Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje : Tips and Tricks

Tip: How to shrink TeamCompanion’s ribbon commands

neno — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:20:07 GMT

TeamCompanion, the popular Outlook plug-in for TFS, adds pretty wide command icons to Outlook’s mail window ribbon bar, as you can see here:

Before:

You can control it using the following registry entry:

Key: HKCU\Software\Ekobit\TeamCompanion.Outlook

Value: DisplayButtonCaptionsInRibbon (DWORD) must be 0 (= hide captions)

After:

Download: TCO_DisableButtonCaptions.zip

Stop SQL Server transaction log (.LDF) files from growing indefinitely

neno — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:52:00 GMT

Symptoms

You notice that in your SQL databases directory the .LDF files are growing permanently.

Solution

Set the recovery mode of your SQL Server databases to 'simple'.

Step-by-step instructions

Perform a full-backup of your SQL Server databases.
Note: This is very important since switching from the full or bulk-logged recovery model to the simple recovery model breaks the backup log chain. Therefore, it is strongly recommend to back up the log immediately before switching, which allows you to recover the database up to that point. After switching, you need to take periodic data backups to protect your data and to truncate the inactive portion of the transaction log. [Source]
Switch recovery mode of SQL databases to SIMPLE.
(See also: What is simple recovery mode?)

Important Note:

"The Simple recovery model lets you restore the database to the point from which it was last backed up. However, this recovery model does not enable you to restore the database to the point of failure or to a particular time." [Source]

Shrink the transaction log (.LDF) files.
Perform a full-backup of your SQL Server databases.

Optionally you can use a script for the steps described above:

Download: SQLScript_SetRecoveryModeSimple.zip

Additional information

MS KB 873235: How to stop the transaction log of a SQL Server database from growing unexpectedly

See and possibly unlock files checked out by other team members

neno — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:51:49 GMT

Ed Hintz points out that this is easily done with TFS Power Tools and wrote about it in 2007.

In the Source Control Explorer, right click on a parent folder that contains the pending change and choose, “Find in Source Control”.
Choose "Status…".
Press the Find button. (optionally you can type in a user and\or wildcards if you want to narrow the search)
You will be presented a “Find in Source Control” window.
Select the pending change and press the undo button OR right click Undo…
Done.

Customizing the folders and file extensions automatically excluded

neno — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:21:29 GMT

When adding items to source control a list of excluded folders as well as file extensions is shown. You can customize those defaults in the registry.

Matthew Mitrik has the details:

If the add operation is successfully completed, the list will be saved to the registry.

Order of finding masks to filter:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version]\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\AddOptions\ExcludeMasks
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version]\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\AddOptions\ExcludeMasks

(Thanks to Rich and Matt)

Setting Remaining Work to Zero when closing a work item in TFS

neno — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:12:00 GMT

Question:

How can I make sure that the "Remaining Work" field is set to 0 when the work item is closed (for example when associating a work item during checking-in)?

Short Answer:

You can achieve this using the <COPY> rule on the transition to the "Closed" state.

Step-by-Step instructions:

For the desired transition (in this example from "Active" to "Closed").
Add a field reference to "Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork"
Add a new rule of type "COPY"
Choose From = "value" and enter value = "0"
The resulting XML should look something like
Verification: After transitioning a task work item from "Active" to the "Closed" state "Remaining Work" is set to zero.

Disable auto-connect to TFS on VS startup

neno — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:56:00 GMT

When starting Visual Studio it automatically tries to connect to your TFS, which can be very annoying if you work offline. You will probably see:

TF30331: Team Explorer could not connect to the Team Foundation server ...

You can turn this auto-connect behavior off by setting the following files in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation
"AutoLoadServer" = 0

Zero means do not reconnect automatically.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/hippietim/archive/2006/03/14/551320.aspx

Downside: you now always have to manually connect (from Team Explorer’s toolbar)

Download .REG file: NoAutoLoadServer.zip

P.S. The Team Foundation Power Tools (TFPT) include a feature called Tweak UI which offers a checkbox to set this registry key – however in the October 2008 version it has a bug (creaing a string value instead of DWORD) and therefore will not work.

