Team Foundation Server Team Blog

Process Template Schemas Published to Code Gallery

jontsao — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:51:17 GMT

Allen Clark has published the Team Foundation Server process template schema files to Code Gallery: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/TFSchemas . Check out his blog post for a short helpful guide on how to use them to help you when you’re customizing your...(read more)

Programming for the TFS Excel Add-in

jonieren — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:45:19 GMT

Some folks have asked about how to program against the TFS Excel Add-In. The summary is that we don’t have a public API for the TFS Add-in but we do support using the ribbon. Here are the ribbon commands and an example of how to use them. List...(read more)

Tool to configure SharePoint Server for dashboard compatibility with Team Foundation Server 2010

Smitha Saligrama - MSFT — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 23:04:00 GMT

If you have or planing to have Team foundation server 2010 integration with SharePoint Server(MOSS) and unsure of the SharePoint configurations needed to get the dashboards(Tfs Excel reports that show as dashboards in team project portal site) working...(read more)

Visualizing Team Foundation Server Work Items with Live Labs Pivot

jontsao — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:29:17 GMT

Live Labs Pivot is a great way to visualize sets of data, and glean insights/understand patterns that may not be as visible otherwise. In this post, we’ll walk through how easy it is to visualize Team Foundation Server work items using Live Labs Pivot...(read more)

WIQL syntax for Link Query

Smitha Saligrama - MSFT — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:51:00 GMT

Flat List Query (Old) The general Syntax: select <fields> from WorkItems [ where <condition>] [ order by <fields>] [ asof <date>] Link Query When querying across links, you specify three filters: · A filter...(read more)

Extending Work Item Tracking Context Menus

jontsao — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:30:00 GMT

This blog post was written by Hayder Casey, a developer on the work item tracking team. The work item tracking context menus in Visual Studio are extensible. You can add your own commands to them and interact with the work item tracking editors and...(read more)

Work Item Tracking Queries Object Model in 2010

jontsao — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:58:00 GMT

The following post was written by Smitha Saligrama, a software development engineer in test on the work item tracking team for Team Foundation Server . To allow better organization and permissions on queries in Team Foundation Server 2010 we added...(read more)

Announcing Team Foundation Server Scrum v1.0 Beta

Aaron Bjork MSFT — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:27:43 GMT

Today , we’re announcing and releasing a brand new process template… Team Foundation Server Scrum v1.0 Beta. This is a new process template built from the ground up specifically for Scrum teams. So, why a new template? Quite simply...(read more)

Change in HTML Field Behavior in the 2010 TFS Excel Integration

jonieren — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:19:33 GMT

TFS has changed how Excel interacts with HTML fields to only allow HTML fields to be editable on creation of a work item but read only when editing existing work items. What was the old behavior? With the 2008 TFS Excel Add-In you were able to edit work...(read more)

New Work Item Type Controls in TFS 2010

jontsao — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:26:00 GMT

The following post was written by Smitha Saligrama, a software development engineer in test for the work item tracking team in TFS. With the release of TFS 2010, there are some new work item controls you can take advantage of. Stand-alone Label...(read more)

When trying to enable reporting after upgrading my server I get a schema warning

Sunder Raman — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:25:04 GMT

A couple of customers have reached out recently with this question, so I wanted to elaborate how this scenario works. Here’s the scenario: “ I have an existing TFS 2005 or 2008 server with reporting enabled. I upgraded the server to TFS 2010 but...(read more)

Visual Studio 2010 and TFS with Office 2003

jonieren — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:47:35 GMT

You have installed Visual Studio 2010 and found out that the TFS Office Add-In is no longer working because you only a have Office 2003 and TFS requires Office 2007 or newer. Your company is not rolling to Office 2010 for another six months, what do you...(read more)

MSF Agile 5.0 Tips

Aaron Bjork MSFT — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:15:00 GMT

With the launch of Visual Studio 2010 last week I thought it would helpful to start a series of blog posts on how you can make the most out of the new MSF Agile 5.0 process template . If you’ve been following any of the beta releases you know that...(read more)

