How can I create a TFS rule on the AssignedTo field that displays a list of valid users and allows freetext entry?

Question

What I am trying to do:
Set up a TFS work item to allow assigning tasks to people who don't have TFS accounts. Those users wouldn't access TFS. We just want to keep track of we assigned tasks to when those people are outside of our team.

What I have tried:
Basically I want to update the AssignedTo field on a task work item to allow entering values that aren't in the list, but still show a dropdown of valid AD users to pick from.

Replacing the ValidUsers rule with a SuggestedValues rule solves the problem of letting us add values that aren't in the list but we lose the dropdown of TFS users unless we manually type each person into a global list (which I'd prefer not to have to maintain).

Using both a ValidUsers rule and a SuggestedValues rule lets you use the dropdown AND type in a new value, but if the typed value isn't in the list it won't validate.

The Question
Is there a way to set up a SuggestedValues rule that pulls the suggested values from an AD or TFS group? Or perhaps there is another way of skinning this cat?

This sounds like a really bad idea. Have you ever looked at a denormalized database and seen how many ways one person's name can be spelled? It makes reporting impossible. Just add them to a group with Reader access. — Daniel Mann
These users aren't even domain users in the environment where TFS is installed. That won't work. I agree on the normalization issue though. It would be ideal if any free-text entries got added to the dropdown list (global list) automatically to reduce that kind of issue) — JohnFx

Vicky - MSFT Vicky - MSFT · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-15T06:46:11

Yes, you can populate the SuggestedValues with a AD Security group or a TFS group with:

<ListRule expanditems="true">
  <LISTITEM value="[Project]\Contributors" />
  <LISTITEM value="[Project]\Project Administrators" />
  <LISTITEM value="Domain\GroupName" />
</ListRule>

How can I create a TFS rule on the AssignedTo field that displays a list of valid users and allows freetext entry?

1 Answers