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What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

One of my team is looking into what a command line tool for Work Item Tracking might look like. We'd like it to be something that you could use without a GUI so that it could be suitable for scripting.

What would you like it to do? What problems would you use it to solve? Does it sound useful to you?

I'd love to have your input - I want to make sure we're creating something that is useful to you. Feel free to post a comment here, or contact me directly.

Thanks!

Published Monday, March 06, 2006 1:55 PM by johnlawr
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Comments

Monday, March 06, 2006 5:58 PM by David

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

It could be Monad based :)
Monday, March 06, 2006 10:11 PM by Richard Murillo

# What I am looking for in a command-line work item tracking tool

John Lawrence asked in his blog entry "What features would you like for a command line work item tracking...
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 5:04 AM by Martin Woodward

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

John,

We would probably use a command line tool mostly in scripted environments. The following features would be useful (in order of preference):-

1) Ability to run arbitary WIQL against the web service - both passed as a command line argument or stored in a file.

2) Be able to pass login credentials to use instead of the current threads default credentials.

3) A WorkItem move command to move work items between Team Projects

4) As well as human readable formats, it would be nice to have format that was specifically designed to be machine parsable, i.e. /format:xml.  It would also be locale neutral

5) Ability to do the equivalent of an update command in SQL, alternatively have the ability to set some field values to a certain value based on the results of a WIQL query.  The case I am thinking is if you would like to make everything an issue if it has been in a certain state for a period of time, or perhaps raise the rank...

Also, if you are building a command line tool it would be very useful if it also brough together the functionlaity of the various other tools such as witimport, witexport, witfields etc.

That'll do for starters :-)  However, if I think of anything else I'll drop you a line.

Martin.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 6:53 AM by Mariano Szklanny

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

John,
I think it would be usefull to have a tool that enabled administrators to remove work items and, as Martin Woodward said, to move work items between projects.

Thanks,
Mariano.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 12:14 PM by Keith Hill

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

I like David's idea of having it be based on the Microsoft Command Shell.  The .NET scripting support in MSH (aka Monad) would be a natural fit for the .NET object model for TFS.  MSH also provides many useful SQL like utilities that would be handy for slicing WIT data from the CLI.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 12:19 PM by Team System News

# VSTS Links - 03/07/2006

John Lawrence gives us some history and clarification on their Team Foundation dogfood statistics.  He...
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 5:16 PM by kayers

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

IT would be nice to delete workitem types from a team project
Thursday, March 09, 2006 10:43 PM by Ron

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

Way off topic here but what I would really like to see is a web interface for editing/adding/deleting work items

Thanks!
Thursday, March 23, 2006 4:25 AM by John Lawrence (MSFT)

# Jason - another Team Foundation Developer - is blogging

Looks like Jason Prickett is now blogging.
I'm looking forward to reading what he has to say. He's one...
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 5:33 AM by nobl

# re: What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool?

it would be great if we could get all the workitems as XML or an other format file to be used by other tools or applications as well as writing scripts in the case of administrators...
Friday, March 28, 2008 9:08 AM by Employment Wages » John Lawrence (MSFT) : What features would you like for a command line …

# Employment Wages » John Lawrence (MSFT) : What features would you like for a command line …

PingBack from http://employmentwagesblog.info/john-lawrence-msft-what-features-would-you-like-for-a-command-line/

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