Working on and resolving work items

As you work to address the issues raised in a work item, periodically update the work item to describe your work and the current state of the item.
About this task
To update work items:
  1. To work on a work item, first run a query that retrieves work items that have been assigned to you. In the Work Items view, double-click an entry in the results grid to open it. Alternatively, you can indicate that you are starting work on the item without opening it by right-clicking it and selecting Start Working.

    Rather than running a query to find new work items, you might want to start from the My Work view, which organizes your work items into three sections: Newly Assigned Work; Current Work; and Future Work.

  2. Read the description, comments, and any attachments.
  3. Select Start Working from the State property drop-down list. If you have a question or comment, you can click the Add Comment link in the Discussion section and enter your text. All subscribers of the work item receive notification of your comment when you save the work item. When you add a comment, you are added as a subscriber. Alternatively, you can right-click the submitter's name in the Created By property and select Chat to start a chat session or Send Mail to send an E-mail message.

    Another way to collaborate with team members is to enter the @ sign followed by a team member's user ID in a comment or the description, which causes an alert to appear in that user's client and an event to appear in their Event Log in the Team Central view. You can use Content assist to find a user's ID by entering Ctrl/Space and the user's first or last name. The alert is of the form, "User-name mentioned you in work-item-summary (work item number)." For example, "Bob mentioned you in Update header file (251)." The event contains the comment or part of the description that you enter following @user-ID. For example, "On Feb 10, 2009, 6:45:43 PM Bob Smith mentioned you in comment 2: @bert: Should we fix this in 2.0M1?".

    To add subscribers, click Add in the Subscribers section on the Links tab. However, be conservative when adding subscribers because they receive E-mail notifications whenever the work item is changed.

    Optionally, change the owner to a different user, and add a comment that explains why you reassigned the work item.

    Click Save to save your changes.

  4. To resolve a work item, open the work item and select Resolve from the State property drop-down list. In the adjacent Resolution property drop-down list, select an entry, such as Fixed, Works For Me, or Duplicate that describes how you resolved the work item. Enter a comment in the Discussion section that further explains your actions. If you resolve a work item as a duplicate, you also need to specify the other work item in the Links section on the Links tab. Click Save to save your changes.

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