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Task templates for batch creating tasks

This article apply to Urban Turtle 5.2 & later

Urban Turtle allows you to create a template of subtasks/sub-work items to rapidly populate your sprint backlog with commonly repeated activities.

This is most useful for deliverables (User Stories, Product Backlog Items, etc) that have frequently repeated task. An example of deliverable that has commonly repeated tasks would be a product release (eg tag build, update release notes, etc), change request analysis (eg review requirements, technical validation, risk assessment) or frequently adding reminders for tasks relating to your definition of done (eg have localization reviewed, deploy changes to staging, etc). 

How to create a template

First, you will need to be a project administrator and go to the project administration in TFS. Click the “Urban Turtle” Tab and select “Product Backlog Templates” sub tab. From this screen, you will be able to add a new template and define the sub elements you will add when you select this template in the product backlog.

2015-12-07_Urban_Turtle_Project_Level_Administration_-_Microsoft_Team_Foundation_Server.png

To use your template, simply go to the product backlog. When at least one template is created for your project, a new button will appear in the product backlog. Use the “Add from template” icon on the story that you want to create your multiple subtasks and there you go.

2015-12-07_Product_Backlog_-_Microsoft_Team_Foundation_Server.png

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7 Comments

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  • 0
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    John D. Shkolnik
    1. Do you have plans to allow for deeper templating of the tasks? Like predefined activity, remaining work, etc.
    2. Is there a way to share templates across projects?
  • 0
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    Vincent Cléroux

    Hi John, 

    To allow users to predefine other fields is something that we will improve. I'll check other feedback about the templates and do a second round of improvements on this. 

     

    Not sure we will go the all the way with the project sharing. Project sharing is always more complex because Work Item Type can be different between projects. 

     

    Regards, Vincent

  • 0
    Avatar
    Petter Nyquist

    Hi, We like this new feature! Developers who se their tasks in Visual Studio like to put the Title of the parent (PBI) as a suffix to the Task title. I suggest that you make this optipnal in the temlplate setup page. 




    mockup.png
  • 0
    Avatar
    Petter Nyquist

    It will be easier for a developer to identfy his task in Visual Studio If we are able to put the parents title on as a suffix. Otherwise he will only see a lot of task named "Developing"

  • 0
    Avatar
    Vincent Cléroux

    Thanks for the suggestion Petter. 

    We will improve this feature soon and I'll take this into consideration. Thanks for the mockup! 

    Regards, Vincent

  • 0
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    Nathan Strom

    Seconding the request to be able to set predefined fields. We'd love to use this feature in our organization, but our default Task template in TFS has a required "Needs QA" field which means if we're not setting this field explicitly, tasks can't actually be created. (We'd also like to be able to set Activity on the created tasks.)

  • 0
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    John D. Shkolnik
    VSTS now has work item type field templates and TFS 15 will have it. All they're missing is what UT does here to compete the functionality.
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