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Tutorial: Follow changes made to a user story, bug, or other work item or pull request

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Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

To get notified of changes made to a specific work item or a pull request, you can choose to follow them. The Follow feature provides an improvised way of getting notified on a case-by-case basis.

If you want to subscribe to receive notifications automatically based on changes that occur based on your targeted set of criteria, see Manage personal notifications. For example, you can create a subscription to automatically get notified whenever a work item that you created or that was assigned to you is modified.

Note

Notification subscriptions allow you to personalize the notifications you receive automatically based on additional criteria you specify for yourself, a team, or a project. For example, you can create a subscription and add field criteria to receive changes based on one or more of the following templates.

Work item notification templates

This article shows you how to:

  • Follow a work item
  • Follow a pull request
  • Manage work items that you're following

Configure an SMTP server for team members to receive notifications.

Prerequisites

  • Permissions:

    • To view, follow, and edit work items, have View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has these permissions. For more information, see Set work tracking permissions.

  • To add tags to work items, have the project-level Create new tag definition permission set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission.

  • Access levels:

    • Be a project member.
    • To add new tags to work items or to view or follow pull requests, have at least Basic access.
    • To view or follow work items, have at least Stakeholder access. For more information, see About access levels.
    • All project members, including those in the Readers group, can send emails containing work items.

    Note

    • Provide Stakeholder access to members who want to contribute to the discussion and review progress. These are typically members who don't contribute to code, but want to view work items, backlogs, boards, and dashboards.
    • By default, all Contributors and Stakeholders in public projects can add new and existing tags. In private projects, Stakeholders can only add existing tags. To control the ability to create new tags, set the Create tag definition permission at the project level. For more information, see Change project-level permissions.

Follow a work item

When you want to track the progress of a single work item, choose the follow icon. This signals the system to notify you when changes are made to the work item.

Work item form, Follow icon control

If you want to specify conditions on when you'll get notified of changes, choose the gear icon and choose from the options provided.

Work item form, Notification settings dialog for follow

By default, you're Subscribed to receive a notification when any change is made to the work item. Choose Not Subscribed to receive notification only when you're @mentioned. Or choose Custom to receive notifications when one of the checked fields changes, State, Assigned To, or Iteration Path.

Work item form, Follow icon control

You'll only receive notifications when other members of your team modify the work item, such as adding to the discussion, changing a field value, or adding an attachment.

Notifications are sent to your preferred email address, which you can change from your user profile

To stop following changes, choose the following icon.

Follow a pull request

To track the progress of a single pull request, choose the actions icon for the pull request, and select the Follow option. This signals the system to notify you when changes are made to the PR.

Pull Request, context menu, Follow icon option

You'll only receive notifications when other members of your team modify the PR, such as adding to the discussion or adding an attachment.

Notifications are sent to your preferred email address, which you can change from your user profile.

To stop following changes, open the PR context menu and choose the Following icon.

Manage work items that you're following

You can review and manage all the work items you've selected to follow.

Open Boards>Queries, choose All, and under My Queries, choose Followed work items.

Boards>Queries>All>Followed work items, new nav

From this view, you can view all items you're following across all projects. Also, you can complete similar actions supported with a query results view, such as:

  • Refresh the view
  • Add or remove visible columns
  • Sort the order of specific columns
  • Filter results by text or tags
  • Set work item pane
  • Enter full screen mode.

You can also view and manage work that you're following from Boards>Work Items and pivot to Following.

Boards>Work Items, and pivot to Following.

Query work items that you're following

You can use the @Follows macro in a work item query to filter a list based on work items you're following along with other query filters.

For example, the following query shows how to query across all projects for active work items that you're following. You use the ID field and the In operator with the @Follows macro.

Query Editor, with ID In @Follows query clause

Next steps

Add, update, and follow a work item

Q: Can I add someone else to follow a work item or PR?

A: No, you can't add another team member to follow a work item or pull request at this time. You can subscribe them to get notified based on select criteria, such as when a work item is create or modified, or a pull request is created. For more information, see Manage team notifications.