I'm working on a .NET project with a subcontractor.
The client has all source code in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).
The client has granted access to the subcontractor, but he cannot see any source code or builds.
When logging in to the VSTS website, he receives the following error messages:
"TF400409: You do not have licensing rights to access this feature: Code"
"We could not verify your Visual Studio subscription so we've downgraded you to Stakeholder."
The subcontractor meets the criteria for commercial development using the Community Edition of Visual Studio (fewer than 5 developers etc.), so it would be sad if they had to purchase a license, just to access one client's source code.
Is there a way out?
Could he maybe set up a free VSTS "Community" instance and thus be marked as "licensed" in the system?
Access level is assigned per Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) subscription and not per company. So even though you contractor might be considered a single entity he will be part of the free license count for the particular subscription he is trying to access. Either there are already 5 free developers or he is not assigned the correct level.
Access level is assigned through the dashboard https://{youraccount}.visualstudio.com (select Users from the '...' menu). The 5 free licenses can be used by assigning the users to the Basic access level. You can read more here: Manage users and access in VSTS (if you turned off User Hub).
Related
I am following along with a book that requires me to have a previous version of Visual Studio (2010). The link from the book, https://microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/professional now redirects to https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/ but after using the search bar to look for 2010 version I am directed to https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/ where the download I need is available and shown.
However on the page it says to "Select a product below and click on the download button to log in to your Visual Studio (MSDN) subscription or join the free Dev Essentials program, to gain access to the older versions."
My question is why do I need to set up an account for the 'Dev Essentials program' and am not able to simply download the software? Does the reason include needing to assign an id to the people who download an older version? Also I am looking for an answer that includes any information about the program itself, your experience with it, and any benefits of linking it to my account.
1- Why do I need to set up an account for "Dev Essentials" and unable to simply download
A- Perhaps they want to keep a record of the customers who are insistent to have the older versions despite a much newer prod release.
With this they would have insights to X customers on VS2010, Y on VS2017, this could prove useful for IDE enhancements if they figure out, probably through surveys (which require you to sign up), why some of the customers stick to the older IDEs
2- My Experience
A- I've signed up to it using my corporate account and manage our product keys and subscriptions for our enterprise account there
3- Benefits
A- You get 1 month free access to PluralSight courses, 1 month LinkedIn learning premium subscription, 1 year subscription to Code Magazine (These benefits hold true even without a corporate account)
This link provide us a comparison about three versions. Apparently only TFS features is the different. here
I guess that is more than that.Technically, Is it full featured ?
Otherwise why would we pay $45/month for professional version. Products
Per this link
VS Community Usage terms
For individuals
Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.
For organizations
An unlimited number of users within an organization can use Visual Studio Community for the following scenarios: in a classroom learning environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source projects.
For all other usage scenarios:
In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community. In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
For more information, see the Visual Studio Community license terms.
Licensing is the critical point.
If you develop in the contest of an organization, you must be within limits not buying Pro license (full details), e.g. classrooms, academic, open source projects plus some.
Technically they are the same and Team Explorer is built-in. My understanding (I can be wrong) regards the licensing: the features listed are almost all accessible via web interface, so there is no technical blocker as I see it.
BTW I contribute to an open source TFS plugin using Community edition and found no problems.
Then you have to consider the free tier of VSTS which is a separate license. For TFS on prem, you need some CAL (Client Access License) but there is some free tier also.
We're looking into migrating to TFS 2010 in the next few weeks. However, we're unclear on what kind of tools are required for the team. We know developers need Visual Studio but what tooling is required for Project Managers and Testers that will ONLY need to manage work items? Do they also need Visual Studio to just view and edit work items?
Project Managers and Testers can use the following methods to access TFS 2010
The web access portal - this allows the ability to create/run queries of work items, and even view source/builds if they want
Excel/Project - Both have integrate with TFS. You are able to load work items directly into Excel/Project, edit them, and publish them back to TFS.
Visual Studio with Team Explorer only - This is a barebones installation of VS, with the Team Explorer only. It doesn't take all that long to install, but it will say "Visual Studio" when launched. Not sure if that is scary to testers/project managers.
Web access provides a good complete set of functionality, but having VS/Team Explorer will provide a rich client experience (read: faster, more responsive).
Additionally, in order to get the Excel/Project integration, you'll need at least the VS/Team Explorer installed on the client box, even if they never use VS. And you need a CAL (Client Access License) to use the web access portal.
So to summarize, TFS provides a lot of ways for the non-developer to interact with the system, but all of them require a CAL, and most of them require installing VS/Team Explorer on the client machine.
