Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje : TFS 2008

Naming Restrictions for Team Foundation Server

neno — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:39:38 GMT

If you ever had questions like:

How long is the team project's name allowed to be?
How many levels may an work item area hierarchy have?
Which characters are allowed in build type names?
What is the maximum supported size for work item attachments?

Those are answered by the MSDN topic: Naming Restrictions for Team Foundation Server

What are Test Name, Test Id, and Test Path used for?

neno — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:49:05 GMT

If you create a work item out of a test result like this…

… the three test fields get populated by Visual Studio:

Read all details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194965.aspx

Using TFS to develop custom SharePoint applications (revised)

neno — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:11:05 GMT

The first article is created during a real world customer engagement and answers dozens of frequently asked questions and how-tos in a real world context vs. theoretical discussions. The 2^nd package addresses very common questions around setting up and using TFS features for a MOSS development project.

VSTS Rangers - SharePoint Server Custom Application Development: Document Workflow Management Project
Read about the real-world design, construction, and deployment of a custom SharePoint Server 2007 application to a mid-market enterprise customer using Team Foundation Server as an ALM platform.

VSTS Rangers - Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications
Learn how to use TFS to support your SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles.

Additionally to the existing guidance from Patterns & Practices the two teams worked together to align these stories:

patterns & practices: SharePoint Guidance

The SharePoint Guidance contains a sample implementation of an intranet application based on SharePoint Server 2007 that demonstrates solutions to many ALM challenges.

VSTS Whitepapers by Microsoft

neno — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:21:53 GMT

Planning

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Licensing White Paper (pdf/xps/docx)
Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Guide (pdf/book)
Team System Web Access 2008 Scalability Limits White Paper (pdf/xps/docx)

Installation, Configuration & Administration

Requirements Management

Requirements Management with Visual Studio Team System White Paper (pdf/xps/docx)

Version Control

TFS Branching Guide 2.0 (pdf/zip)

Hardware Recommendations for Team Foundation Server 2008

neno — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:08:51 GMT

What hardware do I need to run TFS? Well, it depends on how much load you are going to generate. But what is a solid hardware configuration to start?

Microsoft recommends for the Single-Server installation of TFS:

Additionally they recommend switching to a Dual-Server configuration (TFS & MSSQL installed on separate machines) if you have more than 450 users (Note: this is really just a rough orientation - many other factors are important).

Sources: here and here.

We recommend the following minimum based on our experiences
(recommendations for better performance in brackets):

# Developers	Configuration	CPU	RAM*	HDD**
<= 20	single server	2 x 2.2 GHz	2.5 GB (3 GB)	80 GB
<= 100	single server	4 x 2.2 GHz	3 GB (4 GB)	250 GB
> 100***	dual server	2 x 2.6 / 4 x 2.2 GHz	4 / 8 GB (16 GB)	500 GB

Disclaimer: All values shown here do vary depending on the individual situation.

A few general notes

* Increasing the amount of memory (RAM) clearly improves performance (be aware TFS Application Tier is 32-bit only and hence limited to ~ 3.5 GB)

** Hard drive speed is very important to MSSQL and therefore for TFS. The use of fast hard drives and disk arrays is heavily recommended.

*** Splitting TFS and MSSQL is a good idea if you experience heavy load and slow response times on a single server installation. [More]
However more than just the number of developers should be considered in this case, e.g. licensing issues, existing SQL infrastructure, backups in place, etc.

A reliable network connection with a minimum bandwidth of 1 Mbps and a latency maximum of 350ms is required.

The use of virtualization technologies (Virtual Server, Hyper-V, VMware) is possible and mostly recommended by us for backup and fail-over reasons.

More official Hardware Recommendations (our recommendation in brackets):

Team Build (2 x 2.2 GhZ CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk)
Team Foundation Server Proxy (2 x 2.2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk)
Team Explorer (2.2 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB Hard disk)
Test Rigs

Q: How Do I link work items with SharePoint documents?

neno — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:46:38 GMT

A: Two possible ways:

Step 1: Get the URL of the document saved in a SharePoint document library

From the project portal:

Right-click the file and select Copy Shortcut. Done.

From the Team Explorer window in Visual Studio:

Right-click the file under the Documents folder and select Properties.

The quickest way is to double-click on "Url", then right-click the blue-marked URL on the right side and select Copy (or press Ctrl+C respectively).

Step 2: Add the link to the work item

Select Add on the work item's Links tab:

Select the a link type of "Hyperlink":

Paste the URL and enter a comment optionally:

Confirm with "OK".

Done.

TFS Tip: Enabling Work Item meta data filtering

neno — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:45:54 GMT

Beginning with TFS 2008 SP1 you can specify that only the necessary part of the Work Item meta data will be transferred to the client caches, e.g. not the meta data for project you have no permission on. This is not done by default.

