Trying to move work-items from one Team Project to another..

Question

 

I'm trying to move existing work-items from one team project to another.  I have run my query and have my list of work-items I want to move to another team-project, I export the list to Excel and see the field Team Project; this is what I want to change.  However in Excel it tells me that the field is 'Read-only' and I cannot change the value.  Is there another/better way to move existing work-items to another Team Project?

 

I simply want to move existing work-items to another Team Project.

 

Any ideas/suggestions/information would be very helpful.

 

Thank you for your time,

Peter

Answer 1

In the current versions of TFS, work items are fixed to a particular team project.  This is because the work item templates are scoped to a team project so there is no way to guarentee that the particular work item type or workflow is valid in that other project.

Therefore, what you do in this case is you copy the work item (right click on the work item form and select "Create Copy of Work Item".  You then can close the work item that the new one was copied from.

Hope that helps,

Martin.

Answer 2

 

Martin,

 

Thank you for the information.  I understand what you're saying about templates being scoped for individual team projects and there is no way to know that workflow between two projects is the same - in my case I can say they are identical (the projects share the same custom template).  Is there a way for me to override the 'Read Only' attribute of the field when the list is exported to Excel?

 

Does the TFS team have a plan/idea on how to resolve the manual labor of individually addressing each work-item to move from one team project to another?

 

Thank you for your time and help.

 

Peter

Answer 3

Peter,

 

Does this thread help?

 

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=169471&SiteID=1

 

I'm not aware of any work being planned to make this any easier for you - but someone from Microsoft might be able to comment.

 

M.

Answer 4

Martin,

 

The post does address a similar issue - I understand that there is no utility to automate the move of work-items.  At this point I would just like to know if there is a way to override the 'Read Only' attribute of the field when an item is exported to Excel - ideally someone from Microsoft could explain that.

 

Again, thank you for your time and help.

 

Peter

 

Answer 5

If you want to move entire work items, you should consider using TFS migration toolkit and TFS 2 TFS migration tool; both are available on CodePlex and can be downloaded with source codes from codeplex. The tool will copy your work items with historical revisions, attachments and, optionally, links.

 

Thanks,

Alex.

Answer 6

"no way to guarentee that the particular work item type or workflow is valid in that other project" - I don't buy it.  We use the exact same templates between all our Team Projects, and even if we weren't I can think of half a dozen ways that, on the server side, the WIT types could be versioned and compared.

It would be nice if there was an override feature which allowed us to assume the risks, and move the work item type.  I was hoping by TFS 2010 that this kind of * basic functional requirement * would have been satisfied, but sadly, no.  It seems to me that this restriction to a specific Team Project is an artificial constraint, and one that should be addressed.

Answer 7

Martin,

does above thread working?

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=169471&SiteID=1

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j_bond