Work Items contain elements which we can define inside Work Item templates with the help of XML. Each element can contain list values specified within Work Item element. If we want to share this list of values among different Work Items within out project we can store them inside gl.xml file in the following format:

<GLOBALLIST name="name of global list">
    <LISTITEM> … </LISTITEM>
</GLOBALLIST>

typelib Schema is responsible for setting up Elements inside Global List. Global Lists cannot be empty and they are a part of a Work Item type definition.

There are additional constraints that we need to follow while setting up Global Lists. For instance, name can be up to 254 characters in length, cannot have leading or trailing spaces, two white spaces one after another is not allowed, cannot contain backslashes.

Global Lists become very handy when we try to load lists from a third party systems. These lists can be loaded automatically with the help of glimport and glexport command-line utility tools.