Create Child Tasks

Create Child Tasks

Azure DevOps offers team-specific work item templating as core functionality with which you can quickly apply pre-populated values for your team's commonly used fields per work item type. Create Child Tasks is an extension to Azure DevOps, which allows you to create multiple Task work items as children with a single click. Each Task work item is based on a single pre-defined Task template.

The child Task work items created by this extension are based on the hierarchy of work item types defined in the process template (Agile, Scrum, CMMI). For example, if you're using a process inherited from the agile template with a custom requirement-level type called defect and 3 Task templates defined, using this extension on a User Story or Defect work item will generate three child Tasks; one for each defined template.

How-To Guide

Defining Task Templates

Azure DevOps offers team-specific work item templating as core functionality with which you can quickly apply pre-populated values for your team's commonly used fields per work item type. View Microsoft's documentation about how to add and update work item templates.

Creating Task Template Filter Rules

With this extension, it's possible to specify which parent work items apply to each Task template by putting rules into the Task template Description field. There are two ways that you can specify these rules:

Simplified

Put the list of applicable parent work item types in the child Task template's description field, like this:

[Product Backlog Item, Bug]

Complex

Put a minified (single line) JSON string into the child Task template's description field, like this:

{
    "applywhen": [
    {
        "System.State": "Approved",
        "System.Tags" : ["Blah", "ClickMe"],
        "System.WorkItemType": "Product Backlog Item",
        "System.AreaPath": "Root\\Sub Path\\Another Sub Path"
    },
    {
        "System.BoardColumn": "Testing",
        "System.BoardLane": "Expedite",
        "System.State": "Custom State",
        "System.Title": "Repeatable item",
        "System.WorkItemType": "Custom Type"
    }]
}

Applying Child Tasks

Find and select the Create Child Tasks option on the toolbar menu of the parent work item (E.g. Product Backlog Item, User Story, Bug).

You should now have children associated with the open work item.

Ordering Child Tasks

By default, the child Tasks are created and orderd alphabetically by the Task template name field. If you would like to customize the order of how the tasks show up in the work item then you can name the Task template with numbers.

When creating the tasks with the extension, the tasks will then show up in the same order in the work item.

Using 'Wildcards' for Title Filter Rules

You might want to apply a child task to a parent work item if the parent work item title matches completely or only partially. It's possible to compare the parent work item title by using a wildcard string as the filter rule and using the asterick character ("*").

{
    "applywhen": [
    {
        "System.WorkItemType": "Product Backlog Item",
        "System.Title": "*WildcardString*"
    }]
}

The following are examples of how the wildcard comparison can be used:

- "a*b"     Everything that starts with "a" and ends with "b"
- "a*"      Everything that starts with "a"
- "*b"      Everything that ends with "b"
- "*a*"     Everything that has an "a" in it
- "*a*b*"   Everything that has an "a" in it, followed by anything, followed by a "b", followed by anything

Credits

Cloned from https://github.com/figueiredorui/1-click-child-links