You can read all the glory details in Martin Woodward's blog. Short excerpt:

Enabling WIT Meta-data filtering

Now that we have been through all the gory details, let's finally see how to switch on the feature.
In the appSettings section of the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\WorkItemTracking\web.config file add the following keys
   1: <add key ="filterClientMetadata" value="true"/>
   2: <add key ="excludedUserAgents" value="WebAccess:w3wp:witfields:witimport:witexport:witadmin"/>
The filterClientMetadata switch determines whether to filter client metadata based on the calling user's access rights (true) or not (false). If not provided the setting will default to false.
The excludedUserAgents switch is a colon delimitated list of strings that may appear in the requested clients HttpRequest UserAgent header. You can take a look at your IIS logs or your TFS Activity logs to determine what user agents are used, but a handy feature of the TFS .NET API is that the executable name using the API is recorded in the user agent string, meaning that you can easily find your specific utility and exclude it if necessary. As far as I am aware, the only publically accessible application that makes use of shared meta-data is Team System Web Access, so we put "WebAccess" in our excluded user agents setting. We also put in the names of the utilities in Team System that need to see all the metadata to report back correct information to the TFS administrators.

Ways to access Team Foundation Server

neno — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:16:29 GMT

Pick your favorite tool for your task/job:

From Visual Studio:

Visual Studio 2008: Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Explorer (+ SP1)
Visual Studio 2005: Visual Studio Team System 2005 Team Explorer (+ SP1)
older Visual Studio versions and VSS clients: via MSSCCI-Provider*
(includes Visual Studio .NET 2003, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro, Visual Basic, MS Access, SQL Management Studio, FinalBuilder, etc.)

From the command line:

tf.exe *: Version Control
tfpt.exe *: Work Items, Work Item Types, Version Control
PowerShell scripts (soon to be released)

From the web browser:

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Web Access (TSWA)*

From Microsoft Office products:

Excel (2003+): built-in*
Excel (for reporting): How to: Create a Report in Microsoft Excel for Team System
Project (2003+): built-in*
(for project server integration use: Project Server 2007 VSTS Connector)
Outlook (2003+): TeamCompanion* ($) by Ekobit
Word (2007): TeamSpec* ($) by Personify Design
Visio Pro (2003+): stpsoft Storyboarding for VSTS* ($)
Visio (for reporting): How to: Team Foundation Server Reporting and Visio

From other platforms or IDEs:

Java UI and console client: Teamprise Explorer and Command-Line Client ($)
Eclipse IDE: Teamprise Plug-in for Eclipse ($)
Borland IDEs: SourceConneXion (via MSSCCI) ($)

From Windows Explorer:

As part of Team Foundation Server Power Tools* (soon to be released)
TortoiseSVN: via SVNBridge
Dubbelbock TFS by Benjamin Day Consulting

From other products:

MindManager Pro 7: Requirements Manager for VSTS*
SnagIt: SnagIt Output for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System*

From Windows Taskbar:

Tray icon client: Fissum*

Footnotes
(*) requires Team Explorer to be installed.
($) means the product is a commercial third party solution.

Using TFS to develop custom SharePoint applications

neno — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:52:24 GMT

Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications

Summary: Use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server to support SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles. (12 printed pages)

Author: Microsoft Corporation, September 2008

Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc948982.aspx

Updated: revised versino of this blog post.

Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5 and TFS 2008 Service Pack 1 released

neno — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:31:00 GMT

Service Packs for VSTS/TFS do not only contain bug fixes, but quite a few nice new features as you can read here (more general) and here (TFS-specific).

Download links:

TFS Installation Guide
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 (full)
(updates TFS, Team Build and TFS Proxy)
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (Online installer)
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (ISO)
(updates Visual Studio and Team Explorer; requires 4.225 MB free HDD space)
.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Online installer)
.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (full)

If you have trouble installing SP1 look here and here.

Tip #1: Uninstall Visual Studio Hotfixes first

If you previously installed a Visual Studio 2008 Hotfix, you must run the Hotfix Cleanup Utility before installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1. For more information, see Visual Studio 2008 Hotfix Cleanup Utility for Installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Tip #2: Have enough disk space available on your primary hard drive:

You can read here why.

Tip #3: If you have Team Explorer or TSWA on your TFS you need to install... (Thanks to Hakan Eskici)

... Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and TFS 2008 Service Pack 1 (in that order!).

Tip #4: Integrate installation of TFS and SP1 ("Slipstream")

The steps to produce a so-called "slipstream" installation package are documented in the TFS Installation Guide in the chapter "How to: Integrate the Installation of Team Foundation Server and Service Pack 1".

There are a few reasons why you must do that (e.g. upgrading to SQL Server 2008) you can read in Brian Harry's blog post.

