We have just started out with Team Foundation Server 2008 / Visual Studio Team System and we are pleased to find how we can export and modify work items to our needs. However, this last thing that would make the setup perfect for us has proved somewhat difficult:

We have exported the Bug work item type and have made modifications to it to appear differently to different groups of users. We do, however, see a potential problem in non-developers reporting bugs which turn out to be duplicates. We would like to enforce that users who close a ticket with resolved reason:duplicate also creates a link to the bug which is perceived as the first bug report.

I have looked at System.RelatedLinkCount, and put the rule

  <FIELD type="Integer" name="RelatedLinkCount" refname="System.RelatedLinkCount">
    <WHEN field="Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ResolvedReason" value="duplicate">
      <PROHIBITEDVALUES>
        <LISTITEM value="0" />
      </PROHIBITEDVALUES>
    </WHEN>
  </FIELD>

However, when I try to put anything in that scope, the importer tells me that System.RelatedLinkCount does not accept the rule, no matter what I put, but the rule above shows what I am trying to do (even though the most preferable rule would also check that the bug that I link to is not a duplicate as well, though this is overkill :P)

Has anyone else tried to enforce rules like this in work items? Is there another approach to solving the same issue? I am thankful for any thoughts on the matter.