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

Setup up an e-mail notification on other user's check-ins

neno — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:19:19 GMT

Open Alerts Editor (required TFS Power Tools to be installed locally).
Create new alert.
Choose “Check-In of a specific file happens”:
Enter a name for the alert subscription, the destination e-mail address, desired team project name ($/Teamproject), if applicable, as well as your account name (to be excluded).
The “Filter Expression” (2nd tab) looks now similar to:

'Artifacts/Artifact[starts-with(translate(@ServerItem, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"), "$/playground")]' <> null AND "Committer" <> 'TFS\neno'

Tool for creating direct links to TSWA

neno — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:38:55 GMT

Buck Hodges from Microsoft blogged about all the possible links you can construct to point to TSWA pages.

For example the following URL opens the Work Item Editor:

Open the existing work item with ID 1234: http://mytfs:8090/wi.aspx?id=1234

To make it simple I created a small tool that helps you construct those URLs in an easy way:

You can download the source from here:

File Attachement: WebAccessLinkCreator.zip

Discover users without Visual Studio SP1 installed

neno — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Far too often people install Visual Studio SP1 before Team Explorer 2008 and therefore TE remains unpatched in the RTM state.

Luckily the ambitious TFS Admin can use the TFS Server Manager from the Power Tools package (TfsServerManager.exe in the Power Tools folder) to find those users without SP1:

Check for VS 2008 SP1 from the server

Open "Completed Requests" in TFS server manager.

Choose "devenv.exe, 9.0.21022.8" (= RTM), devenv.exe, 9.0.30729.1 stands for SP1.

Click "Run Query" and look at the User and Client IP columns to identity your colleagues:

Done!

Visual Studio (devenv.exe) Version Numbers:

devenv.exe 9.0.30729.1 – Visual Studio 2008 SP1
devenv.exe 9.0.21022.8 – Visual Studio 2008
devenv.exe 8.0.50727.762 – Visual Studio 2005 SP1 (?)
devenv.exe 8.0.?? – Visual Studio 2005

Specifying a user upfront or: How is the developer supposed to know who will be the responsible tester?

neno — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:00:00 GMT

In a small team this sounds like oversize, but in mid-sized large teams it's common that you do not know who is going to be the tester.

Looking at the Bug workflow from MSF Agile:

while "Active" the project lead decided if and when the bug is going to be fixed and assigns it to the responsible developer.
between "Active" and "Resolved" is where the developers implements the fix.
between "Resolved" and "Closed" is where the tester verifies the fix.

When the developer finishes coding he changes the state from "Active" to "Resolved", e.g. by checking in and associating the changeset with the work item.

But by doing so the work item is still assigned to him. In our scenario he doesn't know who will be the responsible tester to verify the fix. So who knows?

The project lead might have that information. So either we assign it back to the project lead to make him assign it to as tester or we make the project lead specify the tester upfront (with the ability to change it afterwards if necessary).

In this example we'll implement the second approach.

Objective

Ask for the Tester when creating the bug and automatically u.se it for the transition from "Active" to "Resolved"

Required Work Item Customization

Step 1: Add a new string field to hold the tester
In this example we will make it a required field (<required/>) and ensure that it contains a valid user (<validuser/>).

<FieldDefinition> type="String" name="Tester" refname="TeamSystemPro.Samples.Tester">
<REQUIRED />
<VALIDUSER />
</FieldDefinition>

Step 2: Add a rule to the transition from "Active" to "Resolved"
Automatically copy the value of the tester field to the Assigned to field.

<FieldReference refname="System.AssignedTo">
<COPY from="field" field="TeamSystemPro.Samples.Tester" />
</FieldReference>

Result

When creating a new bug it's now required to select a Tester before it can be saving.

