View and Modify Work Items in a Direct Links View (Team Explorer Everywhere)

You can manage and review changes to your work items more easily by using the direct links view. You can find work items that are associated by links by using the Work Items and Direct Links query. Within the direct links view, you can focus on a group of linked work.

A direct links view of work items is especially useful when you want to perform the following tasks:

• Review active tasks grouped by feature area.

• Assess changes that were made to work items that you do not own but that your work items depend on.

• Assess changes that were made to dependent work items at a point in time.

• Manage commitments made to other project teams.

• Manage cross-group dependencies.

• Change link relationships by moving or copying a source work item to a target work item.

You can use the direct links view to list work items which are associated using link types that are based on any type of link. The direct links view can only show one level of dependency. To view multiple levels of hierarchical relationships among work items, use the Tree of Work Items query. For more information, see View and Modify Work Items in a Tree View (Team Explorer Everywhere).

In this topic

• Listing Work Items in a Direct Links Query

• Changing a Query to a Direct Links Query

After your query is defined, you can save it in order to reuse it or share it with other team members. For more information, see Organize and Set Permissions on Work Item Queries (Team Explorer Everywhere).

Required Permissions

To perform these procedures, you must be a member of the Readers group or your View work items in this node permission must be set to Allow. To save a query as a team query, you must have the appropriate permissions set. For more information, see the following topic on the Microsoft Web site: Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Listing Work Items in a Direct Links Query

To create a direct links view query

1. Expand your team project, expand the Work Items node, right-click Team Queries or My Queries, and then click New Query.

2. For the type of query, click Work Items and Direct Links.

3. Specify the filter criteria for the top tier of work items:

   1. Click each column in the query clause to fill in the clause. If a column has a list of accepted values, click the arrow and select one from the list. For a description of the available columns, see Query Fields, Operators, Values, and Variables (Team Explorer Everywhere).

   2. Click the * in the left-most column to add a new clause, and specify the values for Field, Operator, and Value.

   3. Repeat step 3b to add all of the filter criteria that will return the list of work items that you want. Group or ungroup clauses as needed. For more information, see Specify Query Criteria.

   4. Right-click in the query editor and click Run Query.

      You can also click Run Query on the toolbar.

   5. Repeat steps 3c and 3d until you get the set of work items that you want.

4. (Optional) To narrow your search more, you can specify the filter criteria for linked work items:

   Filter Criteria for Linked Work Items

   

   1. Specify the And linked work items that match the query below. Perform the same sequence of steps provided above in step 3.

   2. To add another clause to the query, click the * in the left-most column, and specify the values for Field, Operator, and Value. Specify In as the Operator value to filter link types that belong to a set, for example Fulfilled by.

   3. Select the Linking Filters that will additionally filter your first-tier list of work items as follows:

      • Return all top level work items: All first-tier work items are returned regardless of the linked work items filter criteria. All second-tier work items that are linked to the first tier are returned based on the linked work items filter criteria.

      • Only return work items that have the specified links: Only first-tier work items are returned that have links to work items specified by the linked work items filter criteria.

      • Only return work items that do not have the specified links: Only first-tier work items are returned that do not have links to work items specified by the linked work items filter criteria.

   4. (Optional) Click Return selected link types, and then select one or more of the available check boxes for the link types to include in your criteria.

   5. On the toolbar, click Run Query, and confirm that your query returned the results that you expected.

   6. Modify the filter criteria that you specified in steps 4a, 4b, or 4c and then repeat step 4d until you get the first and second-tier of work items that you want.

5. (Optional) On the toolbar, click Column Options to modify which columns appear in the query results. For more information, see Add, Remove, Reorder, and Sort Columns (Team Explorer Everywhere).

6. (Optional) On the File menu or the toolbar, click Save. For more information, see Save, Copy, Rename, and Delete Work Item Queries (Team Explorer Everywhere).

Changing a Query to a Direct Links Query

To change a query to a direct links view query

1. Expand your team project, expand the Work Items node, expand Team Queries or My Queries, right-click the query that you want to modify, and then click Edit Query.

2. To select the type of query, click Work Items and Direct Links.

3. (Optional) Modify your query filter criteria as needed.

4. On the File menu or the toolbar, click Save.

See Also

Tasks

Add, Remove, Reorder, and Sort Columns (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Save, Copy, Rename, and Delete Work Item Queries (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Concepts

Choose Link Types to Effectively Track Your Project (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Other Resources

Getting Started with Team Explorer Everywhere and Team Foundation Server

Query Fields, Operators, Values, and Variables

Finding Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items

Work Items and Workflow (Agile)

Work Items and Workflow (CMMI)