View, run, or email a work item query

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2022

To locate work items assigned to you or your team, you can run a query. Your process could include several predefined queries that you can access and run. Often, it's easier to create a new query by modifying an existing query definition.

Note

The browser images used in this article are from the new boards hubs feature, which is enabled by default. If this feature is not enabled, you might be using the previous boards experience. To display the images for the previous experience, select the Azure DevOps Server 2022 version of this article.

Prerequisites

• Access levels:
  • Have Stakeholder access to view and run shared queries. All project members have Stakeholder access by default. For more information, see Change the permissions for a shared query or folder.
  • Have Basic access or higher to add and save a shared query.
• Permissions: Have your Contribute permission set to Allow for the folder that you want to add a query to. By default, the Contributors group doesn't have this permission.

Note

Users with Stakeholder access for a public project have full access to query features just like users with Basic access. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.

Open Queries

Browser

From your project, choose Boards > Queries, and then choose All.

The Queries page opens to the Favorites tab that lists the queries you set as favorites. You can choose the All tab to view all queries you defined and shared queries for the project.

Tip

Queries you or your team have chosen as favorites show up on the Favorites page. Favorite queries along with other objects also appear on your Project page. For more information, see Set personal or team favorites.

Visual Studio

Important

We strongly recommend that everyone use the default view instead of this legacy view. It is designed for you to quickly access a list of work items based on your assignment, following, mentioned, or recent updates. The legacy view is no longer being enhanced and we expect to remove it in a future release of Visual Studio.

1. From the Team Explorer home page, choose Work Items.

   

2. To open a query, open the context menu for the query (right-click with your mouse), and choose View Results. Or, double-click the query to open it.

   

Or, select one of the following options:

• Edit Query: Opens the Query Editor for the selected query.
• New Query: Opens the Query Editor with the default new query options.
• Open in Microsoft Excel (Flat): Opens the query in Microsoft Excel.
• Send to Microsoft Outlook: Open
• Cut: Cuts the query. You can then paste the query under a different folder.
• Copy: Copies the query. You can then paste the query under the same folder or a different folder.
• Delete: Deletes the query.
• Rename: Enables you to rename the query.
• Add to My Favorites: Adds the query to the My Favorites section.
• Add to Team Favorites: Adds the query to the Team Favorites section.
• Security: Opens the Permissions dialog for the query.

Run a query in Azure Boards

To run any query, expand a folder and choose the title of the query. The view opens to display the query Results.

You can also run a query by using the Azure DevOps command line interface.

Browser

Tip

The Queries page, as with other web portal pages, remembers the view you last went to and returns you to that view.

1. Choose All to open the page where you can view all queries you defined or that are shared within your project.

   

2. Choose My Queries as needed.

   • To view all work items assigned to you, choose Assigned to me. This query uses the @Me macro to list all work items assigned to you.
   • To view all work items you're following, choose Followed work items. This query uses the @Follows macro (ID in @Follows) to list all work items you follow. For more information, see Follow a work item or pull request.

3. Choose Shared Queries to expand the folder and access queries saved as shared queries.

Visual Studio

Important

We strongly recommend that everyone use the default view instead of this legacy view. It is designed for you to quickly access a list of work items based on your assignment, following, mentioned, or recent updates. The legacy view is no longer being enhanced and we expect to remove it in a future release of Visual Studio.

• From the Team Explorer Work Items, page, open the context menu for the query (right-click with your mouse), and choose View Results. Or, double-click the query to open it.

  

Run a query from the command line

You can run a query in the CLI with the az boards query command. To get started, see Get started with Azure DevOps CLI.

az boards query [--id]
                [--org]
                [--path]
                [--project]
                [--wiql] 

Parameters

• id: The ID of an existing query. Required unless--path or--wiql is specified.
• wiql: The query in Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format. Ignored if --id or --path is specified.
• path: The path of an existing query. Ignored if--id is specified.
• org: Azure DevOps organization URL. You can configure the default organization using az devops configure -d organization=ORG_URL. Required if not configured as default or picked up using git config. Example: --org https://dev.azure.com/MyOrganizationName/.
• project: Name or ID of the project. You can configure the default project using az devops configure -d project=NAME_OR_ID. Required if not configured as default or picked up using git config.