When choosing "Resolved" for the state "Assigned to" will be automatically filled with the contents from the "Tester" field.

The history correctly shows the change in the "Assigned To" field from the developer (here: "Neno Loje" to the tester (in this case: "Administrator")

Happy Customizing!

Using rich HTML descriptions instead of plain text

neno — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:34:00 GMT

Objective

Allow rich HTML formatting in description fields of the MSF Agile process template.

Note: The MSF CMMI process does support HTML formatting by default. In order to use it you have to enable the formatting toolbar (see Step 6 below).

Work Item Customization

Step 1: Add a new HTML description field

Since the System.Description field is defined of type string as opposed to type HTML we need to create a new field:

Step 2: Change the work item layout

Use your own HTML field instead of System.Description

Step 3: Refresh Work Item cache

Right-click "Work Items" in Team Explorer and select "Refresh".

Step 4: Enable the formatting toolbar

Right-click on the Visual Studio toolbar, find and click "Formatting":

A new toolbar will appear:

Result

Click into the description field and use the toolbar to format your input:

Optional Step 5: Copying the old descriptions to the new HTML field

It would be a pity to loose the existing descriptions so let's write a small utility using the Team Foundation Object model to copy the "old" descriptions to the new HTML field:

static void CopyOldDescriptions()
{
    // TODO: Change these values:
    string tfsName = "servertogo";
    string tfsProjectName = "WorkItemCustomization";
    string tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName = "DescriptionHtml";
    string tfsWorkItemType = "Task";

    using (TeamFoundationServer tfs = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer(tfsName))
    {
        WorkItemStore wit = (WorkItemStore)tfs.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));
        WorkItemCollection result = wit.Query(String.Format("SELECT [System.Id] FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.TeamProject] = '{0}' AND [System.WorkItemType] = '{1}'", tfsProjectName, tfsWorkItemType));
        List<WorkItem> affectedWorkItems = new List<WorkItem>();
        foreach (WorkItem wi in result)
        {
            if (wi.Description.Length > 0)
            {
                // Set new description
                string value = (string)wi[tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName];
                if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
                {
                    wi[tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName] = wi.Description.Replace("\n", "<br>");
                }
                else
                {
                    wi[tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName] += "<br><p>Old description:</p><p>" + wi.Description.Replace("\n", "<br>") + "</p>";
                }

                // Delete old description
                wi.Description = String.Empty;

                affectedWorkItems.Add(wi);
            }
        }

        if (affectedWorkItems.Count > 0)
        {
            wit.BatchSave(affectedWorkItems.ToArray());
            MessageBox.Show("Items updated: " + affectedWorkItems.Count);
        }
        else
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Nothing to do.");
        }
    }
}

Happy formatting. :-)

How to revert changes checked into TFS Version Control

neno — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:55:49 GMT

Objective

We did some changes to a file and now want to revert to an older version of that same file. In the concrete scenario we added a method called "Multiply" with changeset 8 and want to go back to the version of changeset 7.

Step-By-Step guide using the UI

Step 1: Get the version of the file you want to revert to into your workspace

Note: verify that the file really contains the version you expect and want to revert back to!

Step 2: Check out the file for editing

Note: You can freely specify a lock here to make sure none else checks in a new version of the file you are just trying to revert

Step 3: Check in the change you just made

Your check-in will generate a version conflict:

This conflict has to appear so that you don't accidently check in old stuff. You now have to confirm that you really want to override the version that is currently checked in with the older version in your workspace.

The conflict is now resolved:

The check-in was aborted due to the conflicts:

Step 4: Check-in again

Note: If you accidently reverted back to an old version you can use the same steps to open a newer version and upload this as the very latest version again.

Total: 20 clicks.

