blog

How to delete work items from TFS or VSO

Published on
3 minute read

Have you ever created a bunch of work items that you decided later that you had to delete. Well I have… especially as a user of the TFS Integration Platform. And when things go wrong there they can really go wrong.

Now while you can put stuff into the “removed” state it is still hanging around cluttering up the place. The only way out of the box to remove items is to give the ID for each work item that you want to delete and execute the command line for each one.:

witadmin destroywi /collection:CollectionURL /id:id [/noprompt]

WARNING: This code can result in total loss of all work items you have if you miss key a query! Be careful… and you are on your own. Don’t blame me, and no… I can’t get them back for you…

Well that’s just great unless you have a couple of thousand things to delete. So I knocked up a little bit of code to do it for me. Now, since I have had to knock it up a bunch of times before I thought that I had better share it. I started this blog in the first place so that I would remember things.

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
 
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
 
            TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://tfs.company.com:8080/tfs/DefultCollection"));
            WorkItemStore store = tpc.GetService();
            string query = @"SELECT [System.Id] FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.TeamProject] = 'projectName'  AND  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'projectName\_TOBEDELETED' ORDER BY [System.Id]";
            WorkItemCollection wis = store.Query(query);
            IEnumerable x = from WorkItem wi in wis select wi.Id;
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("DESTROY {0} work items (they really can't be resurrected): y/n?", wis.Count));
            ConsoleKeyInfo cki = Console.ReadKey();
            Console.WriteLine();
          if (cki.Key.ToString().ToLower() == "y")
            {
            try
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Deleting....");
                    IEnumerable y = store.DestroyWorkItems(x.ToArray());
                    Console.WriteLine("DONE");
                    foreach (var item in y)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine(item.ToString());
                    }
                }
                catch (Exception)
                {
 
                    Console.WriteLine("Things have gotten all pooped up please try again!");
                }
        
            }
 
          Console.WriteLine("Freedom");
        }
   
    }
}

The first thing that you may notice is that I search for items in a specific area path. I use _TOBEDELETED as it is obvious what is going to happen to things that end up there. Although I did work with a user who complained that all his files had gone missing. When asked where he kept them he pointed at the recycle bin on his desktop!

Anyhoo… just in case you made a mistake it will let you know how many work items that you are deleting. It’s a simple check but I have had it say “100,000” work items… AS you can imagine I very carefully terminated the program (never trust the ’no’ option).

tools-and-techniques blog tfs tfs-2013 vsteamservices

Connect with Martin Hinshelwood

If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.

Our Happy Clients​

We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.​

Xceptor - Process and Data Automation Logo
ProgramUtvikling Logo
Trayport Logo
Workday Logo
Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company) Logo
Teleplan Logo
Slaughter and May Logo
Alignment Healthcare Logo
DFDS Logo
Schlumberger Logo
Lockheed Martin Logo
Higher Education Statistics Agency Logo

NIT A/S

Emerson Process Management Logo
Epic Games Logo
Illumina Logo
Big Data for Humans Logo
YearUp.org Logo
Department of Work and Pensions (UK) Logo
Washington Department of Transport Logo
Washington Department of Enterprise Services Logo
Ghana Police Service Logo
Nottingham County Council Logo
New Hampshire Supreme Court Logo

CR2

Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company) Logo
Higher Education Statistics Agency Logo
Alignment Healthcare Logo
Jack Links Logo
Freadom Logo