TFS Changing Work Item Priority Field Randomly - workflow

I am using TFS2012 and I have found a strange issue that happens in only a couple of cases when using Excel to update the TFS work items. For some reason, a work item's priority is randomly assigned the value of 2 when ever another field is changed. I have been able to reproduce it when using excel but nothing more.
I am starting to suspect some sort of setting in the backlog configuration or in the project common configuration despite already extracting the project's common config. I have also checked the work item workflows and i do not see any issues with them
Anyone know what might be a possible cause for this issue?

Related

Is it possible to use the Github CLI to find out when an issue in a board has moved from one column to the next?

I'm writing a script for tracking issues in a board on Github. There is a json field updatedAt, that allows me to know when an issue has been updated, but I need to know if that update was because it moved from one column to another, specifically from "InProgress" to a column called "Done".
The github CLI does not seem to expose this information, but in the Github UI you can see exactly when all events occur on an issue -- so theoretically it's possible, but maybe someone (me?) needs to write a github cli extension to make it work.

Restore the state my project was in 11/10/2021 into another temporary project, so I can only get the order of work items from Boards from that day

I want to restore the state my project was in 11/10/2021 into another temporary project (not the one I am currently using), so I can only grasp the order of work items from Backlogs from Boards for that day. I did not delete the project. I just changed the Area Paths for Teams and the order of work items changed. I just want to have a reference in a separate temporary project, so I can compare work items order between them and restore correct one to the actual backlog.
Doing something like this is going to be quite tricky, I think that the closest you will come to doing this will be to create a new project and then try to use the open-source migration tools at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=nkdagility.vsts-sync-migration. We used an earlier version of this for an Azure DevOps carveout from another tenant, and it worked well, but we didn't have your "restore-to-point-in-time" use case.
I think that what you're going to need to do is use the ReplayRevisions on the WorkItemMigration class, and then you're probably going to need to write some custom WIQL to get only what you're looking for. It's even conceivable you might need to extend this to get the functionality you want.

Azure DevOps Projects List GET not returning a project

When running the Azure DevOps Projects List GET, one particular Project is excluded from the results. I cannot find any different settings. I am the admin of it. I can add new projects, and there were projects I created before it, that all show up in the results. It's the API call as documented here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/core/projects/list?view=azure-devops-rest-5.0
I cannot find explanation of why a project is excluded from the results aside from Project State, which I have troubleshot already.
I've already tried running the GET API in the browser and I do not return the missing project. I have tried creating another project in the same manner and it appears in what is returned. I have added an argument for Project State = All, and that does not improve the outcome.
Under what circumstances is a project excluded from these results as a standard (undocumented) constraint?
edit: I am a project admin, and I have access to the default project team. I have tried recycling things in the background by changing the Project Name back and forth, and having myself removed as Admin and added back in, with no change in the API response.
edit: It seems like the more important question is how to force Azure DevOps to cycle the 'lastUpdateDate', when it's currently set to a non-date.
This may be due to the fact that the result set for the call is 100 entries. So you either need to use the continuationToken to get the next 100 entries, and so on. Otherwise, you can also use the $top query parameter:
https://-collection_url-/_apis/projects?api-version=5.0&$top=200

In VSTS Duplicate Feature or Epic with Work Items

We have a project that often has the exact same work flow needed.
We have a feature that includes detailed work items, along with very helpful descriptions.
Is there not a way to take a current Feature and duplicate it along with all of the work items?
I have tried using templates but that has not worked out.
I tried Copy Work Item and checked 'Include existing links' but it does not copy the Related Work, which is what I need.
To further clarify I would like to duplicate a Feature, along with its Product Backlog Items and their Tasks.
You would be able to use powershell and VSTS REST API to achieve this copying. A sample powershell is available in the thread here
You can modify that and create a script to support your needs.

What issues can arise from checking in .vssscc and .vspscc files into source control?

There seems to be some consternation about two file types that, in my case, TFS checks in when a new solution or project are created: .vssscc and .vspscc files.
I found a page that describes that these files are for, and yet another that recommends checking them in. I'm perfectly fine with this, but I have heard some grumblings in the internet that these files can cause issues with collaboration between projects, such as merge conflicts and project load errors.
I do recall having some issues in my own organization where the .vspscc file caused some issues, where a developer had caused some edits to it and didn't check it in with the rest of his changes. We were able to repair easily, however.
My question is: what issues should I be aware of, and in the case that issues exist, what precautions can I recommend to my organization to avoid any trouble?
The only issue I've ever come across is a minor annoyance- the .vssscc is included as a change with many checkins even though the .vssscc contents have not changed. I'm guessing the last modified date is being updated.
Apparently Microsoft was looking into fixing this in 2010.
It seems unlikely that these files contain anything of importance to the source code. As far as I can tell it's just cached data about the current code.
I opened an issue at https://github.com/dotnet/project-system/issues/1801, so go there and let them know how this affects you.