title of the work item.
Example
You can only move one work item at a time using Azure DevOps CLI. In this example, we move work item ID=148 under the Fabrikam Fiber\Production Planning area path.
az boards work-item update --id 148 --area "Fabrikam Fiber\Production Planning" --output yaml
The YAML output listed below provides information on each of the fields defined for the work item.
fields:
Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority: 2
Microsoft.VSTS.Common.StackRank: 1500000001.0
Microsoft.VSTS.Common.StateChangeDate: '2021-11-23T22:26:28.27Z'
Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ValueArea: Business
System.AreaPath: Fabrikam Fiber\Production Planning
System.AssignedTo:
_links:
avatar:
href: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
descriptor: aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
displayName: Jamal Hartnett
id: d291b0c4-a05c-4ea6-8df1-4b41d5f39eff
imageUrl: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
uniqueName: fabrikamfiber4@hotmail.com
url: https://spsprodeus27.vssps.visualstudio.com/A5d5b8da6-3db7-4829-baf9-1e500c21cc12/_apis/Identities/d291b0c4-a05c-4ea6-8df1-4b41d5f39eff
System.BoardColumn: Backlog
System.ChangedBy:
_links:
avatar:
href: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
descriptor: aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
displayName: Jamal Hartnett
id: d291b0c4-a05c-4ea6-8df1-4b41d5f39eff
imageUrl: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
uniqueName: fabrikamfiber4@hotmail.com
url: https://spsprodeus27.vssps.visualstudio.com/A5d5b8da6-3db7-4829-baf9-1e500c21cc12/_apis/Identities/d291b0c4-a05c-4ea6-8df1-4b41d5f39eff
System.ChangedDate: '2022-05-19T22:58:52.93Z'
System.CommentCount: 0
System.CreatedBy:
_links:
avatar:
href: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
descriptor: aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
displayName: Jamal Hartnett
id: d291b0c4-a05c-4ea6-8df1-4b41d5f39eff
imageUrl: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/aad.NDEwY2FkMDQtOWQyOS03NDFlLTk2MmEtNGZlYmU2NGE1NTM4
uniqueName: fabrikamfiber4@hotmail.com
url: https://spsprodeus27.vssps.visualstudio.com/A5d5b8da6-3db7-4829-baf9-1e500c21cc12/_apis/Identities/d291b0c4-a05c-4ea6-8df1-4b41d5f39eff
System.CreatedDate: '2021-11-23T22:26:28.27Z'
System.Description: <div>This user story is for documentation purposes. </div>
System.IterationPath: Fabrikam Fiber\Release 2\Sprint 1
System.Reason: New
System.State: New
System.TeamProject: Fabrikam Fiber
System.Title: Test the Request feedback functionality
System.WorkItemType: User Story
WEF_10182DA5BCCD4CE2A43629FFBD290EF2_Kanban.Column: Backlog
id: 148
relations:
- attributes:
isLocked: false
name: Child
rel: System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Forward
url: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/854a3f67-9962-43d1-a968-2e5f2eb66c99/_apis/wit/workItems/152
- attributes:
isLocked: false
name: Child
rel: System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Forward
url: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/854a3f67-9962-43d1-a968-2e5f2eb66c99/_apis/wit/workItems/153
- attributes:
isLocked: false
name: Child
rel: System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Forward
url: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/854a3f67-9962-43d1-a968-2e5f2eb66c99/_apis/wit/workItems/151
- attributes:
isLocked: false
name: Child
rel: System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Forward
url: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/854a3f67-9962-43d1-a968-2e5f2eb66c99/_apis/wit/workItems/149
rev: 5
url: https://fabrikamprime.visualstudio.com/854a3f67-9962-43d1-a968-2e5f2eb66c99/_apis/wit/workItems/148
Verify your team backlog
After you move work items from one team to another team, check your team backlog to ensure the items appear. See Create your backlog.
If you encounter any problems, review Set up your project's backlogs and boards.
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