Example

The following command runs a query with the specified ID and shows the result in table format.

az boards query --id 6c286d74-26a5-4cce-bfcf-bf9123495bfe  --output table

Priority    Node Name         Work Item Type    Title                             Remaining Work
----------  ----------------  ----------------  --------------------------------  ----------------
1           Voice             Bug               Apply fix elsewhere as needed
2           CMMI              Bug               Slow response on form
1           Fiber             Bug               Check issues with permissions     0
2           Fiber             Bug               Voicemail hang issue              0
2           FabrikamBB        Bug               Research slow response time
1           FabrikamBB        Bug               Fix performance issues            0 

The following command runs a query with the specified WIQL and shows the result in table format.

az boards query --wiql "SELECT [Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority], [System.NodeName], [System.WorkItemType], [System.Title], [Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork], [System.AssignedTo], [System.State], [System.Tags], [System.AreaPath] FROM workitems WHERE [System.WorkItemType] = 'Bug' AND [System.AreaPath] = 'Fabrikam Fiber' ORDER BY [System.WorkItemType]" --output table

Priority    Node Name       Work Item Type    Title                  Remaining Work
----------  --------------  ----------------  ----------------       ----------------
2           Fabrikam Fiber  Bug               Slow response on form
2           Fabrikam Fiber  Bug               Check permissions
2           Fabrikam Fiber  Bug               Fix performance issue
2           Fabrikam Fiber  Bug               Secure Sign-in 

Query directory, query folders, and breadcrumbs

Note

You can't add folders to My Favorites or Team Favorites.

Browser

The Queries page contains a Favorites and an All tab. Each contains a directory-focused view that you can filter to find specific queries of interest.

When you're working in the Queries pages, you can go to a folder, subfolder, or a query page.

You can also select a favorite query or return to the All queries page from the drop-down menu of an open query.

Visual Studio

The Work Items page displays the same folder structure as defined in the web portal. Changes you make through Visual Studio are reflected in the web portal.

You can expand and collapse folders, rename folders, and drag and drop queries from one folder to another. For more information, see Manage and organize queries

For more information, see Query FAQs, Navigate, and Folders.

All and Favorites supported tasks

You can do most tasks for viewing and running queries from each of the queries list pages as indicated in the following table. Only queries you save under My Queries and have favorited show up under My Favorites. Only queries saved under Shared Queries can be favorited by a team.

Task	Favorites (Browser)	All (Browser)	Work Items (Team Explorer)
View all favorited queries, yours or a team you belong to	✔️		✔️
View all your queries or shared queries for the current project		✔️	✔️
Run a query, open the context menu for a query	✔️	✔️	✔️
Expand or collapse container folders or query folders	✔️	✔️	✔️
Filter the list of queries	✔️	✔️
Favorite a query (for web portal, choose )		✔️
Unfavorite a query (for web portal, choose )	✔️	✔️	✔️
Add a new query: Choose	✔️	✔️	✔️

Filter the list of queries

Enter a keyword into the filter box to filter the set of queries displayed on either the Favorites or All pages. To learn more about filtering, see Filter backlogs, boards, queries, and plans.

For more information, see Query FAQs, Navigate, and Folders.

Email query items or share a query URL

Browser

From the Query Editor or Results view, you can email a formatted list of query items or copy the query URL.

Choose the more actions icon to open the menu and select from the options listed, Email query or Copy query URL.

You can only send the email to individual address for a project member that the system recognizes. Adding a team group or security group to the "To" line isn't supported. If you add an email account that the system doesn't recognize, you receive a message that one or more recipients of your email doesn't have permissions to read the mailed work items.

Note

To email a formatted list to people who aren't project members, you'll need to use the Copy as HTML option described in Copy a list of work items. For on-premises Azure DevOps, all email actions require an SMTP server to be configured. If you don't have an SMTP server configured, you can work around this by using Copy as HTML.

Visual Studio

You can email a formatted query list by choosing the Send to Microsoft Outlook option from the context menu.

Note

This feature requires you to have Microsoft Outlook installed. For on-premises Azure DevOps, all email actions require an SMTP server to be configured. If you don't have an SMTP server configured, you can work around this by using Copy as HTML from the web portal.

Next steps

Define a query

Related articles

• Manage queries and query folders
• Interactively filter backlogs, boards, queries, and plans
• Change column options
• Set personal or team favorites
• Keyboard shortcuts