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Organize your personal or shared queries by adding a query folder. You can then add queries to or move existing queries into those folders. You can create queries and query folders from the web portal or from a supported client, such as Visual Studio Team Explorer and Team Explorer Everywhere, a plug-in for Eclipse.

Note

To create and manage queries in Visual Studio 2019, you need to Set the Work Items experience to the legacy option.

Prerequisites

Open a query

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Note

To open, view, and run queries in Visual Studio 2019, you need to Set the Work Items experience to the legacy option.

1. From the Team Explorer home page, choose Work Items.

   

2. To open a query, open the context menu for the query (right-click with your mouse), and choose View Results. Or, double-click the query to open it.

   

Or, select one of the following options:

• Edit Query: Opens the Query Editor for the selected query.
• New Query: Opens the Query Editor with the default new query options.
• Open in Microsoft Excel (Flat): Opens the query in Microsoft Excel.
• Send to Microsoft Outlook: Open
• Cut: Cuts the query. You can then paste the query under a different folder.
• Copy: Copies the query. You can then paste the query under the same folder or a different folder.
• Delete: Deletes the query.
• Rename: Enables you to rename the query.
• Add to My Favorites: Adds the query to the My Favorites section.
• Add to Team Favorites: Adds the query to the Team Favorites section.
• Security: Opens the Permissions dialog for the query.

Run, edit, and save a query

The easiest way to define a query is to start with an existing shared query. The following example shows how to find all closed bugs by modifying the Active Bugs shared query provided with the Agile process template. Examples are based on the user interface provided through the web portal.

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To save a query as a new query, open the query results and then from the toolbar choose File>Save QueryName As....

Specify the file name and folder location to use to save the query.

To save the query as a .wiq file, choose the File radio button and specify the file location.

Rename or delete a query

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From the Work Items page, open the context menu for the query you want to run, edit, rename, or delete and choose the corresponding option.

Add a query folder and move items into a folder

Tip

You need Delete permissions to rename or move a shared query or folder, and Contribute permissions for the folder where you move the query to. To view or set permissions, see Set permissions on queries and query folders.

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From the Work Items page, open the context menu for My Queries, Team Queries, or an existing query folder, and choose New Folder.

A New Folder is added under the area you selected. Select the folder to rename it.

Add a query to the dashboard or share it with your team

To add a query to a dashboard, open the actions icon (or context icon) menu for the query and add it to a specific dashboard or as a team favorite.

Share queries with your team by adding them to a folder under the Shared Queries container. To save a query to a Shared Queries folder, get added to the Project Collection Administrators group or have your permissions set for a folder under Shared Queries.

You can only add shared queries to dashboards or as team favorites, and only if you have team administrator or project administrator permissions.

Related articles

• Query FAQs
• Set query permissions
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Change project-level permissions