Exercise 5: Creating a Report in Microsoft Excel

In this exercise, you will learn how to create a report in Microsoft Excel using data provided by a work item query in Visual Studio 2010.

1. In Team Explorer, expand Tailspin Toys to the Team Queries node (Tailspin Toys | Work Items | Team Queries).

   Figure 1

   Using Team Explorer to locate default team queries

2. Right-click on the My Bugs query and then select Create Report in Microsoft Excel.

   Figure 2

   Right-click on a query to create a report in Microsoft Excel

3. After Microsoft Excel loads and displays the New Work Item Report dialog box, select All Reports and then select the Finish button.

   Figure 3

   New Work Item Report selection dialog box

   Note:

   The report generation process may take some time to complete depending upon the machine used and the amount of data available.

4. After the report has been generated, you will see a worksheet that contains a table of contents to the generated reports. Select the first link named Stack Rank from the table of contents to navigate to the worksheet named 1.1 Stack Rank.

   Figure 4

   Table of contents for report generated in Microsoft Excel

5. The Work Item Count by Stack Rank report is just what it sounds like - for selected work items, it shows the top 10 stack rank values by work item count. Many different dimensions of filtering can be applied to explore this data set.

   Figure 5

   Stack rank report for work item count

6. Although the data in the virtual machine does not provide much data to work with for demonstrating the value of the reports, go ahead and navigate through some of the other reports to see what is available by default.

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