TFS & Visual Studio ALM - by Neno Loje

Solved: Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 crashes with MissingMethodException

neno — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:48:55 GMT

Re-applying Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 solved the issue.

How to set the SMTP Port in TFS 2010

neno — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:48:08 GMT

The Problem

You are configuring SMTP Settings for TFS 2010 and want to specify a different port for your SMTP server than the default port (which would be port 25)

Figure: TFS 2010 does not allow to set a custom SMTP port.

Solution #1: Change config file

As answered here and here, you could add the following XML to the TfsJobAgent.exe.config file (usually located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\TFSJobAgent):

<mailSettings>
<smtp deliveryMethod="Network">
<network port="2525"/>
</smtp>
</mailSettings>

Keep in mind that this is only valid for TFS notifications itself and not for notifcations from SQL Server Reporting Services or the SharePoint-based Project Portal.

The Solution #2: Install a local SMTP server

Install the SMTP Service on Windows Server and ask it to route all SMTP traffic to a different SMTP server.
On the Delivery tab, click Advanced, an enter the SMTP server name as "smart host".
On the Delivery tab, click Outbound Connections, and set the TCP port (= SMTP port).

Figure: Setting up a local SMTP server has the great benefit that you can use it SMTP for other applications, too (like notifications from SQL Server Reporting Services or SharePoint).

How to move a SQL Server Database from Enterprise to Standard Edition

neno — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:47:33 GMT

Cross-posted from my other blog:

The Problem

You have a database (e.g. TFS collection database) in SQL Server Enterprise Edition.

You want to backup and restore this database on a SQL Server Standard Edition.

You get an error message on restore that some features are not supported.

The Solution

…

[Read the full post]

TFS Build cannot resolve dependency to assembly 'Microsoft.Windows.Design.Extensibility'

neno — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:44:28 GMT

The Problem

You are using DevExpress components.
Compilation fails with the message:

'Cannot resolve dependency to assembly 'Microsoft.Windows.Design.Extensibility, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'

The Solution

Check your references and remove any reference to DevExpress.*.Design.dll's.

(Thanks to "Kookiz" who solved this.)

Export TFS Work Items to an .XML file (using TFS Power Tools)

neno — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:24:00 GMT

Steps:

Download Team Foundation Server Power Tools.
On the command line use the TFPT.exe utility to export all work items from a team project in .XML format:

tfpt query /collection:<URL> /format:xml /wiql:"SELECT * FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.TeamProject] = '<TeamProject>' AND [System.WorkItemType] <> 'Sprint' ORDER BY [System.Id]" > WorkItems.xml
As you can see I selected all work items from the team project excluding Sprint Work Items. Feel free to modify the query, if necessary.

Download: Visual Studio 2010 Project Template for TFS Utilities

neno — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:13:00 GMT

If you develop small utilities for Team Foundation Server a lot, you might want to save some time and use a project template (see bottom of post for download link) that already comes equipped with the correct references to the Team Foundation Object Model (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.*.dlls) as well as the most important using statements and a few lines of code to get started.

Installation

Copy the ZIP file to {MyDocuments}\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates.

Usage

Create a new project and select “TFS Utility” from the “Visual C#” list.

The template creates a new Windows Forms application with references to the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.*.dlls (btw: the C# compiler gets rid of all references that were not used in the project during compilation)…

… as well as a a few using statements and some code to start from.

Happy TFS tool development!

Download: TfsUtility.zip

Publishing Requirements from Word to TFS (via WordToTFS)

neno — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:09:00 GMT

This post is part of a blog series:

Part I : Exporting TFS Work Items to Microsoft Word (via WordToTFS)
Part II: Publishing Requirements from Word to TFS (via WordToTFS)

Steps:

