Use state transition actions to automate transitions of work items at various points in their workflow. You might consider the following usage details about transition actions:

• Transition actions are optional. If the current state of the work item instance has an action entry for the specified action, it returns the "to" state. If not, the return value is Null. Integrations should handle Null return values gracefully. That is:

  • Do not fail.

  • Leave a trace or log that indicates that the integration did not auto-transition because it required an action that was not found

• For each work item type, actions must be unique for From State/Action pairs. This means that work item type authors cannot specify multiple "to" states for the same action.

• However, multiple actions on the same transition are supported to allow for multiple auto-transition integrations. For example:

  <TRANSITION from="Working" to="Ready To Build">
  <ACTIONS>
  <ACTION value="Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.Checkin"/>
  <ACTION value="ADatum.Actions.Complete"/>
  </ACTIONS>
  </TRANSITION>

• Action names are programmatic names for which you can use only English characters.

• Action names should follow the same reference namespace convention as field reference names to avoid action name conflicts between vendors and customers. However, this convention is not enforced by the tool. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System uses Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.<your action>.

See Also