Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of Work Item Search in Visual Studio Team Services. Work Item Search provides fast and flexible search across all your work items.

With Work Item Search you can quickly and easily find relevant work items by searching across all work item fields over all projects in an account. You can perform full text searches across all fields to efficiently locate relevant work items. Use in-line search filters, on any work item field, to quickly narrow down to a list of work items.

Enabling Work Item Search for your Team Services account

Work Item Search is available as a free extension on Visual Studio Team Services Marketplace. Click the install button on the extension description page and follow instructions displayed, to enable the feature for your account. Note that you need to be an account admin to install the feature. If you are not, then the install experience will allow you to request your account admin to install the feature. Work Item Search can be added to any Team Services account for free. By installing this extension through the Visual Studio Marketplace, any user with access to work items can take advantage of Work Item Search.

You can start searching for work items using the work item search box in the top right corner. Once in the search results page, you can easily switch between Code and Work Item Search.

Search across one or more projects

Work Item Search enables you to search across all projects, so you can focus on the results that matter most to you. You can scope search and drill down into an area path of choice.

Full text search across all fields

You can easily search across all work item fields, including custom fields, which enables more natural searches. The snippet view indicates where matches were found.

Now you need not specify a target work item field to search against. Type the terms you recall and Work Item Search will match it against each work item field including title, description, tags, repro steps, etc. Matching terms across all work item fields enables you to do more natural searches.

Quick Filters

Quick inline search filters let you refine work items in seconds. The dropdown list of suggestions helps complete your search faster. You can filter work items by specific criteria on any work item field. For example, a search such as “AssignedTo: Chris WorkItemType: Bug State: Active” finds all active bugs assigned to a user named Chris.

Rich integration with work item tracking

The Work Item Search interface integrates with familiar controls in the Work hub, giving you the ability to view, edit, comment, share and much more.

Got feedback?

How can we make Work Item Search better for you? Here is how you can get in touch with us

• You can eMail us or
• Post your suggestion ideas

  Thanks, Search team