Download and install the freeware tool AIT WordToTFS from here (registration required).
Start Microsoft Word (winword.exe). You should see a new "WordToTFS" ribbon.
Choose the layout template you want to use (the names correspond to TFS process templates, but it's possible to furhter customize those layout templates).
Once, you are ready to publish, click 'Connect' on the 'WordToTFS' ribbon and choose a team project to connect to.
Start by creating an outline, headlines, introduction text as you would normally do when creating a requirements document in MS Word.
Once you are ready to add a requirement, choose "Empty Product Backlog Item" (in the case of the "Visual Scrum Scrum" template; the name differs for other process template, e.g. "Requirement" in MSF/CMMI or "User Story" for MSF/Agile).
This will insert a table with the typical fields to describe a requirement. Replace 'Title' and 'Description' with appropriate values (you can edit those defaults by clicking "Edit Default Values" on the ribbon).
Repeat Steps 5 to 7 for additional requirements.
Once you're happy with your requirement(s), click 'Publish' in the 'WordToTFS' ribbon.
The work item is now created in TFS.
After publishing the requirement table looks smilar to this:

Notes:

Keep in sync: After initially publishing your work items you can either change those in MS Word and re-publish those changes, or change the work items with a different TFS client and click 'Refresh' on the 'WordToTFS' ribbon to import those changes into your MS Word document.
Images: You can insert images in the description field (if the process template is using an HTML-based field) and those will be updated as attachments:
Test Cases with Test steps: You can enter a numbered list of steps for a Test Case, which will be translated to test steps (as they are required by Microsoft Test Manager):

Disclaimer: This MS Word integration is not part of Visual Studio or Team Foundation Server. The plug-in was developed by a Microsoft Partner (AIT) and not by Microsoft itself.

Exporting TFS Work Items to Microsoft Word (via WordToTFS)

neno — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:13:00 GMT

This post is part of a blog series:

Part I : Exporting TFS Work Items to Microsoft Word (via WordToTFS)
Part II: Publishing Requirements from Word to TFS (via WordToTFS)

Steps:

Download and install the freeware tool AIT WordToTFS from here (registration required).
Start Microsoft Word (winword.exe). You should see a new "WordToTFS" ribbon.
Choose the layout template you want to use (the names correspond to TFS process templates, but it's possible to furhter customize those layout templates).
Click 'Connect' on the 'WordToTFS' ribbon and choose a team project to connect to.

If the "missing mapping fields" dialog appears, you probably choose the wrong layout template (you can still change it before the next steps).
Click 'Get Work Items" from the ribbon.
On the 'Get Work Items' pane to the ride, select a stored query.
Click on 'Find' button.
Optionally, deselect work items in the list if you want to exclude them.
Click on 'Import' button.
Enjoy!

Disclaimer: This MS Word integration is not part of Visual Studio or Team Foundation Server. The plug-in was developed by a Microsoft Partner (AIT) and not by Microsoft itself.

Error Code 1603 when trying to install TFS 2010 SP 1

neno — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:49:42 GMT

Issue:
TFS 2010 SP 1 fails with:

Product: Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU - Update 'KB2182621' could not be installed. Error code 1603.

Resolution:
In my case the log file indicated that permissions to the Master database were missing. I made sure the setup user got sysadmin priviledges for the time of the SP install and it went through very smoothly.

Book Recommendations for Team Foundation Server 2010

neno — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:00:32 GMT

This is my personal selection of books covering TFS 2010:

	Agile Software Engineering with Visual Studio: From Concept to Continuous Feedback [Sample Chapter] The book that Sam Guckenheimer (the Product Owner of Visual Studio) and I wrote about how agile software development with agile practices and Scrum as a project management framework can work with the support of Visual Studio.
	Professional Team Foundation Server 2010 Many useful tips and best practices from experts regarding all parts of TFS 2010. Recommendation: should not be missing on any desk.
	Software Testing with Visual Studio 2010 Targets specifically testing with VS 2010 and Microsoft Test Manager (MTM). (Note: There's a second book with a very similar title.)
	Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build (2nd edition) Specifically about the topic of automated builds (Note: Only the last half is TFS-related.)
	Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010: with Team Foundation Server 2010 [Sample Chapter] For getting started: a solut overview over all ALM-related functionality in Visual Studio & TFS 2010.
	Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 A book dedicated to how to do Scrum with TFS 2010. (Note: I recommend chapters 3, 5 and 11.)

Have fun reading!

