witAdmin: Administering Objects for Tracking Work Items
You can change how you track your team's progress by creating and customizing objects that track work items. By using the witadmin command-line tool, you can create, delete, import, and export objects such as categories, global lists, global workflow, types of links, and types of work items. You can also permanently delete types of work item types, and you can delete, list, or change the attributes of fields in work item.
As the following illustration shows, you manage categories and types of and work items for each team project. You manage global lists, types of links, and fields in work item for each team project collection. You can customize global workflow for a team project or a collection.
Note
You can create and modify objects for tracking work items by using Process Editor, a power tool for Visual Studio. This tool is not supported. For more information, see the following page on the Microsoft website: Team Foundation Server PowerTools.
In this topic
Requirements
Global Parameters
Command Index
Requirements
- To use the witadmin command-line tool, you must connect to the application-tier server for Team Foundation Server.
To access the witadmin command-line tool, open a Command Prompt window where either Visual Studio or Team Explorer is installed and enter:
cd %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE
On a 64-bit edition of Windows, replace **%programfiles% **with %programfiles(x86)%.
A Command Prompt window opens to the directory that contains the witadmin command-line tool.
Global Parameters
You can use the following parameters to display help text for witadmin.
Parameter |
Description |
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/help or /? |
Displays the syntax and parameters for the witadmin command-line tool. |
command /help or command /? |
Displays the syntax and parameters for the witadmin command that you specify. |
Command Index
Tasks |
Related content |
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Create and modify work item types. Work item types define the fields and behavior that you use to create and manage work items. You can create and modify types of work items to support the process objectives of your team and your team project. You can manage work item types for a team project by using the following witadmin commands:
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Customize process configuration. You can customize several process configuration elements to meet your Agile planning and Scrum processes. Many of these elements control the interactive tools and visual displays provided with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012and Team Web Access.
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Define and manage groups of work item types. By using categories, you can group work item types and then perform operations on them as a set. For example, you can specify a category when you define the criteria of a work item query to find all work items in that category, regardless of whether the items are different types. You can manage work item categories for a team project by using the following witadmin commands:
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Create, modify, export, import, and display global lists for work item types. By using global lists, you can share list items among multiple types of work items. You can manage global lists for a collection by using the following witadmin commands:
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Create, modify, export, or import a global workflow. By using global workflow, you can minimize the work required to define and update global lists and fields in work items that many team projects and types of work items share. You can share definitions of fields and list items among multiple types of work items. You manage global workflow for each team project or collection by using the following witadmin commands:
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Create, modify, list, activate, deactivate, import, and export types of links. By using link types, you can associate work items based on a set of link rules. If you create custom types of links, you can track work items and their dependencies in more ways. You can manage types of links for a collection by using the following witadmin commands:
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Delete, list, and rename fields in types of work items, and redefine the fields that determine indexing and reporting characteristics. You use fields to find work items and to track information in them. You can manage fields for a collection by using the following witadmin commands:
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Destroy work items. You can permanently remove work items from a team project collection by using the witadmin destroywi command. |
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Force a rebuild of the client cache. After certain maintenance operations, you can force a rebuild of the cache of all client computers the next time that they connect to a team project collection. For example, you might force a rebuild after you move, rename, restore, or fail over a data-tier or application-tier server. By forcing a rebuild, you help prevent workspace errors during version control or build operations. To perform this operation, you use the witadminrebuildcache command. |
See Also
Concepts
Customize Project Tracking Data, Forms, Workflow, and Other Objects
Other Resources
Determine Your Process and Tracking Customization Requirements