Alternative using the command-line tools (less clicks)

Instead of 20+ clicks you might think about automating these steps using TF.exe – and are down to 5 commands.

tf get MyClass.cs /version:C8
tf checkout MyClass.cs
tf checkin /noprompt /validate
tf resolve /auto:AcceptYours
tf checkin /comment:"Reverting to older version!" /noprompt

Here's ready to use batch file, which takes two parameters:

%1: Name of the file you want to revert.
%2: Version of the file, e.g. if changeset number when C7 stands for changeset 7

Although we use command line commands the check in dialog will pop up to allow us to specify check-in comments, notes and associate work items.

Download: RevertScript.zip

Q: How do I switch Team System Web Access back to English?

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:10:10 GMT

Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 comes equipped with 10 languages for its UI that will be displayed depending on your Internet browsers regional settings.

You can set a language - independently what your browser settings by opening the Options dialog from the Settings menu.

and choosing your preferred language on the "Regional settings" tab.

Turn off label deletion when deleting builds

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:50:10 GMT

By default a build label is deleted when the corresponding build gets deleted.

In TFS 2008 SP1 you can change that behavior by modifying the web.config file (on the TFS AT in folder %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services) to:

<appSettings>
<add key="PreserveLabelsOnBuildDeletion" value="true" />
</appSettings>

(Thanks to Buck Hodges for this tip).

Adding TFS tools to your path environment variable

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:02:46 GMT

For easier access to the various command line tools of TFS you can add the necessary directories to your %PATH% environment variable.

Paths to add (on a TFS client)

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

Paths to add (on a TFS)

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Tools

Background

The 1^rd path contains TF.exe
The 2^nd path contains BisSubscribe.exe
The 3^rd path contains tfsadminutil.exe

Note: TFPT.exe add its itself to %PATH%

How to

Q: How do I disable the Team Members feature of TFPT?

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:45:06 GMT

A: You can disable it from the options dialog, however this does not remove it entirely (as described here).

To turn it off completely you need to additonally set the following value in the registry:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\PowerTools

TeamTrackerHidden = True

(Thanks to Bill Essary from Microsoft for this tip)

You can download a ready to use .REG file that does both:

DisableTeamMembers.zip

Q: How can I exclude a file from code churn?

neno — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:32:19 GMT

A: You can change it's encoding in version control to Binary.

Background:

The code churn value used by TFS report, like the Quality Indicators report, might not make any sense to you if files this value includes some specific files, like auto-generated files, that were not created/edited by humans.

Disadvantages:

Comparing binary files in the command line or UI will just result in "Binary files differ" rather than a diff viewer showing the changes.
By default, multiple checkouts of binary files are not allowed.

Step-by-Step instructions:

(Thanks to Brian Harry for this tip.)

VS & TFS SP1 - What to apply on which machine

neno — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:50:43 GMT

Often the questions is raised which service pack applies to which VSTS/TFS component:

Machine	TFS SP1	VS SP1
TFS single server / TFS Application Tier	Yes	Yes, if Visual Studio is installed. Install this prior to TFS SP1.
TFS Data Tier	No	No
Team System Web Access (on separate machine)	No	Yes
TFS Build Server	Yes	Yes, if Visual Studio is installed. Install this prior to TFS SP1.
TFS Proxy	Yes	No
Visual Studio User	No	Yes
Office User	No	Yes

A very Basic Process Template to start with

neno — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:34:22 GMT

If you want to start small with your team project you might consider the "Basic Process Template" instead of the built-in MSF Agile and MSF CMMI process templates. It can find on MSDN. From the description:

The basic process template includes:

one work item type: bug,
three queries: AllWorkItems, MyWorkItems, and MyWorkItemsAllTeamProjects,
a basic Windows SharePoint Services team portal (created from the default site template),
and a SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services site that has the following reports on it: Builds, Bug Rates, Quality Indicators, Tests Failing Without Active Bugs and Load Test Summary.

Use this process template as a basic starting point and an alternative to the MSF for Agile Software Development or the MSF for CMMI Process Improvement templates.

Step 1: Upload the process template to your TFS

Step 2: Create a new team project (using the new process template)

Step 3: Discover what's been created

Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194993(VS.80).aspx