Work Item Dependencies

Adds a Dependencies group to every work item form showing two-way dependency relationships in a native-style linked list.

What is added on installation

• A Dependencies group on work item forms

Functionality

The panel shows two sections:

Depends on — work items whose IDs are listed in this item's Custom.Dependencies field.

Depended on by — work items that list this item's ID in their own Custom.Dependencies field (reverse lookup).

The list is read-only. Adding or removing dependencies is done by editing the Dependencies field on the work item directly.

Azure DevOps pre-requisites

A custom plain-text field with the reference name Custom.Dependencies must exist in your Azure DevOps process before the extension can display anything. The field is not created by this extension.

The field should contain work item IDs separated by commas, semicolons, spaces, or pipe characters. For example:

1234, 5678, 9012
1234; 5678
1234|5678|9012

Contact your Azure DevOps process administrator to create the custom field and add it to the relevant work item type layouts if it does not yet exist.

Configuration

None. The extension reads from the custom Dependencies field automatically once the field is present.

The panel can be removed from specific work item types from Project Settings → Process → [Type] → Layout.

Privacy and data storage

This extension does not store any data. It reads the Dependencies field value from the current work item and fetches the referenced work items live from the Azure DevOps API each time the form is opened.

Permissions

Questions, ideas, or bugs?

Open an issue on GitHub — we would love to hear from you.