How to: Import a Work Item Type to an Existing Project
After you have exported a work item type using witexport and made changes to the XML file, you can import the work item type to your Team Foundation Server using the command-line tool witimport. For more information about the command-line tools, see witexport or witimport.
Required Permissions
To perform this procedure you must be a member of the Team Foundation Administrators group or a member of the Project Administrators group for the project. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.
To use Team Foundation commands at the command prompt
Click Start, click All Programs, point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, point to Visual Studio Tools, and then click Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt.
Alternatively, you can run vsvars32 in the Visual Studio installation path; usually DriveLetter:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools.
Note
You must have Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 installed to use the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt.
To import changes
Open a Visual Studio Command Prompt window.
Import the changed work item type into the Team Foundation Server. To do this, at a Visual Studio command prompt, type the following, and then press ENTER:
witimport /f " File Path " /t " Team Foundation Server name " /p " Team Project name "
Note
If you are running the Windows Vista operating system, you might not have access rights to certain folders. If you tried to save the work item type XML file to a location where you do not have access rights, the registry virtualization technology automatically redirected and saved the file to the virtual store. For more information, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92325 and https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92323. To avoid this redirection, you can save the file in a location where you have access rights.
This imports the work item type into the Team Foundation Server. The following is displayed when the import operation finishes:
Work item type import complete.
Select Team Explorer, and then on the View menu, click Refresh to download the latest updates from the server.
These updates include the changes that you just imported. Wait several seconds until all the nodes are loaded. Nodes that are still loading display the word working.
Create a new work item using your modified work item type. To do this, right-click the Work Items node, point to Add Work Item, and then click the work item.
This work item is created from the work item type that you changed and imported.
See Also
Tasks
How to: Export a Work Item Type from an Existing Project