Tips and Tricks: Open Workitem in Visual Studio

Problem:

Getting annoyed when working in Visual Studio 2017 and each time you you open a work item from Team Explorer pane, it opens it in the web?

Well according to recent conversations I have had, it appears that not to many people know about the ability to set the behaviour.

Solution:

By default, VS2017 will open the work items in the browser, but there is a way to change it. When you open Visual Studio and select the Tools > Options from the menu. Find the "Work Items" section and under General you can change the behaviour.

Setting it to "Visual Studio (compatibility mode)" will open the work items in Visual Studio as before.

Be warned though, this is option is due to be removed in the next major release of Visual Studio where the default behaviour will be to open the work item in the browser. So use it while you can

Tips and Tricks: User has Allow Delete work items, but no delete button on work item

Problem:

The user in TFS/VSTS has all the rights enabled to delete work items. The problem is that when you open the work items the "Delete" button is missing, and you do not have the option to delete in query lists.

When you look at the inherited rights you see something like this:

All indication is that the permission is allowed, but the end result is that it is denied.

Solution:

This may be that the user is in the "Stakeholder" access level. If you pay close attention to the "unavailable features" you will notice that deleting work items is one of the things a stakeholder can't do.

You can now either acquire a license for the user and move him/her into the basic access level or higher, or the user will need to ask someone that does hove those rights to perform the deletions.

Tips and Tricks: TFS Excel Plugin not loading

Problem:

Close an Excel spreadsheet with/or without having a TFS/VSTS connected list. When you open the spreadsheet again, the Team tab is missing in the ribbon bar.

You then need to go through and re-enable the plugin through Excel options to reload the plugin and get the Team tab back.

This also disconnects your TFS/VSTS linked worksheets, causing you to have to reconnect or re-open a query to carry on working with the work items.

Solution:

1. With Excel closed, open up the registry editor (regedit)
2. Then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins , and find the TFCOfficeShim entries:
   
   There may be more than one, and the version number at the end may differ to the image above
3. I simply remove/delete the “older versions”  (I surely do not have to remind you to take a backup of your registry before you make any changes),
4. and then find the “LoadBehavior” in the “folder” and make sure that the value is 3

Now re-open the spreadsheet and see if it will load automatically.