Dan Hellem

We are delighted to announce the long-awaited private preview of the new Markdown editor for the work item discussion. This exciting feature empowers you to utilize the Markdown syntax and editor for all future comments. The Markdown editor aligns with the same experience you encounter in other parts of the product, such as Pull Requests.

You have the option to keep your existing work item comments as they are or convert them individually to Markdown. Our migration process makes a best effort to convert the HTML to Markdown, and in the majority of cases, it works as expected. However, it’s important to note that the conversion may not always achieve 100% accuracy for large, complex comments that contain custom styles.

Image markdown

With the new Markdown editor, you can anticipate the following:

  • Support for all of the essential Markdown formats. To explore further, you can learn more about Markdown.
  • Smooth conversion of HTML tables or tables copied from emails into Markdown format. While we do a best effort conversion, please note that certain table formats may not achieve 100%.
  • Use the value syntax for string highlighting.
  • Continued support for @mentions and !mentions.

New Boards Hub only

The Markdown editor is exclusively available through the New Boards Hub. It is important to note that certain scenarios may result in a less than ideal experience for users who are not enrolled in the New Boards Hub. For instance, if a comment is created in the New Boards Hub and a user opens that particular work item in the Old Boards Hub, the comment will display the Markdown syntax. If you are going to enroll in this preview, it is highly recommended that all users make use of the New Boards Hub.

Once you have enrolled in the preview, you cannot revert back to the old experience that uses HTML for comments.

It is important to note that this new Markdown editor for comments will replace the current HTML editor in the New Boards Hub. Once the feature is generally available, it will be the only editor for comments moving forward.

Enroll in the private preview

The intent of the private preview is to get customer feedback before the feature can be made generally available. If you are interested in enrolling in the private preview, please send us email and include your organization name (https://dev.azure.com/{organization}). Note that the preview is limited, and we will be capping the number of organizations who can participate.

We are excited to finally make this feature available and we hope you love it as much as we do.