Hi All, if you are worrying how to calculate sum of the effort fields in VSTS, here is the solution. I’m going to explain you how our VSTS Rollup Service works. Here is the entire thing you need to know.

VSTS Rollup is a Web Service which provides summed values of select fields for all child work items of a parent. Most project managers are interested in getting rollup of estimated or completed work, effort etc. Hence Rollup will automate the process of summing up the Effort fields, viz., Original Estimate, Remaining Work and Completed Work from child work item Tasks and show it at Requirement level, in the same fashion show summation of effort fields of all child Requirements (PBI/User Story) at Feature level and continues for Epic level.

Rollup service also does the calculation of effort fields.

• While creating a Task, you should just enter the value into Original Estimate field, the  Remaining and Completed work will be updated.
• When you update a Task with Completed hours, remaining work is automatically calculated based on the formula Original Estimate - Completed Work = Remaining Work.

Before you start

Below are the pre-requisites to get your VSTS Team Project registered for this Rollup web service.

• You will need a Visual Studio Team Service (VSTS) Account - if you don't have, you can create one now.
• You will need a Personal Access Token (PAT) for the account. An overview of Personal Access Token with instruction to create are available here.
• Create the web service hooks using the tool, please refer the below section.
• Once the web service is created using the tool, test the service hooks once to activate them. please refer below section.

Now click on the  Sign in with VSTS credentials. if you have not signed in to the VSTS account in your browser, it will be redirected to sign in page. Provide your credentials.

Fig 2. Sign In page.

If you have already signed in to the VSTS account in your browser, it will be redirected to Grant access page. Rollup requests these accesses from the user account.

Fig 3. Grant Access

Once you click on accept it will take you to account selection section, where all VSTS account associated with your ID will be loaded. Select an account and provide Personal Access Token(PAT) associated with that account and click on continue button. If you don’t know how to create PAT, click here.

Fig 4. Account Selection

Once you click on continue, service internally validates for the account and the PAT provided, if it validates to true you will be redirected to project selection page, which will be loaded based on your account selection.

Fig 5. Project Selection

Select a project from the list and click on Create Service Hooks button, which intern takes a few seconds to create service hooks for Work Item create, Update and Restore. You can click on the link provided in the success message and check for the service hooks created.

Fig 6. Success message with link for service hooks page.

Fig 7. Service hooks created.

Please activate your service hooks as the steps provided below.

Step 1. Click on Ellipse (…)

Step 2. Click on Edit

Step 3. Click on Next in your Trigger dialog.

Step 4. Click on Test in your action dialog.

Step 5. Test Success

Repeat the same steps for the remaining service hooks and activate them.

Rollup service internally creates a Dashboard to show the Rollup values and a Rollup View Query in the Shared Query folder. Below us RollUp Dashboard.

Fig 8. RollUp Dashboard

Fig 9. Rollup View Query.

Finally you are ready with Rollup service setup. Please look into next blog - VSTS Rollup Service - How to use.