formatho FAQ — frequently asked questions
Answers to the most common questions about formatho. For anything else, visit the support page or write to us.
Connecting to Azure DevOps
What do I need to get started?
Four things, entered once in Settings: your organisation (exactly as it appears in your dev.azure.com/<organisation> address), the email address of your Azure DevOps account, a Personal Access Token you generate in Azure DevOps, and the project you want to work in.
Which token permissions does formatho need?
Read access to work items, and nothing more. formatho contains no code that creates, edits or deletes anything in Azure DevOps, so a read-only token is genuinely sufficient — and it means the app cannot damage your board even by accident.
Why has it stopped connecting?
Almost always an expired token. Azure DevOps tokens carry an expiry date you set when you create them, so a configuration that worked for months can simply run out. Generate a new one and paste it into Settings. Otherwise, check the organisation name and that the email matches the account the token belongs to.
Does it work with Azure DevOps Server on our own infrastructure?
Not currently. formatho is built for the hosted service at dev.azure.com and offers no field for a custom server address, so on-premises and self-hosted installations are out of reach for now.
Can I switch between projects or organisations?
You can change either in Settings at any time. formatho keeps a list of the projects in your organisation so the picker is ready when you open the app; if that list looks stale, switch on refresh projects on launch.
What formatho shows you
What can I look at?
Individual work items with their full detail, history and related items; the results of your saved Azure DevOps queries; your recent activity; a hierarchical tree of how items relate to one another; and charts built from the items you have loaded.
Why does recent activity show items from other projects?
Because Azure DevOps reports it that way. The recent-activity list covers everything you have touched across the whole organisation, not just the project selected in Settings — which is often useful, but surprising the first time you see it.
Can I open an item in Azure DevOps itself?
Yes — formatho builds a normal link to the item in your Azure DevOps portal, which opens in your browser.
Can I fetch a specific set of items?
Yes. The list view takes a set of work item IDs and fetches them together, which is handy when you repeatedly report on the same handful of items.
Copying and formatting
What exactly gets copied?
A formatted, rich-text line per work item — priority, type and title, with the requestor in front when there is one, and a live link back to the item in Azure DevOps. Paste it into an email, a chat or a document and the links come with it.
Nothing is being copied
Automatic copying is off until you enable it — turn on the copy-to-clipboard option in Settings.
Can I include the report field?
Yes — include report field in Settings appends your organisation’s report field to each copied line. There is also an option to sort what you copy by priority.
Does formatho read my clipboard?
No. It writes to the clipboard and never reads from it — there is no code in the app that looks at what you have copied from anywhere else.
The widget
What does the widget do?
It keeps a work item visible without opening the app. It uses the credentials you already set up and fetches on the schedule macOS gives it, so it can update while formatho is closed — and can also sit unchanged for a while, because the timing is the system’s decision rather than the app’s.
Data & privacy
Where do my credentials and work items go?
Your credentials stay on your Mac and are sent to exactly one place: your own Azure DevOps organisation. Work items are held in memory while the app is running and are gone when you quit — formatho keeps no database and writes no cache of them to disk. There is no account with us and no server of ours involved. The privacy policy spells this out in full.
Is there any analytics or tracking?
None — no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, and in fact no third-party code in the app at all. It also asks for no system permissions.
Can formatho change my work items?
No. Every request it makes is a read. Nothing in the app writes back to Azure DevOps, which is why a read-only token is all it needs.
Requirements
What does formatho need, and what does it cost?
A Mac running macOS 13 or later, and an Azure DevOps account. formatho is free, with nothing to buy inside it. The interface is in English.