ADO Work Out Loud

About

Post structured "Work Out Loud" (WOL) comments to Azure DevOps work items with a single click.

This extension provides a form-based popup that lets you quickly post formatted status updates to ADO work item discussions — including what you worked on, next steps, system areas affected, task status, and effort estimates.

FEATURES:
• Structured comment templates with bold headings
• Hierarchical system area selection (tree-based multi-select)
• Auto-detects organization, project, and work item from the current page
• Works with dev.azure.com and *.visualstudio.com URLs
• Template sync from a remote URL for team-wide consistency
• Configurable templates via the options page (add, edit, delete, import/export)
• Context menu integration for quick access
• Uses your existing ADO session — no personal access tokens needed

HOW TO USE:
1. Navigate to any Azure DevOps work item
2. Click the WOL icon in the toolbar
3. Fill out the form
4. Click Submit — your formatted comment is posted to the work item discussion

TEMPLATE SYNC:
Teams can host a shared template JSON file and configure the URL in the extension options. Templates sync automatically on startup and periodically throughout the day.

PERMISSIONS:
• activeTab — to detect the current ADO work item page
• storage — to save templates and settings
• contextMenus — for right-click "Post WOL Comment" option
• alarms — for periodic template sync
• Host access to dev.azure.com and *.visualstudio.com — to post comments via the ADO API