Design and Customize a Work Item Form

You can design and customize the work item forms for each work item type that you define for your team project. Some of the reasons that you might want to customize a work item form include the following:

  • Add or remove work item fields for tracking purposes, or change the field labels to support your team's naming conventions.

  • Add informational text to support appropriate use of a work item field. Optionally, you can add hyperlinks to detailed process guidance or add other Web sites and associate these with a field or stand-alone text.

  • Customize the types of links and the types of work items that can be linked to by a work item type.

  • Display dynamic reports or dashboard information in a work item form.

You customize the content and placement of user interface elements on the form that displays for a work item by defining the FORM section of the work item type definition. Each work item type must have only one FORM section. You describe the whole form, which includes all its tabs, fields, and groups.

Common Tasks

Tasks

Related content

Segment, group, and size different areas within a work item form. You can change the layout of the work item form by modifying the FORMsection of the XML file for the work item type. You can understand how to structure your work item forms by learning about the top level FORM section elements of a work item type definition.

Learn about the types of controls that you can add to a work item form. You customize a work item form by adding controls that group fields, specify columns and tabs, and display fields, text, Web content, and other items. The Control element supports nine types of control elements that can be added to the work item form.

Add text, hyperlinks, or Web content to a work item form. You can add informational text to a work item form by using the LabelText element. The label is not associated with any work item field.

You can add a hyperlink to a field or a stand-alone label on a work item form by using the Link element.

You can specify a URL or raw HTML content to appear on a tab or in group area of a form. You add content by modifying the XML file for the work item type.

Control the link relationships that can be created for a work item type. You use the LinksControlOptions element to define the options that control what links can be added to a work item and to which work item types. Also, you can specify the default columns that you want to appear for the list of links in a work item.

See Also

Concepts

All WITD XML Elements Reference

Work Item Type Definition Localization and Globalization

Customize Project Tracking Data, Forms, Workflow, and Other Objects

Other Resources

Define and Customize Work Item Workflow