Tip #5: Ignore Windows Update reboot prompt (Thanks to Brian Harry)

If you get a Windows Update prompt to reboot during SP1 installation, ignore it (don't reboot). Wait until after the SP1 installation completes and then reboot.

Tip #6: Uninstall and reinstall Team System for Database Development GDR (Thanks to Brian Harry)

If you have a prerelease of the Team System for Database Development GDR (that supports SQL 2008) installed, you will need to reinstall it after upgrading to SP1.

Screenshots from applying TFS 2008 SP1:

Screenshots from applying VS 2008 SP1 (online installer) on at TFS with only Team Explorer installed:

Users can see all team projects after upgrading from TFS 2005 to 2008

neno — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:07:17 GMT

Make sure all team project members are added to the appropriate groups (Project Administrators, Contributors and Readers).
For every team project remove the "[Server]\Team Foundation Valid Users" group from the team project settings (Team Project Settings » Securty).
Done. Regular members now should only see team projects where they have permissions.

Enjoy!

Version Control Tip: Excluding specific files from multiple checkout

neno — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:34:11 GMT

Question:

Can I define a file name, not only a file type (extension), if multiple checkout is allowed for the whole Team Foundation Server?

Answer:

Yes, that is possible, although the UI shows "file extensions" and displays it in a way that you might think that it's not supported.

As a result you can specify that *.cs files in general do support multiple checkout but a certain file called "specific.cs" follows exclusive-checkout logic.

Enjoy!

-Neno

FIX: TFS 2008: Delete lost when you merge from delete-branch to trunk

neno — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:22:00 GMT

> KB article

> Hotfix download

Facts about Running Builds in Parallel with Team Build

neno — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:57:02 GMT

TeamBuild

can build one build definition from a single Team Project at a time.
can build multiple build definitions from different Team Project.

MSBuild

has the capability to use multiple CPUs to build projects in parallel and therefore speed up your builds.
This multiproc feature can be leveraged in your Team Builds.

Thanks Grant for pointing out those facts.

Team Foundation Proxy - Your friend for distributed development teams

neno — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:14:00 GMT

Since you can only deploy one master TFS server and replication mechanisms are not supported you might consider using a TFS Proxy server, which caches the downloads from the Team Foudation Version Control.

Functionality / What it does:

Cache downloads from Version Control only. Control Messages and other artifacts like work items are still transferred directly between client (Visual Studio) and server (TFS).

Read more about how the proxy works.

Licensing:

From a licensing perspective the TFS Proxy costs you one (additional) TFS license.

See also: Licensing whitepaper.

Installation

You find the installation files on your TFS CD under Proxy\setup.exe.

After the installation is complete you need to modify the configuration file.

See also: hardware requirements.

More Information (including all links mentioned above):

Screen Gallery: Creating a Team Project in TFS 2008

neno — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:30:31 GMT

Screenshots from a successful team project creation.

Screen Gallery: Upgrading WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0

neno — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:40:57 GMT

You updated to TFS 2008, but since the upgrade process doesn't touch your already installed WSS you are responsible for upgrading it yourself.

Official Guidance:

Upgrading SharePoint Products and Technologies for Team Foundation Server

Step 1: Run Prescan.EXE

Resulting log file:

Resulting XML file:

Step 2: Install WSS 3.0

Step 3a: Upgrade (invoked automatically by setup)

(Be aware: if you do not use the same port as your TFS is configured to talk to today you need to change the TFS registration using TFSAdminUtil afterwards!)

Step 3b: Still Upgrade (not in the web browser)

Step 4: Finalization (manual step)

Step 5: Uninstall WSS 2.0 (manual step)

Step 6: Install & configure TFS Extensions for WSS (located on the TFS media)

Step 7: Verify success by creating a new team project

Screen Gallery: Installing TFS Power Tools 2008

neno — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:29:36 GMT

Screenshots from a successful Power Tools installation

Step 1: Installing Windows PowerShell

Step 2: Installing TFS Power Tools

TFS 2008: Team Build doesn't get subfolders of team build type folder by default

neno — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:05:03 GMT

In TFS 2005 subfolders of your team build type folder were copied recursively to the build temp directory. In TFS 2008 only the contents w/o recursion is copied.

To change this behavior, Aaron tells us, you need to modify the following line

<add key="ConfigurationFolderRecursionType" value="Full" />

in the TfsBuildService.exe.config on your build machine.

Enjoy!

Documentation: Team Foundation Server SDK (online version)

neno — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:55:34 GMT

From the contents:

Team Foundation Server Extensibility

Team Foundation Server SDK Architecture

How to: Run Team Foundation Server SDK Samples

Team Foundation Core Services

Work Item Tracking Extensibility

Source Control Extensibility

Data Warehouse Extensibility

Reference for Team Foundation Server SDK

Link: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb130146(VS.80).aspx