| title | titleSuffix | description | ms.technology | ms.prod | ms.assetid | ms.manager | ms.author | author | ms.topic | ms.date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Define area paths |
VSTS & TFS |
Group work items based on team, product, or feature area by defining area paths for Visual Studio Team Services or Team Foundation Server |
devops-agile |
devops |
97358022-AE19-4775-AE25-47BA24FF3C74 |
douge |
kaelli |
KathrynEE |
quickstart |
03/20/2018 |
[!INCLUDE temp]
Newly created team projects contain a single, root area that corresponds to the team project name. You add area paths under this root. To understand how the system uses area paths, see About area and iteration paths.
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You must be a member of a team project. If you don't have a team project yet, create one in VSTS. If you haven't been added as a team member, get added now. ::: moniker-end ::: moniker range=">= tfs-2013 <= tfs-2018"
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You must be a member of a team project. If you don't have a team project yet, create one in an on-premises TFS. If you haven't been added as a team member, get added now. ::: moniker-end
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To create or modify areas or iterations, you must either be a member of the Project Administrators group, or your Create and order child nodes, Delete this node, and Edit this node permissions must be set to Allow for the area or iteration node that you want to modify.
If you aren't a project administrator, get added as one or have someone provide you with explicit permissions to Edit project-level information.
For naming restrictions on area and iteration paths, see About areas and iterations, Naming restrictions.
From the web portal, open the admin page for the team project.
You define both areas and iterations from the Work hub of the team project admin context. From the user context, you open the admin context by clicking the 
gear icon. The tabs and pages available differ depending on which admin context you access.
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From the web portal for the team project context, click the
gear icon.
::: moniker range="vsts || >= tfs-2018"
If you're currently working from a team context, then hover over the
and choose Project settings.
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range="tfs-2017"
**TFS 2017.1**
If you're currently working from a team context, then hover over the
and choose Project settings.
**TFS 2017**
::: moniker-end
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Open the Work hub.
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range=">= tfs-2013 <= tfs-2015"
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From the web portal user context, click the
gear Settings.
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Click the Areas tab.
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range="vsts || >= tfs-2017 <= tfs-2018"
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Open the Work, Areas page for the team project admin context.
If you haven't added any areas or teams, you'll see that only one area is defined.
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Add a new child node to the area you have selected.
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range=">= tfs-2013 <= tfs-2015"
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Open the Areas tab.
From the areas page, you can set the default area path used to filter the backlog. The default area path is also used when new work items a user creates new work items.
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Add a new child node to the area you have selected.
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range="vsts || >= tfs-2017 <= tfs-2018"
When you rename an area or an iteration, or move the node within the tree hierarchy, the system will automatically update the work items and queries that reference the existing path or paths.
When you delete an area or an iteration node, the system automatically updates the existing work items with the node that you enter at the deletion prompt.
::: moniker-end
You can quickly generate queries to view the progress for those areas and iterations. As an example, you can visualize progress of work items assigned to sprints as shown in the following stacked bar chart.
As you can see, areas play a major role in supporting Agile tools and managing work items. You can learn more about working with these fields from these topics: