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Creating, Copying, and Updating Work Items

You can use any one of the Team Foundation client programs to create a work item or update an existing work item. You can track progress on a team project by reassigning work items, modifying, and changing their states. You can work more quickly by making the same addition or change to multiple work items at the same time by using Office Excel or Office Project.

You can perform most tasks, but not all of them, by using any one of the Team Foundation client programs. For more information, see Working with Team Foundation Clients.

When you create many work items or perform bulk edits to existing work items, you may want to use Office Excel or Office Project. By using these client tools, you can open lists of work items, modify selected fields, and publish the changes to Team Foundation Server. For more information, see the Related Tasks in section later in this topic:

Common Tasks

Tasks

Supporting content

Create a work item. You can create work items by opening an empty work item form. You can also create a work item that is linked to a currently selected or open work item.

Copy a work item. To create a work item quickly, you can copy one that is already in the work item database, and then modify the copy.

Format text in a work item. You can enhance readability by applying formatting to some fields.

Modify a work item. Modify a work item by reassigning it, attaching files, creating links, or by making other changes to work item fields. To modify many work items at a time, you can use Team Web Access, Office Excel, or Office Project.

Assign work items and track progress. You can assign a work item to a person when you want that person to supply information or perform work that helps complete the work item. When you change the state of a work item, you track its progress from an active to closed state.

Related tasks

Supporting content

Perform a bulk edit of existing work items. You can use Office Excel and Office Project to add a large number of new work items, modify them, link them to each other and to other items, and publish them to the work item database.

Add links and attach files to work items. You can add links to create relationships among work items and attach files to share detailed information about the work item.

Find work items or generate a list of work items. You can use work item queries to generate a list that contains work items that you want to modify, create links to, or for which you want to generate a report.

Schedule and assign work item tasks. You can use the scheduling and planning tools in Office Project to create, modify, and update a subset of work item tasks that are stored in the Team Foundation database. 

See Also

Concepts

Working with Team Foundation Clients

What's New in Tracking Work Items

Adding and Modifying Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items