Work Out Loud for Azure Boards

Post structured "Work Out Loud" (WOL) comments to Azure DevOps work items using configurable templates — directly from the work item form, with no browser extension required.

What is Work Out Loud?

Work Out Loud is a practice where team members share brief, structured progress updates on their work items. Instead of unstructured free-text comments, WOL uses templates to capture consistent information like what was done, what's next, system areas affected, task status, and remaining estimates.

This keeps the entire team aligned with minimal effort per update.

Features

Template-Based Comments

Fill out a quick form and post a structured comment to any work item's discussion. The extension formats your input as clean HTML with field labels, values, and metadata — no manual formatting needed.

Customizable Templates

Templates define what fields appear in the form. Each template supports five field types:

• Text — Single-line input
• Textarea — Multi-line input for longer descriptions
• Number — Numeric input with optional explanatory note
• Select — Dropdown with predefined options
• Tree — Hierarchical checkbox selection (great for system areas, categories)

Templates are fully editable as JSON. Add, remove, or reorder fields to match your team's workflow.

Project-Scoped Configuration

Templates are stored per-project, so each project in your organization can have its own set of templates tailored to that team's needs.

Template Sync from URL

Keep templates in sync across your team by pointing them at any URL that serves JSON:

• Use any publicly accessible URL that returns template JSON (GitHub raw files, S3, your own API, etc.)
• Or store your template JSON in an Azure DevOps Git repository — the extension automatically converts ADO repo browsing URLs to the raw API format, so just paste the file URL from your browser
• Supports both dev.azure.com and visualstudio.com URL formats for ADO repos
• Click "Sync" to pull the latest version from the URL, or "Sync All" to update every template at once

This means a team lead can maintain templates anywhere — a Git repo, a shared drive, a web server — and all team members get updates with one click.

Import and Export

• Import — Pull templates from any URL (including ADO Git repos). Supports both single templates and arrays of templates in one file.
• Export — Download all templates as a JSON file for backup or sharing.

Default Template Included

The extension ships with a ready-to-use WOL template that includes:

• Done — What you worked on
• Next — Your upcoming steps
• System Area — Hierarchical tree selection
• Task Status — Growing in Effort / Researching / Burning Down
• Estimate — Days remaining with a context note

You can use it as-is or customize it to fit your team.

How to Use

1. Open any work item in Azure DevOps
2. Click the "..." menu in the work item toolbar
3. Select "Work Out Loud"
4. Fill out the template form
5. Click Submit — the comment posts and the panel closes automatically

Managing Templates

Navigate to your project's Work Out Loud > WOL Templates hub in the left sidebar to:

• Add new templates from scratch
• Edit existing template JSON
• Duplicate templates as a starting point
• Delete templates you no longer need
• Set sync URLs for remote template sources
• Import templates from a URL
• Export all templates as JSON

Template JSON Format

Templates are defined as JSON objects:

{
  "id": "my-template",
  "name": "Daily Update",
  "fields": [
    {
      "id": "done",
      "label": "Done",
      "type": "textarea",
      "placeholder": "What did you accomplish?",
      "required": true
    },
    {
      "id": "status",
      "label": "Status",
      "type": "select",
      "options": ["On Track", "At Risk", "Blocked"],
      "required": true
    }
  ]
}

Supported Field Properties

Tree Node Properties

Setting Up Template Sync

1. In the WOL Templates hub, click "Edit URL" on a template
2. Paste any URL that returns template JSON
3. Click Save, then Sync to pull the latest version

The sync URL can be:

• Any raw JSON endpoint (GitHub raw, S3, your own server, etc.)
• An Azure DevOps Git repo file URL — the extension handles the conversion automatically

For ADO repos, you can paste either browsing format directly:

• https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_git/{repo}?path=/templates.json
• https://{org}.visualstudio.com/{project}/_git/{repo}?path=/templates.json

The extension will convert these to the proper API URL behind the scenes and authenticate using your current session.

Permissions Required

• Work Items (Read & Write) — To post comments to work items
• Code (Read) — To fetch template files from Git repositories via sync URLs