View and add work items using the Work Items page
VSTS
View work items that you created or are assigned to you. The Work>Work Items page provides several personalized pivots and filter functions to streamline listing work items. Use this page to quickly find work items defined across teams within a team project. You can enable it from the Preview features menu that you access from your account profile.
Note
Feature availability: The Work Items page is in preview and currently available from VSTS only.
Prerequisites
- You must connect to a team project. If you don't have an account or team project yet, create one in VSTS. You can then connect to a team project from your web portal or Visual Studio.
- To view or add work items, you must be a member of the Contributors group or be granted Stakeholder access. If you don't have access to the team project, ask the account owner or project administrator to add you.
Open the Work Items page
You can start viewing and adding work items once you connect to a team project.
Open a browser window, click the Work hub, and then the Work Items page.
Note
Depending on the process chosen when the team project was created—Agile, Scrum, or CMMI—the types of work items you can create will differ. For example, backlog items may be called product backlog items (Scrum), user stories (Agile), or requirements (CMMI). All three are similar: they describe the customer value to deliver and the work to be performed.
For an overview of all three processes, see Choose a process.
View work items
Using the drop-down menu, you can focus on relevant items inside a team project using one of the seven pivots as described next. Additionally, you can filter and sort each pivot view.
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Add a work item
Adding a work item is just one click away. Simply choose the work item type from the New Work Item drop down menu.
For example, here we choose User Story.
Tip
Work items you add are automatically scoped to the Currently selected team's area and iteration paths. To change the team context, see Switch team project or team focus.
Enter a title and then save the work item. Before you can change the State from its initial default, you must save it.
You can add tags to any work item to filter backlogs, queries, and work item lists.
Filter to create personal views
You can filter each work item pivot view by typing a keyword or using one or more of the fields provided, such as work item type (Types), State, Area Path, and Tags. The page remembers the filters you set for each pivot, supporting personalized views across all pivots.
Sort your view and other View options
You can sort your view by one of the column fields that you select from the View options menu.
Note
The column fields differ depending on the view that you select. You can't change the fields supported by a view.
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Copy selected items to the clipboard or email them
To select several items in a sequence, hold down the shift key. To select several non-sequential items, use the Ctrl key. Then, you can use Ctrl+c to copy the selected items to a clipboard. Or, you can open the context menu for the selected work items, click (), and then choose the option you want from the menu.
Open a view as a query
You can open any view, filtered view, or selected set of work items as a query. Simply click the Open in Queries link or Open selected items in Queries option from the context menu.
Queries provide additional features that you can use, including:
- Edit one or more fields of several work items
- Add or remove tags from several work items
- Change the work item type
- Delete work items
- Apply work item templates
- And more
For details, see Bulk modify work items. To learn more about queries, see Use the query editor to list and manage queries.
Work Items page controls
Use the following three controls to manage your views.
Control | Function |
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Set sort order, view completed items |
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Turn filtering On/Off |
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Enter or exit full screen mode |
Related articles
- Move, change, or delete work items (REcycle Bin)
- Enable preview features
- Use work item form controls
- Keyboard shortcuts for work item forms and the Work Items page
- Work from the account home page
Note
You can create and manage work items from the command line or scripts using the VSTS CLI.
Feedback and support
We welcome your feedback.
For product related inquiries, review our User Voice page or report a problem at Developer Community. Also, you can get advice on Stack Overflow, or get support via our Support page.
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