Inactive Tasks Query in Azure Devops

Question

We are currently implementing Azure Devops for our backlog and task management. We are using a Kanban board setup. I would like to add a query to our dashboard to show Stale actions, effectively I want to see a list tasks that have been assigned but not modified in 7 days. Initially I tried the state change date, but am finding that some tasks are having activity but just not a state change. So I tried Changed Date, but that shows changes to the priority level when other items are changed. How can I write a query that would only identify work items that have not been modified in over 7 days?

Answer 1

Currently there are no existing field can meet your requirement. And the Changed Date field will be updated if there are any changes to this work item as you mentioned.

As a workaround, you could try following steps.

1. Add a custom field to a work item type (Inheritance process), I add field LastEdit which is Date/Time type and IsActive which is Text (single line) type for Task, and field IsActive is required, as below.

2. Add a rule to a work item type (Inheritance process), I add 3 rules for Task, as below.

3. Therefore, the field LastEdit is the last edit time, and users must edit the field IsActive when they update this work item and then the field LastEdit will be updated, otherwise they cannot save their changes.

4. Now you could filter target Tasks that using the field LastEdit, as below.

Answer 2

Here's the approach I tried utilizing rules to set a "LastEdit" custom date field. I have 4 of these set for different changes, then I can query off the LastEdit date. It'll take a few days before I know if this works or not, but some simple testing seem ok. The major shortcoming I see is that I cant create a rule to update the LastEdit based on a new comment being entered.