Finding Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere)

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To track the status of a work item or the progress of an iteration or release, you can define and run a work item query. You can use the query editor in the Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse to define filter criteria. The query results appear as a list or a tree view of work items.

Finding a list of work items

Task sequence for finding work items

From the query results view, you can perform any of the following tasks:

  • Open a work item.

  • Create a work item that is automatically linked to a selected work item.

  • View a multi-tiered, hierarchical tree of work items that are associated by tree links.

  • View a two-tiered set of top-level work items and those work items that directly link to them.

  • Share the query results with other team members.

The following tasks are supported by other clients of Team Foundation but not by this release of the Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse:

  • In Team Explorer, you can also change linked associations by using the drag-and-drop operation within a direct links or tree view.

  • Export the query results to or open the query results within Office Excel or Office Project, make modifications, and then publish the updated items back to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

  • Open the query results within Office Excel to generate work item reports.

  • Export the query results to Office Outlook, and send them in e-mail.

  • Print the query results.

Common Tasks

Task

Supporting Content

Find a single work item. Look up a work item based on its ID.

Find a list of work items. Generate a list of work items by using the query editor to define the criteria. Based on the type of query that you use, you can view a flat list of work items or a hierarchical list that illustrates dependencies.

Define and refine search criteria. All work item queries consist of one or more query clauses. Each clause comprises a field, an operator, and a value. You create and modify queries by adding, removing, modifying, and grouping as many clauses and fields as you need to generate the filtered set of work items that meet your needs.

Manage and share your work item queries. You can create, save, copy, and rename work item queries. You can maintain a private set of queries or share them with other team members.

Add columns, and sort query results. You can add column fields to the query results so that you can view additional information about each work item. You can sort the list of work items so that they are grouped in meaningful ways.

Print query results. You cannot print work items from the Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse. You must use another Team Foundation client, such as Team Web Access or Visual Studio.

You can use work item queries and query results to share information, generate reports, and efficiently create associations among work items. In the following table, select the content that supports the task of interest:

Task

Supporting Content

Share work items with other team members. You can share work items, work item queries, and query results with other team members by using e-mail, using query folders, or posting hyperlinks.

Sharing Work Items and Queries with Team Members (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Create links from one work item to multiple work items. If you want to associate work items, you can open a work item query and select the items to which you want to link.

Create Relationships Between Work Items and Other Resources (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Create reports. You can communicate progress of iterations and releases by creating reports from query results.

Creating, Customizing, and Managing Reports for Visual Studio ALM.

See Also

Other Resources

Tracking Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere)