Is it possible to customize the Backlogs view - azure

We are using Azure DevOps as an agile project management tool. I'm trying to customize the tool to our needs.
Under "Boards -> Backlogs" the user stories & tasks for a project are listed (see picture). However, in that view are only planned or ongoing user stories shown but no completed user stories. While I can create a query that also shows completed ones, I would like to make them appear in this particular view.
In addition, I changed the columns/fields which should be shown by default in this view for our project across different teams/users.
For both, I am trying to find a solution but haven't been successful yet.
Appreciate your help!

The displayed columns are specific to a user and there isn't a way to force a view for the backlog.
The only way I am aware of to see closed items on the backlog view is to have the user story as a child of a feature. The feature must not be closed and your backlog view has to be at the Features level.

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Storing requirements/specification documents in TFS on-premise

We're starting a new development project using on-premise TFS 2018, git and Visual Studio. In the past we've followed the Agile model of creating epics and user stories and putting the requirements/ui mockups and other details directly in the user stories.
After living through that approach, we don't want go back down that road for the following reasons:
1) Once that feature is shipped, it becomes extremely difficult to locate the info. Who remembers what feature was done in what user story?
2) No centralized place to store feature documentation. Of course, we all don't want take the waterfall approach of spending 2 years writing feature requirements, but there is something to be said of having a centralized place organized by feature area that contains the relevant documentation.
3) Have you ever tried to read an extensive user story with requirements acceptance testing through either the web interface or through Visual Studio? It gets old pretty fast having to read through a 8 line window.
What we would like to do is do a hybrid of documentation and reference a link to the doc in the user story. The user story exists for sprint tracking, but the details are stored in the document. After the feature/user story has shipped, we can refer to the doc.
Therefore the question becomes how to store this type of info in TFS and link to it so it can open with a link in the user story. We know we can do this with SharePoint, but is it possible to do in on-premise TFS?
Currently, this is not directly possible in TFS with outgoing with some 3rd party vendors like Modernrequirements which will be paid services.
You could always use the CMMI template which is used for creating and managing requirement Workitems, but not for storing a huge set of requirements as you typically stored in requirement documents.
As you mentioned there are other ways like Storing the documents in
SharePoint, one drive etc., and link to the user stories
Creating a
markdown
in the user stories itself.
Check-in those documents in the version control(Git,TFVS)
Refer to this similar SO in order to understand it better.

User Stories keep being added to "General User Stories" despite being created under an use case

After drawing the following UC Diagram, I right click on an use case and send it to the backlog
It appears as a new activity in the product backlog, like this:
So I move it to the board and create a task and an epic underneath:
Then I go on creating the User Stories for the new topic called "Plugin Deployment":
Everything works great so far, I can even edit the conversation and confirmation items:
The problem
As soon as I activate the tab "scenario", the current story, which so far I thought I associated with the "Plugin Deployment" use case, appears under a new model "General User Stories":
What can I do to organize the stories inside my model in the proper way? What does Visual Paradigm 14.1 Professional Edition expect from me? Any ways to circumvent this problem? I don't want to end up with hundreds of user stories there.
The user stories in Visual Paradigm actually is a kind of server side model where the modifications are directly synchronized to server. They should not be showing in Model Explorer since it is only for showing the model element located within the local project file. The linkage between model element and user story are established with the User Activity in story map via the Send to Product Backlog (which you already did). You can always navigate from model elements in diagram to User Activity created to story map using the Send to Product Backlog via the Open in Scrum resource icon, and then traverse down to User Task, Epic and then to User Story.
BTW the latest patch build of v14.1 SP1 already enhanced the Model Explorer to hide out the user stories. This should to avoid confusion to user. You can contact Visual Paradigm Support Team for details about how to update the software to latest patch build.

Using Flow with SharePoint Discussion Boards

I am trying to use "Flow" to automate emails every time a new item is added to a SharePoint discussion board.
This is working fine with all lists, however, it does not do anything when I create a flow for the discussion board. The name of the discussion board does not even come up as an option in the "List" category and if I use the "Documents" option instead of the lists, I am able to choose the correct discussion board, but the alerts do not work.
Discussions are based on the folder content type, with each reply to a parent discussion being an item within that folder.
Flow does not currently support many triggers or operations against folders (including discussion boards) in SharePoint sites, though they've been steadily adding functionality since Flow was introduced.
It's possible that this functionality will be added in the future. You can make suggestions and vote on proposed functionality in Microsoft's "Flow Ideas" community.

