Using our tool TFS Bug Item Synchronizer one scenario that our customers have been requesting is capability to send workitems to different Quality Center projects based on field value in TFS AreaPath –field.

And here’s how you can do it.

There is actually two ways for it, one is to let users decide this manually or then make this decision for them.

Key is to use QC Project Field –setting for your TFS projects which allows to specify into which Quality Center project TFS workitem is being sent to.

This field accepts values in format of QCDOMAIN.QCPROJECT.

Easiest option is to add all configured Quality Center projects into list, attach this list into selected TFS workitem field and let users manually select values for this field.

This – of course – makes it possible also user to make errors on the selection and workitem is sent to wrong Quality Center project.

To make this decision for the user based on field value in TFS AreaPath –field (or any other TFS field) workitem template needs to be modified to include couple of rules:

1. Have default value as empty for QC Project Field
2. If user selects known AreaPath with mapped Quality Center project, change QC Project Field value in TFS to match this selection so that TFS workitem is sent to QC
3. If user select unknown or unmapped AreaPath, clear QC Project Field so that TFS workitem is not sent to QC

Thing to remember in here is that you cannot use AreaPath directly in a rule, instead you need to use AreaId field. And how do you know these AreaId values? Look at the workitem history:

In above the New Value is the AreaId for matching Area Path value that was selected.

So now that we know where to get all the values, it is time to start modifying the workitem template for our TFS project.

For this purpose I’m using TFS Power Tools.

First create a new field for your workitem, name it the way you like, values for this form below are not important for the synchronization process:

To specify QC destination project automatically for two AreaPaths (TestTfsforCMMI\Area 0, AreaId=151 and TestTfsforCMMI\Area 1, AreaId=152), following rules need to be added:

So two WHEN rules and one WHENNOT rule.

WHEN rules have following content:

and for each WHEN rule we need to define two additional rules:

COPY rule when AreaPath is changed to our’s:

and DEFAULT rule in case we already had the correct AreaPath when we created the workitem:

Our second WHEN rules is the same as the first one, except that AreaId is different:

and COPY and DEFAULT rules have different Quality Center project:

And last thing is the WHENNOT rule:

For value just pick any of the mapped AreaId values and define a COPY rule:

So in case none of the actual ones for AreaPath is selected, QC Project Field we defined is cleared.

To test this, QC Project Field is brought into form (in our case we called it ErrorDB) and when neither ‘TestTfsforCMMI\Area 0’ or ‘TestTfsforCMMI\Area 1’ is selected, ErrorDB remains empty:

When we select ‘Area 0’ we get ErrorDB populated correctly:

and with ‘Area 1’:

And when selecting value that we did not map ErrorDB is cleared:

One thing to configure is that when you add this field into workitem form, you might want to mark it as readonly:

This way users are not able to type in any values for this field and it gets changed only when AreaPath –field is changed.