TFS & Visual Studio ALM – by Neno Loje

This post is part of a blog series:

• Part I : Exporting TFS Work Items to Microsoft Word (via WordToTFS)
• Part II: Publishing Requirements from Word to TFS (via WordToTFS)

Steps:

1. Download and install the freeware tool AIT WordToTFS from here (registration required).

    

2. Start Microsoft Word (winword.exe). You should see a new "WordToTFS" ribbon.

   

3. Choose the layout template you want to use (the names correspond to TFS process templates, but it’s possible to furhter customize those layout templates).

   

4. Once, you are ready to publish, click ‘Connect‘ on the ‘WordToTFS’ ribbon and choose a team project to connect to.

   

5. Start by creating an outline, headlines, introduction text as you would normally do when creating a requirements document in MS Word.
6. Once you are ready to add a requirement, choose "Empty Product Backlog Item" (in the case of the "Visual Scrum Scrum" template; the name differs for other process template, e.g. "Requirement" in MSF/CMMI or "User Story" for MSF/Agile).

   

7. This will insert a table with the typical fields to describe a requirement. Replace ‘Title’ and ‘Description’ with appropriate values (you can edit those defaults by clicking "Edit Default Values" on the ribbon).

   

8. Repeat Steps 5 to 7 for additional requirements.
9. Once you’re happy with your requirement(s), click ‘Publish‘ in the ‘WordToTFS’ ribbon.

    

   

   

10. The work item is now created in TFS.
    After publishing the requirement table looks smilar to this:

     

Notes:

• Keep in sync: After initially publishing your work items you can either change those in MS Word and re-publish those changes, or change the work items with a different TFS client and click ‘Refresh’ on the ‘WordToTFS’ ribbon to import those changes into your MS Word document.

   

• Images: You can insert images in the description field (if the process template is using an HTML-based field) and those will be updated as attachments:

  

• Test Cases with Test steps: You can enter a numbered list of steps for a Test Case, which will be translated to test steps (as they are required by Microsoft Test Manager):

  

  

Disclaimer: This MS Word integration is not part of Visual Studio or Team Foundation Server. The plug-in was developed by a Microsoft Partner (AIT) and not by Microsoft itself.