ttplaya
commented
4 years ago I finally got some help and found out that after editing WorkItemChangedEvent_2.xsl, I needed to restart the Visual Studio Team Foundation Background Job Agent service before the changes would take effect. Please add this key piece of information to the instructions!
I have TFS2018, and I tried following the instructions here to customize the format for work item alert emails by changing the WorkItemChangedEvent.xsl file. I find that under the <Drive:\%programfiles%\Team Foundation Server 2018\Application Tier\TFSJobAgent\Transforms\1033> folder there is both a WorkItemChangedEvent.xsl file and a WorkItemChangedEvent_2.xsl file. I tried modifying both of these files and restarting the application pool, but the changes don't seem to take effect. Then I even tried removing the WorkItemChangedEvent.xsl file by renaming it, and found that the email alerts are still working without the file. I then tried removing the WorkItemChangedEvent_2.xsl file and found that alerts stopped working. So I concluded that the actual file required is WorkItemChangedEvent_2.xsl instead of WorkItemChangedEvent.xsl. However, I then tried to put in an empty file named WorkItemChangedEvent_2.xsl, and the alerts started working again. So now I am very puzzled. It seems like the system only requires there to be a file named WorkItemChangedEvent_2.xsl in existence in order for alerts to work, and the actual contents of the file do not matter. So where is the system getting the email formatting from? What do I need to do to customize my work item alert emails?
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