Changing the workflow of existing work items
I originally posted this question to StackOverflow because the edge proxy for the forums was throwing errors earlier today. Also, it will probably be more visible there too. You can find it at http://stackoverflow.com/q/10019928/57626.
In a nutshell here's my problem:
This causes me a lot of concern because I'm wondering what happens if I need to update the workflow in the future. Will all of my existing work items become locked out as these test work items? Surely there must be some way to change the workflow of an existing work item, especially if the base underlying workflow for the work item has changed. Even if it means resetting these test work items to new I'm fine with that.
In a nutshell here's my problem:
- I'm creating a new type of work item with some custom attributes
- As I was developing the custom work item I created a few of these test work items and populated them with the existing custom attributes
- When I added new custom attributes I could click "Check attributes usage in repository" and sync the new attributes with the test work items
- Then I got to the state where I realized I needed a custom workflow
- I created a custom workflow and assigned it to the custom work item type
- Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a way to change the workflow of existing work items. Thus my test work items are all fixed at status "1" and I can't do anything to change this fact
This causes me a lot of concern because I'm wondering what happens if I need to update the workflow in the future. Will all of my existing work items become locked out as these test work items? Surely there must be some way to change the workflow of an existing work item, especially if the base underlying workflow for the work item has changed. Even if it means resetting these test work items to new I'm fine with that.
One answer
After poking around I think I might have accidentally stumbled upon a solution. If you make a change to a work item and save the work item it will correct the process state by resetting the state to "New". At least it did with my work items. In my case I simply went in and added then removed a space in the work item summary and hit save. When the work item reloaded I was able to have it follow the new process.
It would be nice if this could be automated for all of the projects that are in invalid states, similar to how attributes work, but oh well. This works.
It would be nice if this could be automated for all of the projects that are in invalid states, similar to how attributes work, but oh well. This works.