View, run, or email a work item query

TFS 2018

Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2022

To find work items assigned to you or your team, run a query. Many work item queries are predefined with your process. Members of your team may have created shared queries that you can view and run. Often, it's easier to define a new query by building on the query definition that's already available to you.

Prerequisites

• By default, all project members and users with Stakeholder access can view and run all shared queries. You can change the permissions set for a shared query folder or shared query. For more information, see Set query permissions.
• To add and save a query under Shared queries, you must be granted Basic access or higher. Also, you must have your Contribute permission set to Allow for the folder you want to add the query to. By default, the Contributors group doesn't have this permission.

Open Queries

Browser

From your web browser, open Boards > Queries.

Visual Studio

Important

We strongly recommend that everyone use the default view instead of this legacy view. It is designed for you to quickly access a list of work items based on your assignment, following, mentioned, or recent updates. The legacy view is no longer being enhanced and we expect to remove it in a future release of Visual Studio.

1. From the Team Explorer home page, choose Work Items.

   

2. To open a query, open the context menu for the query (right-click with your mouse), and choose View Results. Or, double-click the query to open it.

   

Or, select one of the following options:

• Edit Query: Opens the Query Editor for the selected query.
• New Query: Opens the Query Editor with the default new query options.
• Open in Microsoft Excel (Flat): Opens the query in Microsoft Excel.
• Send to Microsoft Outlook: Open
• Cut: Cuts the query. You can then paste the query under a different folder.
• Copy: Copies the query. You can then paste the query under the same folder or a different folder.
• Delete: Deletes the query.
• Rename: Enables you to rename the query.
• Add to My Favorites: Adds the query to the My Favorites section.
• Add to Team Favorites: Adds the query to the Team Favorites section.
• Security: Opens the Permissions dialog for the query.

Run a query in Azure Boards

To run any query, expand a folder and choose the title of the query. The view opens to display the query Results.

Browser

Tip

The Queries page, as with other web portal pages, remembers the view you last went to and returns you to that view.

Visual Studio

Important

We strongly recommend that everyone use the default view instead of this legacy view. It is designed for you to quickly access a list of work items based on your assignment, following, mentioned, or recent updates. The legacy view is no longer being enhanced and we expect to remove it in a future release of Visual Studio.

• From the Team Explorer Work Items, page, open the context menu for the query (right-click with your mouse), and choose View Results. Or, double-click the query to open it.

  

Query folders

Note

You can't add folders to My Favorites or Team Favorites.

Browser

The Queries page displays the folder structure in the left pane. You can expand and collapse folders, rename folders, and drag and drop queries from one folder to another. For more information, see Manage and organize queries.

Visual Studio

The Work Items page displays the same folder structure as defined in the web portal. Changes you make through Visual Studio are reflected in the web portal.

You can expand and collapse folders, rename folders, and drag and drop queries from one folder to another. For more information, see Manage and organize queries

For more information, see Query FAQs, Navigate, and Folders.

Email query items or share a query URL

Browser

From the Query Editor or Results view, you can email a formatted list of query items or copy the query URL.

Choose Copy query URL. To email query items, see Copy a list of work items.

Note

With Email query, the system sends an email of the formatted list to those teammates you select. To email a formatted list to people not part of the project, you'll need to use the Copy as HTML option described in Copy a list of work items. All email actions require an SMTP server to be configured. If you don't have an SMTP server configured, you can work around this by using Copy as HTML.

Visual Studio

You can email a formatted query list by choosing the Send to Microsoft Outlook option from the context menu.

Note

This feature requires you to have Microsoft Outlook installed. For on-premises Azure DevOps, all email actions require an SMTP server to be configured. If you don't have an SMTP server configured, you can work around this by using Copy as HTML from the web portal.

Next steps

Define a query

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