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Limiting the number of work items being displayed on the Task board

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For performance reasons, the task board is by default limited to 500 work items. This helps in achieving an acceptable load time as the work items are loaded into the cache when the Task Board is opened. However, this number can be changed.

The number of work items that appear on the Task board can be controlled from the AgileConfiguration file in TFS 2012, and the ProcessConfiguration file in TFS 2013.

Note:

We will use the witadmin command line tool to import and export configuration files. To use the tool, open a command prompt window where Visual Studio or Team Explorer is installed and navigate to  %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio <version>\Common7\IDE

TFS 2012:

In TFS 2012, the number of work items on the Task Board can be changed by modifying the value of workItemCountLimit attribute of the IterationBacklog element in the agile configuration file.

· Export the agileporcessconfig file for the team project.
In the witadmin command prompt, enter the below command and substitute the values for the arguments:

witadmin exportagileprocessconfig /collection:CollectionURL /p:ProjectName /f:"DirectoryPath\AgileConfiguration.xml" 

/collection: URL of the team project collection
/ProjectName: name of the team project within the collection
/f: name and location where the files should be exported.

· Open the AgileConfiguration file and locate the IterationBacklog section.
· Specify the value for WorkItemCountLimit attribute.

The below example limits the number of work items to be displayed to 200.

<IterationBacklog workItemCountLimit="200">
<Columns>
..
</Columns>
</IterationBacklog>

· Import the modified agileprocessconfig file to the team project.
In the witadmin command prompt, run the below command:

 witadmin importagileprocessconfig /collection:CollectionURL /p:ProjectName /f:"<DirectoryPath>\AgileConfiguration.xml"

TFS 2013

 In TFS 2013, the number of work items on the Task Board can be changed by modifying the value of workItemCountLimit 
attribute of the TaskBacklog element in the process configuration file.

· Export the processconfig file for the team project.

In the witadmin command prompt, enter the below command and substitute the values for the arguments:

witadmin exportprocessconfig /collection:CollectionURL /p:ProjectName /f:"<DirectoryPath>\ProcessConfiguration.xml"

· Open the ProcessConfiguration file and locate the TaskBacklog section.

· Specify the value for WorkItemCountLimit attribute.

The below example limits the number of work items to be displayed to 200.

<TaskBacklog category="Microsoft.TaskCategory" parent="Microsoft.RequirementCategory" pluralName="Tasks" singularName="Task" workItemCountLimit="200">

……..

</IterationBacklog>

· Import the modified processconfig file to the team project.

In the witadmin command prompt, run the below command:

 witadmin importprocessconfig /collection:CollectionURL /p:ProjectName /f:"DirectoryPath\ProcessConfiguration.xml"

Refresh the task backlog page to verify that the changes are being reflected.

Cheers!

Content created by – Sreeraj Syama Rajendran

Content reviewed by – Chandra Sekhar Viswanadha