Using the TeamProjectPicker API in TFS 2010

jontsao — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:38:00 GMT

This post was written by Hayder Casey, a developer on the work item tracking team . If you have used Visual Studio 2010, you may have noticed the new “Connect to Team Project” dialog: This replaced the old DomainProjectPicker in Visual Studio 2008. The...(read more)

Visual Studio Certified Process Template Program

Jim Lamb — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:59:31 GMT

With the launch and release of Visual Studio 2010 we’re pleased to announce the new Visual Studio Certified Process Template Program . Visual Studio certified process templates are high quality templates created by certified partners from the Visual Studio...(read more)

Downloading Unbound Agile Workbooks

Jim Lamb — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:54:53 GMT

I’ve had a few people ask where they can get unbound (not connected to a team project) copies of the Agile workbooks so I’ve written this quick post to show where you can download them. The unbound workbooks are stored in the process template and then...(read more)

Compatibility Matrix for 2010 RTM Team Foundation Server to Team Explorer 2008 and 2005

jonieren — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:24:42 GMT

TFS has continued to improve and add to the compatibility guidance. This blog includes links to the 2005 and 2008 forward compatibility updates as well as the forward and backward compatibility detailed scenarios. Read the rest of John Nierenberg's article...(read more)

Reporting in Team Foundation Server 2010 – Part 8: Custom Reports: Options & Tools

Sunder Raman — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:47:39 GMT

In my last post in this series I covered the new feature for generating reports in Microsoft Excel based on work item query. Let’s look at custom report authoring options available and a few tools next: Walkthroughs for out-of-the-box experience...(read more)

TFS 2010 Upgrade Guide from Beta 2 or RC to RTM

Jim Lamb — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:05:48 GMT

With the Visual Studio 2010 RTM family of products, including Team Foundation Server 2010, due to be released soon, here is some TFS upgrade guidance to help you prepare to upgrade from either Beta 2 or RC to the RTM release. This is supplemental information...(read more)

Work Item Tracking – Custom Controls

Gregg Boer - TFS Product Team — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:00:50 GMT

Custom Controls provide a mechanism to extend the work item form to include user developed controls. It enables various scenarios, that are difficult or not possible using the built in controls such as: extend event-based rules, custom user interface...(read more)

The VS 2005 Forward Compatibility Update is Available!

jonieren — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:38:43 GMT

The Team Explorer 2005 Forward Compatibility Update (GDR) The VSTS 2005 Forward Compatibility Update is now available. It is more focused on development scenarios. For administrative, project management and test case scenarios, the use of Team Explorer...(read more)

Configuring SharePoint Server 2010 for Dashboard Compatibility with TFS 2010

jontsao — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:13:00 GMT

Team Foundation Server 2010 supports integration with both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

For those of you who wish to integrate with 2007, this MSDN topic gives instructions for configuring SharePoint settings so that the TFS dashboards built for MOSS light up on your SharePoint server.

For those of you who wish to integrate with SharePoint 2010, the steps are slightly different (and easier given the improvements in the configuration experience that the SharePoint team has made for 2010). This blog post describes these steps, which involve configuring Secure Store Service and Excel Services. The steps for configuring Secure Store Service, which is the replacement of MOSS 2007’s Single Sign-On, is optional, but recommended if you don’t want to manually give credentials in SQL Reporting Services to everyone who is accessing the portal, and/or your SharePoint server is on a separate machine from your Team Foundation Server, and you need to solve the double-hop authentication issue.

Verify that Excel Services and (optionally) Secure Store Service are Enabled

First, you’ll want to verify that Excel Services and, optionally, Secure Store Service have been enabled on your SharePoint server. To do so, you can use the farm configuration wizard (if you have just done a fresh install of SharePoint Server 2010, you’ll see this screen pop up when you first open SharePoint Central Administration) and pick the “Walk me through…” option:

On the next screen, make sure that Excel Services and Secure Store Service are checked:

If they are not, go ahead and check them and click Next to enable them.

