New Boards Hub, Sprint 211 Update

Dan Hellem

Sprint 211 was a busy one. We were able to complete a lot of bugs and yet introduce some new exciting features. We also enabled a “Try the New Boards Hub” banner and popup to the legacy boards experience on select organizations. This helped us get another round of feedback and bugs to address.

Notable bugs fixed

Issue Description
Remote link types cause re-authentication When a work item has a link to a remote work item type, a re-authentication popup is triggered, and an error is shown for those remote links.
Users locale settings on not respected When a user changes their locale settings (date pattern, time pattern, and time zone), those settings are not being applied.
Missing “Add existing item to parent” For work items that have existing related links, the “Add existing item to parent” option was missing from the Related Work control.
Rename query in favorites When a user renames a query from My Favorites, the old name still shows in the next rename dialog.
Favorite board issues Odd behavior when favoriting a team Kanban board.
Parent Id with Copy as HTML Copy as HTML from a backlog or query with Parent column is included. When pasting the HTML, the parent is showing the Id instead of the parent’s name and link.
Add Link only shows 100 projects Add a link to a build only loads the top 100 projects in the project list.
Sprint burndown chart scrolling issue Unnecessary scroll bar being used on the sprint burndown options control.
Backlog panel extensibility point Issues with the backlog panel extensibility contribution type ms.vss-work-web.backlog-panel.
Arrow key with Board Various issues when attempting to use the arrow keys on the Kanban board.
Moving between tabs triggers save button In some cases, when a user opens a work item and moves to a different tab on that work item, it triggers the form Save button.
Task board editing remaining work on bugs Bugs on the task board do not allow editing of the remaining work field on the card.
WEF fields for columns options WEF fields should not be available when selecting columns on backlogs or queries.

Note: Although these items are fixed, they may not be released to all organizations yet. Rollout can take a few days to a couple weeks.

Option to maintain hierarchy with filters

When filtering on the backlog, your hierarchy gets flattened out in the results and you see just one long list of items. This is a painful experience for folks who want to filter and continue to see the hierarchy. In this sprint, we are releasing a new option for you to maintain the hierarchy when filtering on the backlog. When the filter is applied, we start at the bottom of the hierarchy and work our way back up. If there is match, the work item is highlighted (bold) and you can then see the parent chain above.

image showing boards option to maintain hierarchy

Copy Work Item Attachment URL

We have added the ability to copy the URL for a work item attachment so that it can be cut and pasted in the description and discussions. When you click on the link, it will download the attachment.

Image get attachment url

What is next?

Back to fixing bugs based on the feedback from the “Try the New Boards Hub” banner. Once we get those bugs addressed, we will turn on that banner for more organizations to get more feedback.

There are a couple more features in progress so keep an eye on the features timeline for more information.

We appreciate and need your feedback to ensure the New Boards Hub is successful. Feel free to email me with any issues you find.