Working with Team Foundation Work Items
Team Foundation uses work items to help you manage the work that must be finished for a project. Different work item types track different types of work, such as customer requirements, product bugs, and development tasks. You can customize the work item types that are available in your team project to track your work in the way it makes sense for your development environment.
For information about a particular type of work item, see the process guidance for your team project. For more information, see Finding and Using Process Guidance.
Understanding Work Items
Work Item Types
All projects have "To Do" lists, and everyone on your team can be assigned various tasks over the course of your project. Some people are assigned specifications to write, others are assigned code to implement and then bugs to fix, and others are assigned tests to run. The work item database on your Team Foundation Server tracks these different types of work items. The work items available in your team project depend on the process you chose when you created your project. For more information about the specific work item types in your team project and their use, see the process guidance for your team project.
Work Item Workflow
To track the progress of your project, each work item is assigned to a person on your project team. However, work items can be passed around to different people on your team according to the project work flow. Each type of work item has a customized form and work flow. The administrators of your project can add new types and modify the ones that you are already using.
Work Item State
The current state of the work item and its progress is tracked on the work item form. The work item form has fields, states, and transitions that are relevant to the type of work item, and affect how you use those work items to track your work.
Work Item Queries
You find and manage your work items by using work item queries. Use Team Foundation query builder to build simple or complex queries to pinpoint the information that you need. When you run a query, the work items that match the query are shown in the results list.
The query builder and query results can be displayed in different ways. For more information, see Working With Work Item Queries.
Work Item Fields
Work items can contain different types of fields to capture data about the work item. The following table describes the field types and how to fill them in on your work item forms.
Text field
Accepts any text. There might be a limit on the number of characters for a text field.
Drop-down list
Accepts only the values available in the drop-down list.
Date field
Accepts dates in supported date formats.
Long text
Accepts extended text and limited text formatting.
History field
Records comments chronologically. You can add an entry to this field, but cannot change any saved entries.
In This Section
Adding and Modifying Work Items
Lists topics for adding and editing work items in Team Foundation.Working with Links and Attachments in Work Items
Contains topics that describe how links and attachments work in Team Foundation.Working with Version Control in Work Items
Contains topics that describe how Team Foundation version control and Team Foundation work item tracking interact in Team Foundation.Working with Work Items and Test Cases
Contains topics that describe how test cases and work items interact in Team Foundation.Working With Work Item Queries
Lists topics for viewing, creating, and running queries to find work items.