We've just starting looking at Team System, and really want to use it to manage work items and their progress. Basically, we have 3 types of work to manage;

1. We have a software product that we sell and maintain, a keep a register of bugs, enhancement request etc. Periodically we will pick out some from the list and develop then release.

2. We get asked for Large pieces of bespoke development that require full spec's and multiple developers. This needs to be broken down into components.

3. We get 'Issues Lists' from clients when implementing with a mixture of bugs and requests.

The problem I have in managing all of the above is that we have various methods of receiving work / bug / request lists, from Excel to Word to faxes to Emails....

I can see how I would create separate work items from these - which is great. I can then produce a report to see what is outstanding - great again.

When the programmers start to work on individual items - I intend to get them to add comments into the History Tab of a work item, and update the work time done etc.. and have our QA person update the status when accepted or needing a rework. What would be good is if I could produce a list of issues and queries to send to the client for sign off. And then incorporate their comments back onto the item. The only way I can see to do this is to constantly update the history with comments - however - I can't get the history fields to print on a report or in excel.

Is there anyone else with a similar environment that could comment or would like to share procedures with me as we try to get it all to work.

Thanks

Phil

Hi PhilAJ,

Looks like loads of questions..

The answer to many of your questions are Doable in TFS via workitems. But I would appreciate if you could go through these articles

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms400654.aspx & http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms195023.aspx.

Here you get to know how you can customize work Items and various scenarios of yours can be then worked by you itself....

And regarding collecting reports, just go through the webcasts regarding customization of reports and you shall never be disappointed, I mean the power of TFS is that its fully customizable and extensible.

You can customize the reports to your needs, due to the power of having a single Datawarehouse.

Expecting a reply from you.

Thanks for that Shabari...I shall do as you say and look at the information.

I guess I was trying to just follow a single methodology and get what we wanted 'out of the box' - but I supposed like our clients - everyone needs it to be modified to suit.

I'll update you when I've reviewed what you sent.

Thanks

Phil