Automating Approval Processes in Dynamics CRM

A bit of background before I begin.
Background:
I am working on migrating an existing .NET based system to Dynamics CRM and one of its key feature is its 'Request Approval Process'. I have implemented some simpler versions of such approval processes in past but this one is a bit complex since it involves multi-level approvals, multiple approvers at one level, amendment logic, delegation functionality, etc.
Analysis Till Now:
Before pushing this question at SO, I did a fair analysis of the requirements from my end and have come up with few possible approaches:
Workflow based approach (something on lines of this)
Complete custom logic using Plugins/Web Resources (something on lines of this)
I am not explaining the details of these approaches as of now but the core issue is that none of these two approaches are fitting correctly to my requirements.
Queries:
While analyzing these approaches I came across some newer functionalities added to CRM (listed below) but did not get any additional resources to explore them further. I just want to confirm that I am not trying to achieve something which is already present out-of-the-box or going in the incorrect direction.
1. Internal Process Automation:
Reference: Here
Any leads/thoughts on this approach? I am not able to find any good documentation/articles around this.
2. Graphical Approval Workflow:
Reference: Here
This feature seems to be useful but it is mentioned to be a part of Dynamics Marketing. With the new structuring of Dynamics 365, will this feature be a part of Dynamics CRM by default?
Also, the Prerequisites section of this link mentions certain Item Types for which you can configure this functionality. So can't we use this functionality for any entity records?
Any kind of help/inputs would be appreciated.
I'd suggest the best of both worlds: using out-of-box Workflows along with custom Workflow activities that you can write with C#. Use as much out-of-box functionality as you can, but when you need to query records or run custom logic, create a custom workflow activity that can be used in your out-of-box Workflow. Custom workflow activities are similar to plugins in that they are written using C#. You can have custom inputs and custom outputs for your activity.
For example, maybe your approval process needs to look up the appropriate approving user for this record. You could write a custom workflow activity that takes an input (the record being approved) and an output (the user that has the ability to approve). Then in your Workflow, you'd add your custom activity as a step. After that step, you could send an email to the approver by using the output of that custom step.
More information about custom workflow activities: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309745.aspx

How to hide all the marketing and sales stuff in Dynamics CRM 2011

I am trying to set up dynamics for a call centre that just wants to do cas management. How do I turn off these things off so there is no evidence of them for a user of the system?
A good place to start would be to edit the SiteMap.
There is a project on codeplex which might be helpful, otherwise you can find good guides dotted around the place:
Editing the SiteMap
Editing the SiteMap 2
With this you could hide Sales & Marketing, which would be a good start. You may also want to look at amending permissions for Leads/Opportunities which can be done by editing security roles. This will help nosey/inquisitive users from creating records if they find links elsewhere.
I presume that you are referring to the subsections of the native CRM navigation structure which shows Workplace, Sales, Marketing, Service and Settings.
Visibility of these areas can be driven in two different ways. You may choose to employ both methods.
Firstly record-type visibility is governed by a user's permissions. Remove a users read access to Invoices for example and it will cease to appear as a navigable option in their UI. Similarly the sub-areas that I previously mentioned will cease to appear if a user has no access to any of the record types that it contains.
consequently it may be possible to achieve some of your aims by giving users the least possible permissions required to do their job (though you should be doing this anyway really) by granting the correct ouot-of-the-box roles or cloning and customising one of those roles. The problem is that the Sales section , for example, contains record types that your users will need to see, e.g. contacts. you won't be able to revoke access to contacts so you'll likely need technique #2 as well:
The CRM sitemap can be customized to contain whatever you want and can even contain new areas. One feature available is to alter or create rules that show/hide areas based on record permissions. I'd recommend downloading the Visual SiteMap Editor and read this part of the CRM SDK

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