Create or Delete Relationships Between Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere)

You can create relationships between work items to make a simple association, view two-tiered or hierarchical relationships, and track and manage dependencies. To create these relationships, you can add a link between one work item and another or many work items. When you add a link from one work item to another work item, Team Foundation must modify both work items.

All link relationships are stored in the work item database for Team Foundation. When you add, modify, or delete a link, your changes are applied to that database when you are working in Office Excel or Office Project. When you are working in Team Web Access or Team Explorer, your changes are applied to the database when you save one of the work items that are either the source or target of the link relationship.

When you create a one-to-many relationship, you use one of the following methods to create a list of work items:

• Saved query. Use this method when you have created a query that you know contains the set or subset of the work items that you want. For more information, see Finding Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items.

• Work item IDs. Use this method when you know the IDs of the work items and you would rather type those IDs than run a query or a title search.

• Title search. Use this method to find work items that have a common word or phrase in the work item title field, and optionally, by team project and work item type.

In this topic

To add, modify, or delete a link in a work item, complete one of the following procedures:

• Adding a Link from a Work Item to an Existing Work Item

• Finding, Listing, and Selecting Work Items to Add

• Deleting a Link Between Work Items

Note

In the Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse, you cannot modify links. To make changes, you must delete and re-add a link.

To create a work item and link to an existing work item, see Create a Linked Work Item (Team Explorer Everywhere).

Required Permissions

To add, modify, or remove a link between work items, you must have permission to view both of the work items and to modify at least one of them. You must be a member of the Contributors group or have your View work items in this node, and your Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Note

The following procedures assume that the team project uses the work item types for MSF for Agile Software Development, which are included with Team Foundation. If your team project uses a different process, these procedures might not apply to your work items. You might need to refer to the custom help documentation created for the process that you will use. For more information, see Access a Team Project Portal and Process Guidance.

Adding a Link from a Work Item to an Existing Work Item

To add a link to a work item by using Team Explorer

1. In Team Explorer, open the work item that you want to edit.

2. Click the tab for managing links.

   Note

   The name of the tab might be Links, All links, or Implementation. The name of the tab is determined by the work item definition.

3. Click Link to.

   The Add Link dialog box opens.

4. In Link type, specify the type of link that you want to create.

   Note

   Do not select Changeset, Hyperlink, Test Result, or Version Item. These link types do not create relationships between work items. For more information about those types of links, see Create Relationships Between Work Items and Other Resources (Team Explorer Everywhere). For more information, see the procedure listed below: Finding, Listing, and Selecting Work Items to Add.

5. In Work item id, specify the work items to which this work item should link, separated by commas or semicolons.

   You can also find and select work items to add. For more information, see Finding, Listing, and Selecting Work Items to Add later in this topic.

6. (Optional) In Comment, type a description.

7. Click OK.

8. On the File menu, click Save or press Ctrl+S.

Finding, Listing, and Selecting Work Items to Add

To find, list, and select work items

1. In the Add Link dialog box, click the Browse button to open the Choose Related Work Item dialog box.

2. (Optional) To create a link to a work item that is in defined in another team project, in the Project list, click the name of the project that contains the work items that you want to find.

   Note

   The Project list appears only when you are searching for work items to link to the current work item.

3. Specify one of the following search methods, and then define the search criteria:

   • Saved query

     Click the browse (...) button.

     In the Select Query list, expand the team project, expand My Queries or Team Queries, and then click the name of the saved query for which you want to display results.

     Note

     You can drag a corner of the dialog box to make it larger and display more saved queries.

   • IDs

     In IDs, type the work item IDs of the work items that you want to find. Separate IDs by commas, semicolons, or spaces.

   • Title contains

     In Title contains, type the word or words that the work item title should contain.

     (Optional for Team Explorer) In the and type list, click the type of work item that you want to retrieve.

     Note

     If you narrow the filter criteria for the search, the query runs more quickly.

4. Click Find.

   Note

   The results are filtered based on criteria that are placed on the links control. For example, the links control might allow bugs only. If the results are filtered, a message appears in the dialog box that indicates the types of work items that are included (or excluded) from the results. The filter criteria are defined by the work item type.

5. (Optional) Change the display of the result list by performing any one of the following steps:

   • To resize a column, point to the edge of a column title and drag the column boundary to a new location.

   • To sort on a column field, click the column title.

   For additional options, see Keyboard Shortcuts for the Query Editor and Query Results View (TEE).

6. Specify each item in the result list that should link to the current work item.

   Note

   To specify a continuous range of work items, press and hold the SHIFT key when you click the first and last work item in the range. To specify a non-continuous set of columns, press and hold the CTRL key when you click each work item.

7. Click OK.

Deleting a Link Between Work Items

To edit or delete a link between work items

1. In Team Explorer, open the work item that you want to edit.

2. Click the tab for managing links.

   Note

   The name of the tab might be Links, All links, or Implementation. The name of the tab is determined by the work item definition.

3. Click or select the work items that should no longer be linked to the source work item.

   Note

   To specify a continuous range of work items, press and hold the SHIFT key when you click the first and last work item in the range. To specify a non-continuous set of work items, press and hold the CTRL key when you click each work item.

4. Click Delete.

5. Click OK to confirm the deletion.

6. On the File menu, click Save (or press Ctrl+S) to save the changes to both the source and target work items, and to delete the links from the Team Foundation database.

See Also

Tasks

Create a Linked Work Item (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Other Resources

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

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

Linking Work Items (Agile)

Linking Work Items (CMMI)