The Notes view offers a way to informally add comments or notes to items, e.g., as part of a review. A note does not have any name or specific type, but a Last changed property is maintained for each note. The content of a note is the formatted text in the note. Notes can be created, modified and deleted at any time by the user who created them, even when an item has Released or CS Released status. They are not part of the versioning of the item which means that they should be not be treated as formal information. When a new version is created of an item with a note(s), the note(s) will not be carried over to the new version of the item, however, notes from earlier versions are viewable in the Notes view.

To access the Notes view, select the option on the Items ribbon tab in the Issues and Notes menu group, or in the View drop-down list.

The view is available whenever you have selected an item in the structure tree.

Creating Notes

You can create a new note by clicking the Add note button in the view or on the Items ribbon in the Issues and Notes menu group.

If you select a note in the list of notes, you can type your note in the note editor to the right. The text is formatted, and you can open the Description editor for full editing capabilities, by double-clicking in the box.

Viewing Notes

Select an item in the tree and then, in the view, select the note in the list that you want to view.

The Notes view supports traceability to the indicator column of the structure tree, as seen in the example below; if you select a note in the list the item of the note will be indicated in the tree. (If you use the Include subitems option, you will potentially see the notes of multiple items, as shown below.)

Options

Check the Include subitems option to include all of the notes associated with the sub-items under the selected item in the structure tree. By selecting an item high up in the tree and using this option, you can view all of the notes in the viewed structure. This option is turned off by default.

The Include notes for older versions of items (checked by default) is a useful way to find and view notes for earlier versions of the selected item.