Titles, IDs, Descriptions, and History field reference

You use the Title and ID fields to uniquely identify work items in a list. You use the Description and History fields to provide additional information that is needed to implement the work and to track changes. These fields track information for all work item types defined in the process templates provided with Team Foundation Server.

After a work item is created, you can modify each of these fields except for ID. When you create and save a work item, the ID is assigned by Team Foundation and cannot be changed. 

The Description, History, Steps to Repro and Title fields are automatically indexed for full-text search. See Query fields, operators, values, and variables.

Fields that appear on work item forms

The following table describes the fields that are used in tracking detailed information and historical revisions made for a work item. For information about data types and default field attributes, see Define and modify work item fields.

Field name	Description	Reference name	Data type	Default value of the reportable type attribute	Default value of the index attribute
ID	The unique identifier that is assigned to a work item. Work item IDs are unique across all team projects and within a team project collection.	System.Id	Integer	Dimension	True
Title	A short description that summarizes what the work item is and helps team members distinguish it from other work items in a list.	System.Title	String	Dimension	True
Description	The long description of a work item. This field provides more details about the work item than the title provides. Note Upon upgrade to Team Foundation Server 2012, the Description field was changed from a field type of PlainText to HTML. Using the witadmin changefield command you can revert the data type for this field. See Manage work item fields [witadmin].	System.Description	HTML	None	False
History	The record of changes that were made to the work item after it was created. Every time that the work item is updated, information is appended to the history, which specifies the date of the change, who made the changes, and which fields were changed. You can also add formatted text to the history field.	System.History	History	None	False
Repro Steps	The steps that are required to reproduce unexpected behavior. (bugs only)	Microsoft.VSTS.TCM.ReproSteps	HTML	None	False
System Info	Information about the software and system configuration that is relevant to the bug, code review, or feedback.	Microsoft.VSTS.TCM.SystemInfo	HTML	None	False

Fields that support revision tracking

You can use the fields in the following table to filter queries and create reports. These fields are updated with information every time that a work item is modified. These fields do not appear on the work item form, but they are tracked for all types of work items.

Field name	Description	Reference name	Data type	Default value of the reportable type attribute	Default value of the index attribute
Changed By	The name of the team member who modified the work item most recently.	System.ChangedBy	String	Dimension	True
Changed Date	The date and time when the work item was modified most recently.	System.ChangedDate	DateTime	Dimension	False
Rev	A number that is assigned to the historical revision of a work item.	System.Rev	Integer	Dimension	False

Additional fields that support query and reporting

You can use the fields in the following table to filter queries and create reports. The following fields do not appear on work item forms, but they are tracked for all types of work items.

Field name	Description	Reference name	Data type	Default value of the reportable type attribute	Default value of the index attribute
Team Project	The team project to which this work item belongs.	System.TeamProject	String	Dimension	False
Work Item Type	The name of the work item type.	System.WorkItemType	String	Dimension	True

See Also

Concepts

Query for work items

Work item field reference for Visual Studio ALM