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My company is looking to streamline User Story documentation in DevOps's Agile workflow. Is there a way to use markdown formatting in Description / Acceptance Criteria fields in DevOps? It is far more flexible and powerful than the WYSIWYG editor available in DevOps.

Thomas Parikka
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    Microsoft is finally implementing something for comments and (hopefully later on) for description and acceptance criteria, go vote here https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Add-Markdown-Support-in-Discussions/365826. MD for comments is in beta. – bugybunny Jul 13 '23 at 10:08

1 Answers1

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You may have known that in Azure Devops, we haven't directly provide such feature in WIT. So, to achieve what you want, just consider to develop an extension.

For VSTS, there has an existing one Markdown. But I saw you tagged this question with a azure-devops-server-2019 tag. If your server type is TFS, please check this extension source code, and then made some customized changes into it to let it available for your server.

See how to develop extension for TFS work item.

The working logic of this extension is adding a custom control which expand Markdown edit into work item layout.

Since what you are using is Azure Devops server 2019, below operation and its action logic also suitable for you.

With more details, in your requirement, you want the fields Description / Acceptance Criteria can support to use Markdown. This extension would let you add a custom control to User story.

  • Step1: In its custom control, choosing Markdown as control type which can let this field control under Markdown.

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  • Step2: Choose which field you want to show Markdown editor for, here is Description

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  • Step3: Choosing corresponding layout location, store it in to a new group.

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  • Step4: You should not want there has two same editors on the work item form. So, hiding the default one:

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After the above steps, now, the Description fields can support Markdown language.

enter image description here

Mengdi Liang
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    This is an interesting looking extension, however it's not been updated for over 2.5 years and states it is still an early preview so it's not suitable for us at this time. Is there any other option to support Markdown in TFS user stories? – Thomas Parikka Nov 22 '19 at 18:43
  • @ThomasParikka No, not have. You know, the work item fields are controlled by Process. You need do something in there to make it support markdown. Yeah, that extension does not updated now, also it does not cover TFS. This is the why I suggest you to develop a new one extension based on that repos(most of its design logic is still available now). For how to TFS extension, I provided the doc link in the beginning of my answer. – Mengdi Liang Nov 22 '19 at 19:15
  • @ThomasParikka, did it has any difficult for you to make this idea true? If has any issue about developing a extension, feel free to leave comment here. Would continue to give you the assistance about this. – Mengdi Liang Nov 28 '19 at 02:28
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    I wish it wasn't that complicated. – Monsignor Dec 10 '19 at 15:02
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    I ended up not getting any buy in on the idea due to the issue of having to modify behavior with an extension. – Thomas Parikka Aug 27 '20 at 04:19