ALM Summit 2011 – Taking agile to the next LEVEL

neno — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 05:07:00 GMT

Application Lifecycle Management for the Microsoft Platform
November 14th–18th, 2011 • Microsoft, Redmond Campus

Agenda & Registration at : http://www.alm-summit.com

Update: the session recordings can be found on Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/ALM-Summit/2011

Book: Agile Software Engineering with Visual Studio

neno — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:04:37 GMT

Finally the book that Sam and I wrote on agile software engineering with Visual Studio 2010 is now avaialble.

I want to say thank you to our technical reviewers (David Starr, Claude Remillard, Aaron Bjork, David Chappell, and Adam Cogan), as well as to Ken Schwaber for providing the foreword.

Where to get it:

ISBN-10: 0321685857

Paperback	Amazon \| InformIT
DRM-free PDF	InformIT
Amazon Kindle	Amazon

Promotional Code

Our publisher, Addison-Wesley Professional, has put together a promo code that will allow you to order either the printed copy or the DRM-free PDF copy of the book for 35% off. Here are the details for that promo code: To purchase, go to InformIT.com and during step 3 of the checkout process, enter ASEVS5858 as the coupon code. This discount does not apply to the already discounted eBook/Print bundle. Offer valid until December 31^st, 2011.

Sample Chapter

Preface & Chapter 1: The Agile Consensus (58 pages)
Chapter 2: Scrum, Agile Practices, and Visual Studio (online)

Foreword by Ken Schwaber
Preface
Chapter 1: The Agile Consensus
Chapter 2: Scrum, Agile Practices, and Visual Studio
Chapter 3: Product Ownership
Chapter 4: Running the Sprint
Chapter 5: Architecture
Chapter 6: Development
Chapter 7: Build and Lab
Chapter 8: Test
Chapter 9: Lessons Learned at Microsoft Developer Division
Chapter 10: Continuous Feedback

Authors

Sam Guckenheimer is the product owner for the Microsoft Visual Studio product line.
Neno Loje is an independent Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) consultant and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) specialist.

Book Description

Using agile methods and the tools of Visual Studio 2010, development teams can deliver higher-value software faster, systematically eliminate waste, and increase transparency throughout the entire development lifecycle. Now, Microsoft Visual Studio product owner Sam Guckenheimer and leading Visual Studio implementation consultant Neno Loje show how to make the most of Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools in your environment.

This book is the definitive guide to the application of agile development with Scrum and modern software engineering practices using Visual Studio 2010. You’ll learn how to use Visual Studio 2010 to empower and engage multidisciplinary, self-managing teams and provide the transparency they need to maximize productivity. Along the way, Guckenheimer and Loje help you overcome every major impediment that leads to stakeholder dissatisfaction–from mismatched schedules to poor quality, blocked builds to irreproducible bugs, and technology “silos” to geographic “silos.”

Coverage includes:

Accelerating the “flow of value” to customers in any software project, no matter how large or complex
Empowering high-performance software teams and removing overhead in software delivery
Automating “burndowns” and using dashboards to gain a real-time, multidimensional view of quality and progress
Using Visual Studio 2010 to reduce or eliminate “no repro” bugs
Automating deployment and virtualizing test labs to make continuous builds deployable
Using Test Impact Analysis to quickly choose the right tests based on recent code changes
Working effectively with sources, branches, and backlogs across distributed teams
Sharing code, build automation, test, project and other data across .NET and Java teams
Uncovering hidden architectural patterns in legacy software, so you can refactor changes more confidently
Scaling Scrum to large, distributed organizations

Whatever your discipline, this book will help you use Visual Studio 2010 to focus on what really matters: building software that delivers exceptional value sooner and keeps customers happy far into the future.

Previous Editions

Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (2006, Sam Guckenheimer)

Restrict TFS to only allow connections from clients with VS SP1

neno — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:13:00 GMT

Scenario

You are running TFS 2010 SP1 and want to make sure that all clients have (VS) SP1 (at minimum) applied.

Luckily, you can configure which clients get rejected when trying to connect to your TFS. You can even provide the message that will be displayed to users whose clients get rejected:

Solution

It's easy, you have to add two values to the TFS registry (and restart TFS):

Key: /Configuration/Application/DisabledUserAgents/TFS10SP1
Value: "Team Foundation (*.exe, 10.0.<40219.1)"
Key: /Configuration/Application/DisabledUserAgents/TFS10SP1/Message
Value: "Sorry, you have to install Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1."

