Create a list of identities for a group of individuals in a work item?

DevOps Azure DevOps
1

Is there a way to create a list of identities for a group of individuals in a work item? A team that I am working with wants to create a “Business Stakeholder” field with 1 to n number of biz stakeholders. They want me to do a free text field, which just hurts my soul :slightly_smiling_face:. From an automation and data entry perspective it feels wrong. The only way that I can think to do it is to add the following to the work item type a Primary Business Stakeholder , Secondary Business Stakeholder, Trinary Business Stakeholder, etc, but that also feels like a hack. Any suggestions?

2

There used to be a ‘watchers’ control that could store multiple identities. Been a while I looked for it, no clue if it exists atm.

3

From what I can tell it’s gone…

This would be a perfect case for a wit custom control, backed by a multi-line string with either json or xml innit.

4

Thanks, , what would you suggest as plan B for this? Just do the Primary/Secondary/Trinary hack?

5

I’d love it if you’d make a custom control ;).

6

Interesting, so an ADO Extension with a custom control that allows for 1 to N. Hmm.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/extend/develop/custom-control?view=azure-devops
Sorry if that’s a basic question, I’ve never done that before.

7

Yups that would be the trick.

8

https://github.com/microsoft/vsts-extension-multivalue-control could help as a sample. There is a standard identity picker control that you can use in the sdk.

9

Does Add custom control exist for Azure DevOps Services as well? I don’t see it.

10

Yes, if you have any installed into your organization

11

Ah, nice … an existing extension, sorry, just saw the code. Thanks again for walking me through this!
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-devlabs.vsts-extensions-multivalue-control

12

Yeah. It’s a bit of a deep end I’m pushing you off. Lots of stuff to learn…

13

You could go with 5 fields as well, but you’d make a lop of people happy with a multi-identity control.

14

LOL. That’s ok. I can swim without floaties. :wink:

15

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56029313/how-to-test-new-azure-devops-extension-version-before-publishing-it-for-everyone

16

Will do! Thanks again!

17

Should tell them its not available and suggest they manually migrate all the work items to jira. This is a software tool, not ms project :wink: