How to map work item fields with different underlying data type

[ackh]

I'm attempting to migrate a Team Project hosted on Azure DevOps Server 2019 ("source system") to Azure DevOps Services ("target system"). The problem I see is that the underlying data type of the work item fields on the source system sometimes differ from the data type of the work item fields on the target system.

For example, a field on the source system is using a double as data type and thus can store values such as 3.5, 1.234, etc. But the field that it is to map to on the target system is using an integer as data type.

Does Azure DevOps Migration Tools offer any kind of support for data type conversions?

A quick inspection of the source code did not reveal anything. Specifically, in the class FieldToFieldMap I see the below code which simply copies the values.

internal override void InternalExecute(WorkItem source, WorkItem target)
{
    if (source.Fields.Contains(Config.sourceField) && target.Fields.Contains(Config.targetField))
    {
        var value = source.Fields[Config.sourceField].Value;
        if ((value as string is null || value as string == "") && Config.defaultValue != null)
        {
            value = Config.defaultValue;
        }
        target.Fields[Config.targetField].Value = value;
        Log.LogDebug("FieldToFieldMap: [UPDATE] field mapped {0}:{1} to {2}:{3}", source.Id, Config.sourceField, target.Id, Config.targetField);
    }
}

[MrHinsh]

You are right, we don't have any facilities for that.

How would you change the FieldToFieldMap to support what you want without hard coding specific types?

[ackh]

Thanks for your quick response. Very much appreciated!

The problem here is that ADMT would need to provide some generic solution to be useful for a larger audience. But such a generic solution can quickly get out of hands because the combination of data types might very large which means a lot of different conversions would need to be enabled.

But such conversions are not always straight forward, e.g. how do you convert a double to date/time, etc. So, at the moment I honestly don't have a good proposal on how to extend the code. I have to figure out what exactly I need for my data migration and then figure out how I would need to extend the code.

If that is meaningful for a wider audience I attempt to contribute this back.

[MrHinsh]

How about a regex field map that sets the target format type?

[ackh]

Regular Expressions work well to process text but source.Fields[Config.sourceField].Value returns object and I'm not sure yet what actual data types hides behind object. So, regex might or might not work.

[MrHinsh]

Point!