Update Work Items in Azure DevOps project using Az CLI
If we want to assign the un-assigned work items to a specific team member who is part of ADO Organization or to re-assign an existing work item to some other team member due to priority fixes etc.. we can use az boards work-item update and make sure to provide --id parameter which is mandatory.
Update Work Item
The command to run is az boards work-item update to update work items. The complete syntax of command is shown below:
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az boards work-item update --id
[--area]
[--assigned-to]
[--description]
[--detect {false, true}]
[--discussion]
[--fields]
[--iteration]
[--open]
[--org]
[--reason]
[--state]
[--title]
With this update command, we can update the following fields directly:
- Assigned To (Owner)
- Area Path
- Description (Summary)
- Discussion (Comments)
- Iteration
- State
- Title
- Fields
Example commands to update work items
Assigned To (Owner)
Owner/Assigned To field can be directly updated using --assigned-to parameter. Here is the sample code:
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$organization = "https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/"
$project = "datosmic-project1"
az boards work-item update --id 2 `
--assigned-to 'AdeleV' `
--org $organization
You might receive this error while trying to run the above command:
The identity value '<<UserAlias>>' for field 'Assigned To' is an unknown identity.. This means the user alias you are trying to assign is not in the scope of this organization (Azure DevOps). You might also see this similar error from UI (Azure DevOps portal) as shown below:To fix this issue, please check the permissions of the user you are trying to add like if the user exists in the organization or user alias trying to add is incorrect etc.
If the user alias is not added in the Azure DevOps organization/project, then please add alias in respective group to provide permissions (contributors/Build Admins etc..). See Security groups, service accounts, and permissions in Azure DevOps, Add users or groups to a team or project and View permissions for yourself or others for more information.
Area Path
Area Path (Area) field can be directly updated using --area parameter. Here is the sample code:
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$organization = "https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/"
$project = "datosmic-project1"
az boards work-item update --id 2 `
--org $organization `
--area 'datosmic-project1\datosmic'
Iteration
Iteration field can be directly updated using --iteration parameter. Here is the sample code:
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$organization = "https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/"
$project = "datosmic-project1"
az boards work-item update --id 2 `
--org $organization `
--iteration 'datosmic-project1\Iteration 1'
Description
Description field can be directly updated using --description parameter. This accepts HTML content so we can pass the complete data in HTML format and update it. Here is the sample code:
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$organization = "https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/"
$project = "datosmic-project1"
az boards work-item update --id 2 `
--org $organization `
--description "<h1> This is Description with H1 Heading </h1>"
Discussion
Description field can be directly updated using --discussion parameter. This accepts HTML content so we can pass the complete data in HTML format and update it. Here is the sample code:
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$organization = "https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/"
$project = "datosmic-project1"
az boards work-item update --id 2 `
--org $organization `
--discussion "<h3> This is a comment in discussion section </h3>"
State
State field can be directly updated using --state parameter. This accepts only allowed values. Here is the sample code:
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$organization = "https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/"
$project = "datosmic-project1"
az boards work-item update --id 2 `
--org $organization `
--state "Active"
Fields
Various field values of a work item can be updated using this value and Space separated "field=value" pairs for custom fields we would like to set. Refer https://aka.ms/azure-devops-cli-field-api for more details on fields.
Syntax:
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GET https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/wit/fields?api-version=5.0
Example: https://dev.azure.com/datosmic/datosmic-project1/_apis/wit/fields?api-version=5.0
Its not mandatory that these need to be executed individually, these can be ran in single command by providing valid parameters to update everything at single execution/run.