Manage and organize queries in Azure Boards and Azure DevOps

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Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2015 | Visual Studio 2013

Organize your personal or shared queries by adding a query folder. You can then add queries to or move existing queries into those folders. You can create queries and query folders from the web portal or from a supported client, such as Visual Studio Team Explorer and Team Explorer Everywhere, a plug-in for Eclipse.

Note

To create and manage queries in Visual Studio 2019, you need to Set the Work Items experience to the legacy option.

Prerequisites

• By default, all project members and users with Stakeholder access can view and run all shared queries. You can change the permissions set for a shared query folder or shared query. For details, see Set query permissions.
• To add and save a query under Shared queries, you must be granted Basic access or higher. Also, you must have your Contribute permission set to Allow for the folder you want to add the query to. By default, the Contributors group doesn't have this permission.

Open a query

Browser

From your web browser, open Boards>Queries.

Visual Studio

Note

To open, view, and run queries in Visual Studio 2019, you need to Set the Work Items experience to the legacy option.

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, edit, and save a query

The easiest way to define a query is to start with an existing shared query. The following example shows how to find all closed bugs by modifying the Active Bugs shared query provided with the Agile process template. Examples are based on the user interface provided through the web portal.

Browser

1. Open a shared query. For example, from the web portal, open the Active Bugs or similar flat list query.

   

   Tip

   If you're working in Visual Studio Team Explorer, open the Work page to access your queries and shared queries. If Team Explorer isn't visible, choose View>Team Explorer from the top level menu.

2. Edit the query to find closed bugs and then run the query. Use to insert a clause above the current clause. Use to delete a clause. Queries are automatically scoped to the current project. To find work items defined in several projects, see Query across projects.

   

3. Save the query to your My Queries folder.

   

   To save a query to the Shared Queries folder, you need to be a member of the Project Administrators group, or have your Contribute permissions on the folder set to Allow. To learn more, see Set query permissions.

Visual Studio

To save a query as a new query, open the query results and then from the toolbar choose File>Save QueryName As....

Specify the file name and folder location to use to save the query.

To save the query as a .wiq file, choose the File radio button and specify the file location.

Rename or delete a query

Browser

Choose the context menu icon of a query to edit, rename, or delete the query.

Visual Studio

From the Work Items page, open the context menu for the query you want to run, edit, rename, or delete and choose the corresponding option.

Add a query folder and move items into a folder

Tip

You need Delete permissions to rename or move a shared query or folder, and Contribute permissions for the folder where you move the query to. To view or set permissions, see Set permissions on queries and query folders.

Browser

You add query folders from the Boards>Queries page.

1. To add a folder, choose the context menu for an existing folder or the top container folder and select New query folder.

   Enter the name for the folder in the New query folder dialog.

   

2. To move items into a folder, drag-and-drop a query onto the folder.

   Optionally, you can choose the context icon for an existing query and choose Rename. In the Rename query dialog, select the folder you want to save the query in.

   

Visual Studio

From the Work Items page, open the context menu for My Queries, Team Queries, or an existing query folder, and choose New Folder.

A New Folder is added under the area you selected. Select the folder to rename it.

Add a query to the dashboard or share it with your team

To add a query to a dashboard, open the actions icon (or context icon) menu for the query and add it to a specific dashboard or as a team favorite.

Share queries with your team by adding them to a folder under the Shared Queries container. To save a query to a Shared Queries folder, get added to the Project Collection Administrators group or have your permissions set for a folder under Shared Queries.

You can only add shared queries to dashboards or as team favorites, and only if you have team administrator or project administrator permissions.

Related articles

• Query FAQs
• Set query permissions
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Change project-level permissions