How to do that

Use the tfsreg.exe tool and run this two commands:

tfsreg.exe /server:http://servername:8080/tfs /path:/Configuration/Application/DisabledUserAgents/TFS10SP1 /value:"Team Foundation (*.exe, 10.0.<40219.1)"
tfsreg.exe /server:http://servername:8080/tfs /path:/Configuration/Application/DisabledUserAgents/TFS10SP1/Message /value:"Sorry, you have to install Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1."

Note: Replace the blue URI with your TFS' server URI.

Or download the ready-to-use BlockNonSP1Clients.bat (.ZIP)

Caution: Always remember do not directly edit the TFS registry entries by editing TFS' SQL databases manually. Always use the registry service (client or server) or the tfsreg.exe tool mentioned above (which does that) to modify TFS registry entries.

Future Compatibility Note: This mechanism might change or be implemented differently in future versions of TFS, there's no compatibility guarantee.

Update (2 Oct 2011): In TFS 2010 older clients (VS 2005 and VS 2008) that do not have Service Pack 1 and the appropriate Forward Compatibility Upgrade installed, will be rejected by default using this technique.

(Thanks to Philip Kelley, Taylor Lafrinere, and Buck Hodges from Microsoft for this tip).

Solved: How to find shelvesets from all team members?

neno — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:56:42 GMT

If you don't know the owner name, is there another way to search for the shelveset?

In the "Unshelve" dialog, either enter the username, or use "*" (for all users):

(Thanks to VS ALM MVP-colleague Mike Fourie for raising the question.)

VS 2010 Extension Manager: How to turn off update checks

neno — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:16:00 GMT

Option 1: Manually in Visual Studio 2010 using Tools » Options:

Option 2: Using a registry key

Download .REG file: DisableAutoCheckForUpdates.reg (.ZIP)

(Thanks to Robert MacLean for this tip and both screenshots.)

Installing TFS Build 2010 on a non-domain-joined machine

neno — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:36:00 GMT

Scenario

You want to install and run TFS Build Controller and Agent on a separate network/domain than your Team Foundation Server 2010.

Disclaimer:
According to Ruiz from the MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum this is not officially supported.

How to solve:

Install Team Foundation Build 2010 from TFS media.
Apply latest updates (e.g. Service Pack 1, Cumulative Update 1).
Create user account (both locally on the Build server as well as your TFS AT) as the service account for Team Build (e.g. TFSBUILD)
On TFS, add service account TFSBUILD to Project Collection Build Service Accounts security group (on the collection-level)
Configure the Build Server: when asked leave the "team project collection" field blank.
Choose any system account for now.
After configuration has completed, open the Build Service properties and set the service account to your local account (e.g. ".\TFSBUILD")
Done. You can now start the Build Service, define a Build Controller and Build Agents.

More Information:

Detailed steps, including a walk-through using screenshots, can be found at:
Team Foundation Server 2010 Build Agent not part of the domain

(Thanks to Wes MacDonald and Etienne Tremblay to guide me through this.)

Additional note from Wes:
The other thing I should mention is we had to have the build agent hostname defined in the HOSTS file on the TFS Application Tier and the TFS Server hostname defined in the Build Agent HOSTS file. This assumes the DNS is not configured with the entries.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installation Error: Generic Trust Failure

neno — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:24:03 GMT

Problem description:
Visual Studio (VS) Service Pack (SP) 1 fails with an
"Generic Trust Failure".

Cause:
Probably the .ISO file is corrupt.

How to fix:
You can try to re-download the .ISO file or use the VS SP1 Web Installer (which downloads only the required patches itself) and re-apply the patch, when asked to chose between re-apply and uninstall.

More Information:
The .ISO file has the following checksums (according to Heath Stewart's blog post):

SHA1: 61C2088850185EDE8E18001D1EF3E6D12DAA5692
CRC: C77C2A14

Updated (Sept 3rd, 2011) to include link to checksum of .ISO file. (Thanks to Ahmed Ilyas)

How to restart TFS using the command line

neno — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:42:00 GMT

To recycle the TFS app pool, just run:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd recycle apppool /apppool.name:"Microsoft Team Foundation Server Application Pool"

Note: Requires admin priviledges (run as admin).

