View and add work items using the Work Items page

• 03/20/2018
• 4 minutes to read

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.

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.

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.

Assigned to me: lists all work items assigned to you in the project in the order they were last updated. To open or update a work item, simply click its title. Following: lists work items that you've elected to follow. Mentioned: lists work items in which you've been mentioned in the last 30 days. My activity: lists work items that you have recently viewed or updated. Recently updated: lists work items recently updated in the project. Recently completed: lists work items completed or closed in the project. Recently created: lists work items created within the last 30 days in the team project.

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.

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.

ID, Work Item Type, Title, State, Area Path, Tags (Assigned to me view): Sorts by the column selected. Ascending/Descending: click to change the sort order. Completed Work Items: Click the slider to choose to show completed work items in the current pivot view.

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
	Set sort order, view completed items
	Turn filtering On/Off
/	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

Feedback and support

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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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