Reset Iteration Dates before you Demo

This one is for all of you out there that evangelize, teach or just find yourselves demoing Azure DevOps to others.

It’s easy to set up a demo project in Azure DevOps. In case you didn’t know already, there is a tool you can use called the Azure DevOps Demo Generator that will create a project in your organization with pre-populated sample content including source code, work items, iterations, build and release definitions. You can read all about it here.

I used this tool a long time ago to create a project for all my demos. The issue with this is that the iteration dates get old. When you first create the project there is a current iteration. The next time I want to do a demo the iterations are all in the past. :(

Azure cli azure-devops extension to the rescue. (To understand how to install the azure-devops extension of azure cli read my last article, Azure CLI azure-devops extension).

This time we’ll use the az boards command in the azure-devops extension.

The script below will reset your sprint dates so you have 1 past sprint a current sprint and 6 future sprints. If you want to use it “as is” make sure you have 8 iterations defined named Sprint 1, Sprint 2 etc...

When you run the script below it will find the last Monday, then go back 2 weeks and reset iteration 1 to that date. Then every other sprint from 2 thru 8 will be updated to two week iterations starting every other Monday after that.

Before running the script change the following variables to map to your Azure DevOps instance.

• $org
• $env:AZURE_DEVOPS_EXT_PAT
• $projectName
• $sprints

$org = 'https://dev.azure.com/YourOrg/'
$env:AZURE_DEVOPS_EXT_PAT='YourPersonalAccessTokenGoesHere'
echo $env:AZURE_DEVOPS_EXT_PAT | az devops login --org $org
$projectName = "Parts Unlimited"
$sprints = "\Parts Unlimited\Iteration\Sprint"
$lastMonday = (Get-Date).AddDays((-1 * (Get-Date).DayOfWeek.Value__) + 1).Date
write-host "Last Monday  - $lastMonday"
$startDate = $lastMonday.AddDays(-14)
$finishDate = $startDate.AddDays(11)
For ($i=1; $i -le 8; $i++) {
    Write-host "Sprint $i"
    write-host "Start - $startDate"
    write-host "Finish - $finishDate"
    az boards iteration project update  --path "$sprints $i", 
                                    --finish-date $finishDate, 
                                    --org $org,
                                    --project $projectName, 
                                    --start-date $startDate
    $startDate = $startDate.AddDays(14)
    $finishDate = $startDate.AddDays(11)
    }

I hope someone out there finds this useful.