Work Item template editor

THIS APPLIES TO TFS 2005

The work item template editor (WTE) comes in handy when we have a lot of work items that have repeating data in them for the most part. If you have wanted a template which you could derive from and just fill the fields that you wanted to (halfway through your project, you realize a new customized work item type might make things a lot simpler)..Voila!!!…that’s precisely what work item template editor power toy lets us do.

 

 Its inside the Show Template Tool window under the Work Item Templates menu item 

Follow these steps to create a new work item template and make it the default template.

 

1.      Go to Show template tool window.

2.      New template is one of the menu items in the Show Template tool window. Click on that to bring up the Select work item type window.

 

3.       Choose the work item you want to create a template for. (Example: Bug)

 

Note that there are 3 Required fields in the bug work item and as many as 10 fields totally not including the tabs. By setting a template for this work item, you can fill in the fields and attach files/Create links etc and then use that template to create as many similar work items as you want. Isn’t that a nice to have??

4.      To set that as your default template, just right click on it and click on Set default template.

5.      Now, when you need to create a new work item from the default template, just click on the Work Item Templates under the Team menu and choose New work item from the Default template