In one of my previous blog posts I was asked how to add custom ‘State’ values for a work item in Team Foundation Server 2010.

The state field is a unique field within the Work Item definition, and the mechanism to edit the values is not quite as intuitive as with other fields. Normally, the allowed values for a field are stored directly within the Field tag, using an AllowedValues (or even SuggestedValues) node:

<FIELD name=“Priority” refname=“Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority” type=“Integer” reportable=“dimension“>
  <HELPTEXT>Importance to business</HELPTEXT>
  <ALLOWEDVALUES expanditems=“true“>
    <LISTITEM value=“1“ />
    <LISTITEM value=“2“ />
    <LISTITEM value=“3“ />
    <LISTITEM value=“4“ />
  </ALLOWEDVALUES>
  <DEFAULT from=“value” value=“2“ />
</FIELD>

The State field is slightly different – the field definition itself doesn’t actually contain any of the valid state values:

<FIELD name=“State” refname=“System.State” type=“String” reportable=“dimension“>
  <HELPTEXT>Active = work remains to be done. Closed = tested and checked in.</HELPTEXT>
</FIELD>

Instead, value state values are added to the States node within the Workflow node of the Work Item. See the below for adding a ‘Proposed’ state to the Work Item:

<WORKFLOW>
  <STATES>
    <STATE value=”Proposed” />
    <STATE value=“Active“>
      <FIELDS>
        <FIELD refname=“Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ClosedDate“>
          <EMPTY />
        </FIELD>
        <FIELD refname=“Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ClosedBy“>
          <ALLOWEXISTINGVALUE />
          <EMPTY />
        </FIELD>
      </FIELDS>
    </STATE>
    <STATE value=“Closed“ />
  </STATES>
  …

Transition rules can then be applied to the Work Item State using the Transitions node:

<TRANSITIONS>
  <TRANSITION from=“” to=“Proposed“>
    <REASONS>
      <DEFAULTREASON value=“New“ />
    </REASONS>
  </TRANSITION>
  <TRANSITION from=“Proposed” to=“Active“>
  …

With these modifications made, you should now be able to re-import the Work Item Type definition file back into Team Foundation Server 2010.

C:\TFS>”C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\witadmin” importwitd /collection:localhost\defaultcollection /p:”{ExistingProjectName}” /f:Task.xml