Configure Excel Services

Go to the central administration home page, and click on “Manage service applications” under Application Management...

…and then click “Excel Services Application”. Click on “Trusted File Locations”. By default, SharePoint creates a trusted file location of “http://” when you first configure Excel Services, which makes any path under the root a trusted location; you can change this if you wish, but make sure that the path maps to a location under which you want to place your TFS team project SharePoint portals, and that Trust Children is set to true. Click on the address of the trusted file location that will be used for TFS to edit it.

Scroll down on the form and find the Warn on Refresh option, and uncheck the checkbox. If you leave this option checked, users visiting the TFS dashboards on SharePoint will constantly be asked whether they want to refresh the Excel web parts. Click OK.

Configure Secure Store Service (optional)

Configuring Secure Store Service is optional, but recommended if you don’t want to manually give credentials in SQL Reporting Services to everyone who is accessing the portal and/or your SharePoint server is on a separate machine from your Team Foundation Server, and you need to solve the double-hop authentication issue.

Go to the central administration home page, click on “Manage service applications” under Application Management, and then click on Secure Store Service.

On the resulting page, SharePoint will tell you that you need to generate a key if you haven’t done so already:

Click on Generate New Key on the ribbon if this is the case. Once you’ve got a key, click New on the ribbon to create a new Secure Store Target Application for TFS. Fill out the appropriate fields, and take a note of the value you specify for the Target Application ID, as you’ll need this later (I used tfs in the example below). Select Group for the Target Application Type:

Click Next, and accept the default settings on the next page:

On the next page, enter the administrator account(s) that you want to be able to manage the Secure Store Target Application in the Target Application Administrators field. For Members, enter the users and/or groups that you wish to give access to your TFS dashboards that will be created with your team projects. Then click OK.

Once you’ve clicked OK, you’ll return to the list of Secure Store Target Applications. Select the one you’ve just created and click Set Credentials.

In the resulting pop up dialog, type in the username and password of the TFS data sources account for SQL Server Reporting Services. See this MSDN topic for more information on the accounts used for TFS (the data sources account is referred to as TFSReports in that topic) and the specific requirements of the data sources account. Click OK.

Configuring TFS

Now onto configuring TFS. If you haven’t already installed/configured TFS, do so now, following the instructions in the install guide to enable TFS integration with SharePoint. Once you have installed/configured TFS, open up your TFS admin console on the machine where SharePoint is installed. Select the “Extensions for SharePoint Products” node and select the mapping to TFS and click Modify. In the Enterprise Application Definition field, enter in the value that you specified earlier for the Target Application ID when configuring Secure Store Service (I used tfs above and below).

That’s it!

Your 2010 SharePoint Server is now set up for TFS dashboard compatibility.

Edit (6/1/10): This post originally outlined steps for the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta. I’ve updated the instructions and screenshots for SharePoint Server 2010 RTM.

My name is Jon Tsao, and I am a Program Manager for the work item tracking and project management team for Team Foundation Server.

Controlling which link types are displayed on a work item form

Gregg Boer - TFS Product Team — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:28:44 GMT

In 2005 and 2008 versions of TFS, the work item links control that displayed the links always showed all the links. For TFS 2010, we made a design decision based on the fact that whoever is designing a work item form, may want to display certain link...(read more)

TFS 2010 Warehouse Sample Adapter is now available!

Sunder Raman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:28:35 GMT

We have been working on getting a sample adapter ready for you to build a custom warehouse adapter in TFS 2010. I am happy to announce that we just published the sample and is now available at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Tfs2010SampleAdapter...(read more)

Reporting in Team Foundation Server – Part 7: Excel Reports from Work Item Queries

Sunder Raman — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:58:57 GMT

In my last post in this series, I covered the new SQL RS reports we have in TFS 2010. Let’s look at a cool new feature for generating a report in Microsoft Excel based on a work item query. Walkthroughs for out-of-the-box experience including customizations...(read more)