Many times a custom tool that is created to overcome a particular “issue” ends up morphing into something that is greater than the initial idea. Case in point, I had come across many instances where the sheer bulk of Sprint Backlog Items that had to be entered in to TFS almost made me break out in to a cold sweat – it is an arduous task to do it via the Team Explorer Window when you are doing the entries one by one:
So, typically for large volumes of Sprint Backlog Items I would prefer to use the Export to Excel capability of a TFS WorkItem Query:
I could then enter the bulk of Sprint Backlog Items entering the required data in each row (representing each SBI) and then use the Publish feature of the TFS Excel Team Add-In:
The only issue with this approach is that I’d have to go back and link each SBI in Team Explorer with the correct PBI!
So I created an Add-In to overcome this. At first the Add-In would only pull back the PBI Id and Title and allow the user to type in a new PBI Id and publish the link information, but then I realized it would be great (for planning purposes) to be able to pull back whatever field from a PBI that I wanted. So I created a mapping between the PBI Field name and a Column name that the user would type in to Excel (the red shows the mapping from the Excel Column text; the purple shows the mapping from the TFS Template definition for a Product Backlog Item:
I can then pull back whatever I like and be able to see how it relates to the list of Sprint Backlog Items I have. I also created an informative video to illustrate how to use the add-in.
You can get the latest version from:
http://www.petrellyn.com/jaspware/ExcelTfsAddIn
