Custom Field Alert in TFS 2015

1
votes

The question is the following:

I have a custom Requester field in TFS work items. It contains a valid TFS user name. Is it possible to send an email to the person specified in this custom field, when the item changes a state?

In other words:

Requester = [Me]
Send email on State change

From the following questions :

1) “[Me]” variable for custom field alerts in TFS 2013
2) How to create custom Field with transition workflow in TFS

I figured out that custom fields (such as Requester) do not have = and <> operators. They have only Change, Change to, Change from. Thus it is not possible. (You can only observe the changes made to the custom fields)

Has anybody seen, herd or implemented a solution to this? Maybe a custom plug-in?

Thank You in advance!

2
visual-studiotfscustom-fieldstfs-2015alerts

2 Answers

3
votes

You're looking at a server side event handler to achieve this.

  • Intercept the Work Item changed event
  • Check if the change was a change in state
  • If it is, then email the address listed in the Requester field.

There are couple of old projects on codeplex which should get you up and running but you'll need to update for TFS 2015 (and test with any updates you apply later)

Email alerts for TFS

TFS Work Item Watcher

There is a feature that just popped into VSTS that makes this a little slicker

Follow a Work Item

Although you would get notified on all changes rather than just state change

1
votes

The feature was added in TFS "15" (not the same as TFS2015, see Brian Harry's blog post)

The feature is not enabled publicly yet, but there is a feature flag that you can turn on by changing a value in the team foundation registry to enable it - because it's not public yet you will have to contact Microsoft for instructions,

I have provided my email in the blog post https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rihamselim/2016/09/07/enabling-alerts-for-custom-fields-in-work-item-alerts/