Question: some WI are assigned to non existing users, even though there exists real user with same email

[skfd]

Some Work Item are assigned to non-existing users (users with gray avatar), even though there exists real user with same email.

Note that when we do WIQL AND "[System.AssignedTo] = 'user@example.com' it does find non-existing and real user, it can't tell the difference.

But the core of the issues is that @Me searches does not work for non-existing users even though it should be linked to my user by email.

ALSO: is there a way to do user mapping, if names do not match between systems?

Source Details

• Source Version: Azure DevOps Services
• Source Language: Eng

Target Details

• Target Version: Azure DevOps Services
• Target Language: Eng

[MrHinsh]

In Azure DevOps / TFS there is an internal identity object that wraps the external AD or AAD object. The behaviour that you see is what happens when they become detached. This can happen for multiple reasons:

• Domain migration without following the documentation in TFS (any version)
• Importing your Collection from TFS to Azure DevOps when some of the AD users have not yet been synced with AAD
• Migrating work items using the Azure DevOps Migration Tools when users don't yet exist in the target instance

The result is that you have 2 identities for 1 real user account. There is no way to retroactively fix this in TFS or Azure DevOps.

What might help

You could try to create a mapping from the "disconnected username" to the "connected username". Create a FieldMapping in either a hard-coded list or regex to have a go.

To find the actual data that you want you may want to debug the tool in Visual Studio, limiting the query to a work item that has this issue, and see what the actual values are.

[skfd]

Adding mapping worked for me, thank you! Turns out it only maps by name, not by e-mail. Mapping example, don't forget to do it for all relevant fields:

"FieldMaps": [
    {
      "$type": "FieldValueMapConfig",
      "WorkItemTypeName": "*",
      "sourceField": "System.AssignedTo",
      "targetField": "System.AssignedTo",
      "defaultValue": "",
      "valueMapping": {
          "Ivan Drago": "Drago Ivan",
          "Jon Nice": "Nice Jon",
      }
    },
    {
      "$type": "FieldValueMapConfig",
      "WorkItemTypeName": "*",
      "sourceField": "Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ClosedBy",
      "targetField": "Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ClosedBy",
      "defaultValue": "",
      "valueMapping": {
          "Ivan Drago": "Drago Ivan",
          "Jon Nice": "Nice Jon",
      }
    },
]