You can manage your own work items in the plans and in
My Work view. You can manage team work loads in a plan
and in Team Central.
Viewing work items in a plan
The Planned Items page of a plan displays the work items
planned for the release or the iteration. You can customize the way
you want to view the work items.
Grouping work items in a plan
Grouping work items is an easy way
to view work items after combining the elements of Content, View Layout,
and Color tabs of a plan mode. A plan mode is a single entity that
represents the combination of these elements.
Modifying work items in a plan
In addition to
modifying work items in the work item editor, you can modify work
items in the Planned Items page of a plan. Modifying
work items in a plan is more convenient because you do not have to
open each work item in the work item editor to modify and save its
details.
Configuring the preview pane
The preview pane lets you quickly view and edit the work
items from a plan. You can configure the preview pane for a work item
type to view the sections that you want in the preview pane.
Setting project hours and days per week
You can use Work Environment configuration
in the Project Area editor to specify the hours per day and days per
week for a project. These settings are used to determine work durations
in iteration planning and work item interfaces. Team members can customize
their own work schedules on the Work Environment page of the User
editor.
Reviewing and charting progress
You can assess your team's progress for a release or for
an iteration in several ways. Use the progress report in a plan to
compare completed and estimated labor for the whole team. Use the
Planned Items page in a plan to review work items by assigned team
member, category, tags, or scheduled time. Use the Charts page in
a plan to view a chart of open work items that are planned for this
iteration. Use the Team Load section in the Team Central view or My
Work view to review each team member's progress and estimated hours
for the iteration.
Computing progress of release plans
You must check the progress of a release plan to ensure
its on-time completion. You can compute the progress of a release
plan by selecting any of the work item attributes or enumerations
that can be transformed to a number.
Configuring team load
The team load section displays the load of work assigned
to each member of the team. You can configure the team load section
to view the load of a team associated to a team area or a project
area.
Showing time remaining or time spent
Plans show the progress that team members have made in
completing their work items. You can configure a project area so that
the plans show either the time remaining to complete work items or
the time spent so far on work items.
Setting a user's work environment
Use the Work Environment page in the User editor to define a user's
work location, work days and hours, and team assignments (by percentage). Set
the time zone and regional settings for the user's work location to match the
user's settings for Regional and Language Options, which are available in the
Windows® Control Panel.
Scheduling team member absences
Users can schedule planned absences. Hours that are scheduled for an
absence are subtracted from the user's available hours in the plan.
Ranking work items
You can rank work items to prioritize them according to
your requirement. For example, if the priority is not set for a few
work items and the ranking attribute is set to Priority, after you
set the priority of work items, they will be in order of High, Medium,
and Low. For work items with same priority, you can set the order
by dragging and dropping them. When you drag and drop work items,
the ranking attribute value in the Planned Items page is simultaneously
updated. You can set the ranking attribute in the Plan
Attributes editor.
Creating plan modes
A plan mode is a cohesive unit representing the
view mode, group mode, sort, filter, bars, custom columns, and color
support. You can use plan modes to group work items. For example,
you can group work items to view in tree style, group by Owner, sort
by Priority, filter out Resolved items, add Status column, and color
high priority work items.
Managing work items in My Work view
You can quickly assess your work load using My Work view.
You can view newly assigned work items and work items for current
and future iterations. You can assess your current work load and change
the order, priority, and other properties for your work items. Double-click
work items to open them in the work item editor.
Quick query syntax
Use the following syntax to find, filter, and colorize
work items on the Planned Items page of a plan or in My Work view.
Enter the quick query syntax as the Expression value
in the Colorize window. You can also use the
expressions in the Colorize tab of the plan
edit mode.