Thursday 22 June 2017

Team Services Process Customization

Team Services is coming up with many improvements and one of it is the new process customization experience introduced recently. This allows you to have your own custom work item types, custom work item state flows and custom fields for work items etc. It is made easier to start customizing even directly from work item form. Let’s look at and understand process customization options available for you to optimize your work process.


You can navigate to Process tab from account home page to see the available processes in team services.image

If you are in a team project view you can go to Account Settings page an then go to Process tab.image

In the Process tab default available three process templates, Agile, Scrum and CMMI are shown.image

You can click on each process template menu to create an inherited process from it for customization purpose.

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In the pop up window you can provide a name for the inherited process and create it.image

You can go to edit mode of the custom process by clicking on its name. Edit in menu will allow you to change the name of the inherited process. You can delete the process as long as it is not used by any of the team projects. Click on “Change team project <inheritedprocessname>” to use it in existing projects. New team project can be created with the inherited process by clicking New team project.image

Click on name of the new inherited process.

Types of customizations

  • Adding new work item types

Click on  New work item type and provide a name and select a color and click Create. image

  • Backlog level for new work item

Backlog level for new work item can be set by clicking on edit in a current backlog level of a existing work item. You cannot change the behavior of the Bug work item as it is controlled as a team preference to be available as Requirement backlog item or Iteration backlog item. You cannot select the Issue backlog item in Agile inherited process to any backlog level as it is there for the purpose of issue tracking.Same applies to Impediment work item in Scrum process.image

In the pop up you are allowed to select the new work item type for the backlog level. You can even select it as default backlog level if you want. You can change the name and color of the backlog level to your preference.image


  • Editing existing (out of the box) or added custom work item type

You can edit the custom work item type name, description and color by clicking edit in menu. For existing work item types you are only allowed to disable them but you cannot edit name, description or color. To edit the existing/custom work item type field layout states, etc. click on its name. image

New fields can be added to existing or current work item types. You can refine new group in the Layout to group your fields. Further you are allowed to add new pages to keep your fields and groups. Titles of groups other than Development and Related work can be edited. Any existing group can be hidden from the layout. Adding custom fields will be discussed in detain in a next post.image

State flow of a work item can be changed in states tab. Currently you are not allowed to add states to Completed state category. States customizing with team services will be discussed in detail in a next post.image

All fields in a team services account is shown in Fields tab of the Process admin page. You can delete any custom field added here but cannot delete existing out of the box fields. image

In next few posts more details on customizations of team services process will be described.

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