Managing Global Workflow

By using global workflow, you can minimize the work required to define and update work item fields and global lists that are multiple team projects and types of work items share. With global workflow, you can define and update fields and global lists. You can manage the global workflow for a team project collection or a team project by using the following commands in the witadmin command-line tool:

• exportglobalworkflow:  Exports the global workflow to an XML file or the Command Prompt window.

• importglobalworkflow:  Imports global workflow from an XML file.

You can find the witadmin command-line tool in Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE on any computer that runs Team Explorer. For 64-bit machines, the tool is in Drive:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE.

For more information about global workflow, see Customizing Global Workflow.

Required Permissions

For the team project collection where the global workflow is defined, you must have the following permissions set:

• To export a global workflow, you must be a valid user of the team project or collection.

• To import a global workflow, you must be a member of the following security groups: Team Foundation Administrators, Project Administrators to import a global workflow to a team project, or Project Collection Administrators to import a global workflow to a collection.

For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions and Team Foundation Server Default Groups, Permissions, and Roles.

witadmin exportglobalworkflow /collection:CollectionURL [/p:ProjectName] [/f:FileName] [/e:Encoding] [/exportgloballists] 

witadmin importglobalworkflow /collection:CollectionURL [/p:ProjectName] /f:FileName [/e:Encoding] [/v]

Parameters

Parameter	Description
/collection:CollectionURL	Specifies the URI of the collection. You must specify the URI in the following format: http://ServerName:Port/VirtualDirectoryName/CollectionName If you do not specify a virtual directory, you must specify the URI in the following format: http://ServerName:Port/CollectionName.
/p:ProjectName	Optional. The team project for which you want to export or import the global workflow. This team project must be defined in the collection that you specified by using the /collection parameter. If you do not specify a team project, the global workflow is imported or exported for the collection.
/f:FileName	The path and the name of the XML definition file for global workflow to export or import. Note If the client computer is running Windows Vista, you may not have permissions to certain folders. If you try to export the global list to a location where you do not have permissions, the registry virtualization technology automatically redirects the exported file and saves it to the virtual store. For more information, see the following pages on the Microsoft web site: Registry Virtualization and Common file and registry virtualization issues in Windows Vista. To avoid this redirection, you can export the file to a location where you have permissions.
/e:Encoding	Optional. The name of a .NET Framework 2.0 encoding format. The specified encoding will be used to export or import the XML data. For example, /e utf-7 specifies Unicode (UTF-7) encoding. If you omit this parameter, witadmin attempts to detect the encoding and uses UTF-8 if detection fails.
/v	Optional. Validates the XML that defines the global workflow but does not import the definition file.
/exportgloballists	Optional. Exports the definitions of global lists that the global workflow references. The definitions for global lists will be embedded into the XML definition of the global workflow. If you do not specify this parameter, the definitions for global lists are omitted.
/? or help	Displays help about the command in the Command Prompt window.

Remarks

You can define work item fields by importing them through a global workflow. However, you cannot change the properties of existing fields by using global workflow. If you import a global workflow that does not contain a FIELDS element, all previously imported rules for global workflow will be deleted. Field definitions will not be affected.

Examples

Unless otherwise specified, the following values apply in each example:

• URI for the collection: http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/AWTeam/Collection1

• Team project: Contoso

• Port number for the server website: 8080

Export the Definition of a Global Workflow for a Team Project

The following example exports the global workflow for a team project:

witadmin exportglobalworkflow /collection:http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/AWTeam/Collection1 /p:Contoso /f:C:myGlobalWorkflow.xml

Import the Definition of a Global Workflow to a Team Project

The following example imports the global workflow to the Contoso team project:

witadmin importglobalworkflow /collection:http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/AWTeam/Collection1 /p:Contoso /f:C:collectionGlobalWorkflow.xml 

Import the Definition of a Global Workflow to a Collection

The following example imports the global workflow to the collection:

witadmin importglobalworkflow /collection:http://AdventureWorksServer:8080/AWTeam/Collection1 /f:C:collectionGlobalWorkflow.xml 

See Also

Tasks

Add, Use, and Manage Global Lists

Concepts

Defining Global Lists

Other Resources

Customizing Global Workflow

witAdmin: Administering Objects for Tracking Work Items