What is the easiest way to rename a shelveset in TFS?
Personally think the method you think is the simplest or most direct.
Since TFS teams Suggested on their old user voice forum(Closed now):
Visual Studio Team (Product Team, Microsoft) responded · March 11,
2015 Thanks for the suggestion! We’re currently in the planning
process for enabling an iterative shelveset experience. We’ll update
this item when we have more details.
But so far, we do not have a very easiest way to rename a shelveset in TFS. And we do not have a "update shelveset" API in place:
Shelvesets
Do not have option to rename the name by the Shelve Command.
You could check this thread for some more details.
So, I agree with your idea is the easiest and most straightforward, and it is also the method I have used.