Add and manage work item types

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

You can add custom work item types (WITs) or modify existing WITs to add fields, remove or hide fields, add custom rules, and more. For example, you may want to capture customer issues in a custom Ticket WIT.

Prerequisites

For guidance on tailoring Azure Boards to align with your specific business requirements, see About configuring and customizing Azure Boards.

• Organization requirement: Ensure you have an organization in Azure DevOps.

• Permissions:

  • Be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group.
  • Have collection-level permissions such as Create process, Delete process, Edit process, or Delete a field from organization set to Allow.
  • These permissions allow you to modify processes and fields within your organization.

Open organization process settings

1. Sign in to your organization (https://dev.azure.com/{yourorganization}).

2. Select Organization settings.

   

3. Select Process.

   

Note

When you customize an inherited process, any projects using that process automatically reflect the customizations. To ensure a smooth transition, we recommend creating a test process and project, which allows you to test your customizations before you implement them organization-wide. For more information, see Create and manage inherited processes.

Add a work item type

1. From the Work Item Types page, choose New work item type.

   

2. Name the WIT and optionally specify a description, icon and color. The icon and color you specify appear throughout the web portal, including on the work item form and when associated work items appear on a backlog, boards, query results, and more. Choose Create to save.

   

3. From the Layout page, you can add fields, groups, or pages to specify the form and fields you want to track. Each new WIT comes predefined with a Details page with the Description field, and Discussion, Development, and Related Work groups. For details, see Add and manage fields or Customize the web layout for a process.

   

   Also added, but not shown nor editable from the Layout page, are the standard elements included with the header of the form as shown in the following image, as well as the history, links, and attachment pages.

   

4. Open the States page to view the default workflow states. Optionally, customize the workflow states.
   

5. Optional. To add the WIT to a backlog, see Customize your backlogs or boards for a process. By default, custom WITs aren't added to any backlog. To learn more about different backlog levels, see Backlogs, boards, and plans.

6. Verify the custom work item type appears as expected. Open the Work>Work Items page (user context) and choose New Work Item and select the WIT you customized. Here we choose Ticket.

   

   If you don't see the custom WIT, refresh your browser to make sure it registers all the custom changes you've made.

7. Verify that the field you added appears on the form. Note that the (exclamation mark) icon indicates the field is required.

   

Change description, icon or color

To change the description, icon or color of a custom WIT, choose Edit from the WIT context menu.

Here we change the description, icon and color for the Ticket custom WIT.

Enable or disable a WIT

You can disable a custom WIT, which prevents users from being able to add work items using it. However, all existing work items defined using the custom WIT remain available. You can query for them and edit them.

You may want to disable a custom WIT until you have defined all the fields, workflow, and layout that you have planned.

To disable a custom WIT, choose Disable from the WIT context menu.

To re-enable the WIT, choose Enable from the WIT context menu.

Note

Disabling a WIT removes the WIT from the New drop down and add experiences. Creating a work item of that WIT is also blocked via REST APIs.

No changes are made to existing work items of that type. You can update or delete them and they continue to appear on backlogs and boards. Both work item types need to be enabled in order to do a change type operation.

Delete or destroy a custom WIT

Important

Destroying a WIT deletes all work items and data associated with that WIT, including historical values. Once destroyed, you can't recover the data.

1. To completely remove a custom WIT and all work items based on that WIT, choose Destroy from the WIT context menu.

   To destroy a WIT, you must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group or be granted explicit permissions to edit a specific process.

2. To complete the delete operation, you must type the name of the WIT as shown.

   

WIT extensibility

To work with WITs programmatically, see Work Item Types REST API.

Q & A

Q: How do I get my custom work item type to show up on my backlog?

A: Modify your requirement backlog to include the custom work item type. For details, see Customize your backlogs or boards, Edit or rename the requirement backlog.

Note

The backlog level to which you add a custom work item type determines the parent work item type(s) for the work item type.

Related articles

Note

Review changes made to an inherited process through the audit log. For more information, see Access, export, and filter audit logs.

• Add and manage fields
• Customize the layout
• Customize a workflow for a work item type
• Customize a project using an inherited process