How can I track who entered a comment on a TFS Work Item

Answer 1

Yes you can. TFS work items are customizable. Not as much as I would like in this version but you can do what you want.

Lets take a stab at it with the following field definitions. The Notes Date and Notes Author are readonly and get their default values from the system. Notes field is HTML and you can put whatever you want in there. You can do this in the TFS Process Editor.

 <FIELD reportable="dimension" type="DateTime" name="Notes Date" refname="System.VSTS.Notes.Date">
    <DEFAULT from="clock" />
    <READONLY not="[Global]\Team Foundation Administrators" />
  </FIELD>
  <FIELD reportable="dimension" type="String" name="Notes Author" refname="System.VSTS.Notes.Author">
    <DEFAULT from="currentuser" />
    <READONLY not="[Global]\Team Foundation Administrators" />
  </FIELD>
  <FIELD type="HTML" name="Notes" refname="System.VSTS.Notes" />
</FIELDS>

Of course you will still need to add controls to your form.

Another thing you can try is only keep the Notes field and register for a WorkItemChanged event and write a webservice to update the notes field with the Date and Author. Changed BY and Changed Date fields will give you this information. You can learn about the available events and how to subscribe to them in this article by Brian A. Randell - Team Foundation System Event Service

[WebService(Namespace = "http://mynamespace.com/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
public class UpdateWorkItem : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
    private static TeamFoundationServer _Tfs;
    private static WorkItemStore _WorkItemStore;

    private static List<WorkItem> _ChangedWorkItems = new List<WorkItem>();

    [SoapDocumentMethod(Action = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/TeamFoundation/2005/06/Services/Notification/03/Notify", RequestNamespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/TeamFoundation/2005/06/Services/Notification/03")]
    [WebMethod]
    public void Notify(string eventXml, string tfsIdentityXml)
    {

        EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", "Log Started: Notify Webmethod");


        // Load the recieved XML into a XMLDocument
        XmlDocument eventXmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
        eventXmlDoc.LoadXml(eventXml);
        XmlElement eventData = eventXmlDoc.DocumentElement;

        // Validate event data
        if (eventData != null)
        {
            // Get Work Item id from event data
            int id = GetWorkItemId(eventData);

            //EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", String.Format("eventXmlDoc {0}", eventXmlDoc.InnerXml));
            EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", String.Format("Got Id {0}", id));
            string changedby = GetWorkItemChangedBy(eventData);
            EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", String.Format("Got changedby {0}", changedby));
            if (changedby != "TFSSERVICE")
            {
                //Add a 15 second delay in order to make sure all workitems are saved first before starting to update them
                Thread.Sleep(15000);
                EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", "Calling UpdateWorkItemInternal");
                UpdateWorkItemInternal(id);
            }
        }
    }

    private int GetWorkItemId(XmlElement eventData)
    {
        return Convert.ToInt32(eventData.SelectSingleNode("CoreFields/IntegerFields/Field[ReferenceName='System.Id']/NewValue").InnerText);
    }

    private string GetWorkItemChangedBy(XmlElement eventData)
    {
        return Convert.ToString(eventData.SelectSingleNode("CoreFields/StringFields/Field[ReferenceName='System.ChangedBy']/NewValue").InnerText);
    }

    private static void UpdateWorkItemInternal(int id)
    {
        //Connect To TFS Server 
        EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", string.Format("Updating Work Item {0}", id));
        _Tfs = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer("TeamServer");

        _WorkItemStore = (WorkItemStore)_Tfs.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));
        WorkItem workItem = _WorkItemStore.GetWorkItem(id);

        switch ((string)workItem.Fields["System.WorkItemType"].Value)
        {
            case "Bug":
                UpdateNotes(workItem);
                break;
            default:
                break;
        }

        foreach (WorkItem item in _ChangedWorkItems)
        {
            if (item.IsDirty)
            {
                foreach (Field field in item.Fields)
                {
                    if (!field.IsValid)
                    {
                        Console.Write("Not valid");
                    }
                }
                EventLog.WriteEntry("TFS Services", string.Format("Saving WorkItem: {0}", item.Id));
                try
                {
                    item.Save();
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                }
            }
        }

        _ChangedWorkItems.Clear();
    }

    private static void UpdateNotes(WorkItem workItem)
    {
       Field notes = workitem.Fields["System.VSTS.Notes"];
       if (notes != null)
       {
         notes = string.Format("{0} - {1}", workItem.ChangedDate, workItem.ChangedBy);
       } 

       if (workItem.IsDirty)
       {
           if (!_ChangedWorkItems.Contains(workItem))
           {
               _ChangedWorkItems.Add(workItem);
           }
       }
    }
 }

This is just quick and dirty with some copy and paste from my existing code so review it carefully to make sure I didn't introduce a typo.

Answer 2

I'm curious about the issue with the History tab? It contains the date/time and the user's name in a grey bar with the comment they made immediately below it.

If they didn't make a comment, but made other changes to the work item there will be a collapsed heading called Show Changed Fields. The comment is always visible though.

Update

You could create a custom work item control that provides your own view of the work item's history.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb286959(vs.80).aspx