This will also pick up new settings from the TFS registry.

(Source: Grant Holliday and MSDN Library.)

VS 2010: How to find out if VS SP1 is installed?

neno — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:08:00 GMT

Question: How can I easily see if VS SP1 is installed on my machine?

Answer: Run VS 2010, open Help » About. Look for "SP1Rel" after the version number.

Screenshot:

Available Check-In-Policies for Team Foundation Server 2010

neno — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:59:13 GMT

Shipping as part of Team Foundation Server 2010:

Builds – Requires that build breaks that were created during a build must be fixed before a new check-in.
Code Analysis – Requires that code analysis is run before check-in. [More]
Testing Policy – Requires that check-in tests are completed before check-in.
Work Items – Requires that one or more work items be associated with the check- in.

Supplied by the TFS 2010 Power Tools (needs to be installed on all VS clients):

Changeset Comments Policy – Requires users to provide check-in comments.
Custom Path Policy – Allows you to scope other check-in policies to specific folders or file types.
Forbidden Patterns Policy – Prevents users from checking in files with filenames that contain forbidden characters or patterns.
Work Item Query Policy – Requires that the associated work items need to be part of the result of a specified work item query.

Note: When using an older version of VS (2005/2008) you need to install the corresponding version of the TFS Power Tools (VS 2005 requires 2005 Power Tools, etc.)

Developed by the Community:

TFS Code Comment Checking Policy (CCCP) – Requires that the source code contains code comments (/// for C#, ''' for VB.NET) before check-in.
StyleCop Team Foundation Server check-in policy - Enforces StyleCop rules on projects (provides integration with Visual Studio for policy violations review)
Check for Compilation Warnings and Errors Check-in Policy – will check for compilation warnings and/or errors (can be restricted to a set of warnings, if desired)
Branch check in policy – Requires the user checks in inside the branch specified in the check in associated work items.
LogSubstPol (Keyword Expansion Check-In Policy) – insertes the check-in comments and other keywords into your source code
Update Work Item Check-in policy - allows developers to update Remaining-Work and Completed-Work fields on check-in.

But what about the "Override policy" checkbox?

Set up Policy Override Email Alerts (Post by Martin Woodward)
Monitor via the TFS Warehouse SQL database (via Colin Dembovsky)
Create a Report in Excel using the SQL OLAP cube (German with English screenshots)

TFS & Visual Studio ALM - by Neno Loje

Solved: Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 crashes with MissingMethodException

How to set the SMTP Port in TFS 2010

How to move a SQL Server Database from Enterprise to Standard Edition

TFS Build cannot resolve dependency to assembly 'Microsoft.Windows.Design.Extensibility'

Export TFS Work Items to an .XML file (using TFS Power Tools)

Download: Visual Studio 2010 Project Template for TFS Utilities

Installation

Usage

Publishing Requirements from Word to TFS (via WordToTFS)

Exporting TFS Work Items to Microsoft Word (via WordToTFS)

Error Code 1603 when trying to install TFS 2010 SP 1

Book Recommendations for Team Foundation Server 2010

ALM Summit 2011 – Taking agile to the next LEVEL

Book: Agile Software Engineering with Visual Studio

Where to get it:

Promotional Code

Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Authors

Book Description

Previous Editions

Restrict TFS to only allow connections from clients with VS SP1

Scenario

Solution

How to do that

Solved: How to find shelvesets from all team members?

VS 2010 Extension Manager: How to turn off update checks

Option 1: Manually in Visual Studio 2010 using Tools » Options:

Option 2: Using a registry key

Installing TFS Build 2010 on a non-domain-joined machine

Scenario

How to solve:

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installation Error: Generic Trust Failure

How to restart TFS using the command line

VS 2010: How to find out if VS SP1 is installed?

Available Check-In-Policies for Team Foundation Server 2010

Note: When using an older version of VS (2005/2008) you need to install the corresponding version of the TFS Power Tools (VS 2005 requires 2005 Power Tools, etc.)

Developed by the Community:

But what about the "Override policy" checkbox?

Further reading: