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Automating the creation of Team Projects

Since I announced the ability to automate the creation of Team Projects in my TFS SP1 feature set post and my March Power Tools post, I've gotten several questions about the format of the XML file you need to create and pass to:

tfpt createteamproject /settingsfile:"filename.xml"

I've attached the XML schema to this blog post and included a sample settings file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project xmlns="ProjectCreationSettingsFileSchema.xsd">

    <TFSName>A Valid TFS server</TFSName>

    <LogFolder>
      c:\RemoteTFSProjectStarte
    </LogFolder>

    <ProjectName>
      Batch Project Creation Demo 23
    </ProjectName>
    <ProjectSiteTitle>
      <!-- default to project name if not specified -->
      Batch Project Creation Demo 23   
    </ProjectSiteTitle>
    <ProjectSiteDescription>
      <!-- default to empty string if not specified -->
      Project Description
    </ProjectSiteDescription>
    <SccCreateType>
      <!-- none | new | branch -->
      Branch
    </SccCreateType>
    <SccBranchFromPath>
      <!-- string.Empty for none and new; supplied for branch -->
      $/test44
    </SccBranchFromPath>
    <ProcessTemplateName>
      MSF for Agile Software Development - v4.2
    </ProcessTemplateName>
</Project>

Hopefully this helps make it more clear,

Brian

Published Monday, June 23, 2008 11:04 AM by bharry
Filed under:

Attachment(s): ProjectCreationSettingsFileSchema.xsd

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Comments

# re: Automating the creation of Team Projects

Hi Brian,

Are there any plans for having the VS SDK  / API include the methods needed to automate the creation of Team Projects (without Team Explorer installed)?

The reason I am asking this is because that creating "Team Projects" is regulated process within our company. This means that we must implement an audit trail and approval process before we can create a new "Team Project" and assign new people to it.

So we are looking to automate (WWF and stuff) this so we don't have to go through the stack of paper work.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008 5:20 PM by wvaneck

# re: Automating the creation of Team Projects

Not in the near future, no.  Much of the code to do Team Project creation is actually in the Team Explorer.  However, you can install Team Explorer on any machine that you like.  That shouldn't prevent you from using it in an automated solution.

Brian

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 9:24 AM by bharry

# re: Automating the creation of Team Projects

That is too bad though.

I am working for a big company and we have various developer groups in different locations dealing with financial systems. Because of that only non-developers or support groups are allowed to great source code repositories and assign developers to work on the code. By automating we would prevent the deployment of Team Explorer to non-developers and on desktops which are already overloaded with other support tools. Also there is also an approval needed from the manager of a development team. If the API of TFS would also expose the creation of team projects it would greatly increase the ability to fit TFS in existing processes.

Thursday, June 26, 2008 2:29 AM by wvaneck

# re: Automating the creation of Team Projects

What I see many people doing in this scenario is creating a Web App to front end this.  They install Team Explorer on the Web Server and automate it there.  That way end users don't have to have any of it on their machines.

Brian

Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:33 AM by bharry

# re: Automating the creation of Team Projects

Making a web site is what we had in mind but with the addition of Workflow Foundation to support the approval process.

However it sounds like a workaround to me that half of what I need to do can be done through the API and the other part like creating a team project, I have to utillize a tool.

Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:52 AM by wvaneck

# VSTS Links - 06/26/2008

Brian Harry on Rally connects to TFS for Agile project management and Automating the creation of Team...

Thursday, June 26, 2008 5:21 PM by Team System News

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