In short, they don't need Visual Studio. They can use Team System Web Access (formerly known as TFS Web Access) to do pretty much everything a developer can do, except associate a check-in with a work item. After you install TFS 2010, you simply browse to http://yourserver:8080/Tfs/web and you're in!
Project Managers (and all other team members) can also work with work items from Outlook using 3rd party TFS client embedded in Outlook: TeamCompanion www.teamcompanion.com. This way, assuming they otherwise use Outlook, they wouldn't need to change tools or use any additional tools at all.
As is the case with Excel or Project integration they would still need a TFS CAL and additionally a TeamCompanion license.
TeamCompanion supports much more than just work item management: Email/TFS integration, SQL Server Reports, SharePoint document integration and much more...
Full Disclosure: I am the Product Owner of TeamCompanon, so I may be biased :-).
There is a web front end which you can use to manage the work items. There is also integration to Excel and MS Project.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181304.aspx for more information on Team Foundation Clients
I can't seem to add a user to the licensed user group in TFS 2010. Everything online says to open up Visual Studio, connect to the server, then drop down team, click Team Foundation Server Settings, and then Groups.
I can get that far, but then it says to click on the Licensed Users Group, and I don't have that group in my list.
I don't think this should even work really though, because I believe those directions are for TFS 2008 not 2010.
We've got TFS 2010 installed, and on my development PC I'm using VS 2008, and we have another PC in the office using VS 2010 so I can connect to it either way. I also have full rights to the 2008 server that the TFS is actually installed on, but cannot seem to find the licensed user group anywhere.
Are your instructions from Microsoft or an internal document? I've never seen the Licensed Users Group in TFS. Instead, we add our users to [SERVER]\Team Foundation Valid Users when they are licensed.
In Visual Studio 2010, first ensure that you are connected to the Team Foundation Server. Then, under the Team menu, select Team Project Collection Settings then Group Membership. This will bring up a dialog box that shows all of the valid groups. Find the one that is called [SERVER]\Team Foundation Valid Users and click on Properties.
In the secondary window that pops up, select Windows User or Group and click Add.
Alternatively, create an Active Directory group that represents your authorized users, and add that group to the Team Foundation Valid Users TFS group. This way, when you add new users, you can have your network administration simply add the licensed user to that Active Directory group and they'll automatically be included in the Valid Users.
To add to what's been said here, that particular group isn't expected to exist in all editions:
After you install Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition, you must add users to Team Foundation Licensed Users security group in order for them to connect to the server. This security group is a server-level group specific to the Workgroup Edition. This group is created during installation of the Workgroup Edition, but not the Trial Edition or the Standard Edition
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/how-to-add-users-for-team-foundation-server-workgroup-edition/
Already have MSDN with Team System Test Edition, how do I go about getting Developer Edition? Can't find it on MSDN.
Do I need to buy a whole other MSDN license for this?
Can you add just another SKU into the Team System family, in other words, can you have 2 Team System Versions, or does it have to be the Team $uite MegaVersion or single versions?
Also, can you use FxCop with the nice VS shell integration inside of VS Test Edition?
Any URLs/hints would be greatly appreciated. Seems to me that there's very little documentation on how to mix and match VS versions. Would be great if MSFT had a "Visual Studio store" MENU ITEM in VS where you could go and just buy/download the different SKUs automatically. I mean it takes me just a few clicks to download extra states into TurboTax, but MSFT makes that very hard to do.
P.S. Same set of questions for Visual Studio Database Edition.....yes I'm a dev that wears many hats.
There are 3 common levels of licensing that you see:
Visual Studio Pro - Doesn't include any of the team system features
Visual Studio Team System xxxxx Edition - Where xxxx is either Developer, Tester, Architect or DBPro. Includes all the functionality of VS Pro + the functionality associated with the role you chose.
Visual Studio Team Suite - Includes the functionality of all the different role editions.
If you have the VSTS Developer Edition and you want some of the functionality from the other roles, you either have to buy a 2nd VSTS license for the other role, or upgrade to VSTS Team Suite. If I remember correctly VSTS Team Suite is about twice the cost of a specific role version of VSTS, so rather than purchasing multiple role editions most people just opt to upgrade to Team Suite since the cost is approx. the same.
You can compare the list prices here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/howtobuy/compare-price.mspx
First, once you logon to the MSDN site, make sure you've clicked the "Downloads" tab at the top of the page, and then near the lower-right click on "MSDN Subscriber Downloads". Software that you have access to at your level of subscription will appear in the list.
Second, you may consider reviewing the details of your level of MSDN subscription if you still don't see what you're looking for.
I hope this helps!
If you will really be using all the different products, then it is best to have the full System license. I think 2 of the products make the price of the full, if you are using 3 ...