In Azure Devops, how can I create a branch policy to require linked work items be resolved before a PR is merged?

Updated on 12/19

For this scenario that you would like to validate the pull request with the specific work item state. I suppose that you could add a branch policy of Build Validation.

You could add the ps script below in powershell task to check the work-item state linking to your target pr.

# Define organization base url, PAT, linked wit, Target WIT state and API version variables
$orgUrl = "https://dev.azure.com/{yourORG}/{yourPROJECT}"
$pat = ""
$queryString = "fields=system.state&api-version=7.0"
$witID = {YourWitID} 
$TargetState = {yourWITstateForPRapproval}

# Create header with PAT
$token = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(":$($pat)"))
$header = @{authorization = "Basic $token"}

# Get the linked wit state
$projectsUrl = "$orgUrl/_apis/wit/workitems/$witID?$queryString"
$field = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $projectsUrl -Method Get -ContentType "application/json" -Headers $header | ConvertTo-Json | ConvertFrom-Json | Select-Object -ExpandProperty fields

write-host $field

$witstate = $field.'System.State'

Write-Host $witstate

#Compare the wit state with target approval state

if ($witstate -eq "$TargetState" ) {
    Write-Host "Check Succeeded"
}
else {
    Write-Host ("Check Failed")
    exit 1
}

Only when the build succeeds, your pr could be complete.

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I suppose that you could check the setting for Check for linked work items.

You could set the policy with screenshots below. And you could also set the policy with rest api."type":{"id":"40e92b44-2fe1-4dd6-b3d8-74a9c21d0c6e"} this type id in the body below is by design.

POST https://dev.azure.com/fabrikam/fabrikam-fiber-git/_apis/policy/configurations?api-version=7.0

Body
{"type":{"id":"40e92b44-2fe1-4dd6-b3d8-74a9c21d0c6e"}, 
"revision":1,
"isDeleted":false,
"isBlocking":true,
"isEnabled":true,
"settings":{
"scope":[{"repositoryId":"$(yourRepo)",
"refName":"refs/heads/$(yourBranch)",
"matchKind":"Exact"}]}}