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Changing State according to a field's value

All,

I have 'bug' work items which are in a 'Resolved' state. I would like to change the state according to another field's value, for example if the value of 'Testing' becomes 'test failed', i would like to change the state to active automatically.

I had hoped to achieve it with something like this:

<FIELD name="State" refname="System.State" type="String" reportable="dimension">
<HELPTEXT>The workflow state of the bug</HELPTEXT>
<WHEN field="MyCompany.WorkItems.Testing" value="Test Failed">
<COPY from="value" value="Active"/>
</WHEN>
</FIELD>

...but there are constraints on the System.State field that don't allow me to do this. Next i thought about adding an action to the relevant transition something like this:

<TRANSITION from="Resolved" to="Active">
<ACTIONS>
<ACTION value="MyCompany.WorkItems.Actions.TestingFailed"/>
</ACTIONS>
<REASONS>
<DEFAULTREASON value="Testing Failed" />
</REASONS>
</TRANSITION>

...and then invoke this action from the field definition, something like this:

<FIELD name="Tested" ...>
...
<LISTITEM value = "Test Failed" />
...
<WHEN value="Test Failed">
<ACTIONS>
<ACTION value="MyCompany.WorkItems.Actions.TestingFailed" />
</ACTIONS>
</WHEN>
</FIELD>

..but ACTIONS are not valid here. Any ideas?

Peter Chapman

You cannot do that - the rules engine was not designed for doing that. System.State is a system field which depends only on System.WorkItemType, and this cannot be changed.

Thanks,

Alex

Aliaksei Baturytski - MSFT

I don't understand your answer. If you cannot change an item's state then there wouldn't be much point having transitions, or anything else for that matter.

My question in another way:

Can I get an item's state to auto-transition in response to an action, much like this does:

<

Peter Chapman

You cannot change State in response to change in other field's value - the OM and work item type definition have no support for that. You would have to write your own app to do that.

Actions were added for the integration with the version control; right now the only action recognizeable by the system is Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.Checkin. You may define your own actions, but they will have no effect on system's behavior. However, you could use them in your application to determine the state the action should bring your item to (WorkItem.GetNextState, WorkItemType.GetNextState). Therefore I don't think you could use actions to achieve your goal.

Thanks,

Alex

Aliaksei Baturytski - MSFT

Thanks

Peter Chapman

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