Assigned To field unknown when status is closed

Assigned To field unknown when status is closed

• Bgrantham

  Knowing who worked on a specific bug is very important. Why do we need to 'extend' the Team Foundation for this Extending is for achieving a very specific functionality, not a basic one .

  Thank you

  
  
  

• SROSeaner

  The <STATE> section for "CLOSED" must have the field "Assigned To" set to <EMPTY/>, this is the default for closed states in the MS sample work items.
  
  Remove the field declaration or change the <EMPTY/> to <REQUIRED/> or some other value that makes since.
  
  

• seco

  You can accomplish this by creating a "Closed By" or "Worked On By" field that copies the "currentuser" value on a closing transition.  You can report and query on this field to see who worked on the work item and closed it down.  This is similar to what our team does.

  
  
  

• Neeraj Jain

  I see your point, but the problem occurs when the development manager, for example,  closes a work item for another developer--if you assume the Closed By field references the user that worked on the work item then you would be incorrect. There has to be a way to query which developer actually worked on the item, and who it was originally assigned to. Of course you could look through the field change history, but that's not exactly convenient. Also if I wanted to query closed items for a particular user I may get inaccurate data.
  

• wbstvnsn

  Matt is right in his explanation of why you're seeing this, although I'll agree that it's somewhat confusing for the reports to say "unknown" - possibly they should say empty.
  
  The reason we clear the AssignedTo field is because of the basic principle that once a bug is Closed it is complete - and shouldn't be showing up on anyone's radar (e.g. My Work Items query). Otherwise you end up with a backlog of hundreds of dead work items showing up on your own queries which end up being distracting and unhelpful.
  
  An alternative is to define a dummy user name (e.g. Closed) to assign the bugs to when they are closed. You can update the bug definition to do this instead of assigning them to EMPTY.
  
  
• Assigned To field unknown when status is closed