bulk-operations

Bulk Operations Reference (Verified)

Performance Insight

Direct bash for loops are approximately 10x faster than sub-agents for bulk operations.

This is because:

1. No agent spawning overhead
2. Direct CLI execution
3. Can use -o none to skip JSON parsing

Recommended Patterns

Fast Bulk State Update

# Update multiple work items to same state
for id in 1858 1859 1860; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --state "Done" -o none && echo "Updated $id"
done

Update from Query Results

# Query IDs then update each
ids=$(az boards query --wiql "SELECT [System.Id] FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.State] = 'Active' AND [System.TeamProject] = 'ProjectName'" -o tsv | cut -f1)

for id in $ids; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --state "Resolved" -o none && echo "Updated $id"
done

Bulk Assignment

for id in 1001 1002 1003; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --assigned-to "[email protected]" -o none && echo "Assigned $id"
done

Bulk Field Update

for id in 1001 1002 1003; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --fields "Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority=1" -o none && echo "Updated priority for $id"
done

Bulk Add Discussion Comment

for id in 1001 1002 1003; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --discussion "Reviewed in sprint planning" -o none && echo "Commented on $id"
done

Output Optimization

Use -o none to suppress JSON output when you don't need the response:

# With output (slower)
az boards work-item update --id 1234 --state "Done" -o json

# Without output (faster)
az boards work-item update --id 1234 --state "Done" -o none

Error Handling

Continue on Error

for id in 1001 1002 1003; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --state "Done" -o none 2>/dev/null && echo "OK: $id" || echo "FAIL: $id"
done

Stop on First Error

for id in 1001 1002 1003; do
  az boards work-item update --id $id --state "Done" -o none || { echo "Failed on $id"; break; }
  echo "Updated $id"
done