Printing Work Items in TFS

Question

I am looking for a fancy way the print individual work items in TFS. OK ... maybe not the work item directly but I need to produce printable forms based on data on a work item. And by fancy I mean: header, footer, formatting, tables maybe ... stuff like that.

No, I am not trying to print a list of work items, read carefully, I need an output based on a single work item.

For those who are wondering "Why on earth do you need that?" I should say: We are keeping everything on TFS around here. (For now only software development stuff, but I am thinking bigger...) Sometimes somethings need to be on hard copy, to be signed for instance, and that is why I need printable forms.

Solution 1

I came up with a solution a little interesting from my point of view.

I used the "mail merge" function of MS Word to print work items. I prepared an SQL query that reads whatever fields are needed from TFS database and set the query as a datasource for mail marge.

Now I can design a word document of any kind and use TFS fields in the document. I just select the appropriate record by work item number and voila!! my printable work item is ready.

It is a little slow when selecting a work item if you use a query that returns all work items, but who is perfect? Right ?

Solution 2

Though I agree that Reporting Services is probably the best way to accomplish this, you could alternatively write a web application that queries TFS and formats the data into a nice, printable HTML page. If you really wanted to, you could even look at some of the PDF libraries that are out there and just form-fill a PDF.

Solution 3

Here is an other free tool which can print tfs workitems:

http://blog.bbv.ch/2013/10/31/tfs-print/

Comments

[Morten Frederiksen]

Duplicate question: stackoverflow.com/questions/211488/…

[Robaticus]

I wouldn't point at the cube for this. Point at the TFSWarehouse.

[Robaticus]

That's actually a great solution.

[HaavardMeling]

Do you download excel file from TFS or do you create dataconnection directly from Word to TFS? In case how is that done?

[e-mre]

Excel does not take place in the process. You have to do some digging into the TFS database and find the data you need. You prepare an SQL query that gathers data (from multiple tables if needed). You use the "mail merge" feature of MS Word (which connects to TFS DB with your query) to return the needed data and build the document format you need for the printout.