Simple Question,
I have few Team Foundation Servers I'm working with.
I want to be able to easily switch between them
(a solution based approach - each solution will be managed at it's own TFS).
Is there an easy way to achieve this or do I have to reconfigure VS2013 each time from scratch ?
It looks like it is possible from
Home->another click on HOME-> Project and My Teams->connect to Team Projects-> Press on Servers button and you can Add another TFS server.
Related
I just revised my first job as a developer. In my workplace we developing mainly in c# language.
In my work place there is a lot of use in source control and TFS which I'm not familiar with, my question: suppose I want to learn TFS in my spare time at house, is it possible? I don't have a pro account, I have visual studio 2017.
I don't mean to online courses, I need to do a "hands on" practice, i.e I need tfc on my own pc if it's possible.
You can download and run TFS Express or use Visual Studio Team Services free for up to 5 users.
Or, ask if your company has a place where you can "play" on the live TFS instance, but in a test environment - I have setup separate "Team Project Collections" for people to experiment on.
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 deal with multiple Team Foundation Servers and collections. Is there a command line I can send to VS so I don't have to manually switch between the TFS servers every time I launch VS?
The way I do it is use the start page from Visual Studio. It lists my recent projects and you can even pin them so they do not scroll out of view when you do not use them for a while.
Activating a project from the start page will automatically connect your Visual Studio environment to the correct TFS collection, because the solution you open is bound to one of them.
Works like a charm!
I'm looking at the list here Team Foundation Server Power Tools March 2011 and I wonder if it is helpful for my case - I'm using Visual Studio 2010 as a TFS client tool to connect to TFS servers; I don't have access to any TFS Servers.
It's confusing to me - the features such as 1) Team Foundation Server Backups, 2) Process Editor, 3) Work Item Templates, ect. are the ones for TFS server side, not absolutely not client side.
So I guess the tool is both a tfs server-side tool and a tfs client-side tool.
If you know it clear, please share. Thank you!
Ps. They said they have the Windows Explorer intergration which is quite cool: I love to check out a data/xml/image file without opening the IDE.
If you are not using TFS, the TFS power tools are of no use for you.
The explorer integration is the same kind of integration that TortoiseSVN has - icon overlays and a right-click context menu, only for TFS.
Yes, they are useful if you are going to work with a TFS for Source Control.
Your main IDE might be Visual Studio, and if you use the Team Explorer window in VS, then you also are using TFS in the background. In that case the power tools are a great help.
If you have access to a TFS Server and want to install just the Shell integration of the Power Tools, but not the IDE integration, you can do so, if my memory serves correctly.
I'm trying to develop some SharePoint workflows for the company I work for, and I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of the technology. Normally when I want to familiarize myself with something, I just play with it, look at the properties, find all the methods, etc.
When I fire up Visual Studio and try to create a SharePoint workflow, it gives me an error indicating I don't have a reference to "Microsoft.SharePoint.dll". Someone told me that it was normal to see that because you have to do all your development on the SharePoint Server itself if you want to do workflows. Is this true?
If so, is there anyone out there that has successfully developed SharePoint workflows in a multi-developer environment without resorting to any "hacks"?? Thank you for reading and your responses...
If you want to create a Sharepoint workflow using the Sharepoint Templates, you need to have a Windows 2003 or 2008 Server running Sharepoint. Essentially, that is true for all Sharepoint development: For it to be really efficient, you need to run Visual Studio on a Sharepoint Server. This in turn means that every developer needs his own Sharepoint server and then you have one additional "Staging"-Server where you deploy and test your combined solutions. Suddenly, that MSDN Subscription looks very attractive :-)
As for your Workflow learning question: I can highly recommend "Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System" by Apress.
Yes, you have to do all your development on a the SharePoint server itself. Consider using a virtual machine and package up features that you can deploy to your staging and production environments.
http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2007/02/23/build-a-sharepoint-development-machine.aspx
http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/EntDev.aspx
Yes, you can develop SharePoint Workflows, WebParts, etc. in a multi-developer environment without any hacks. I suggest you use
a MOSS 2007 VPC Image
Ankhsvn to use svn inside Visual Studio
and also the WSPBuilder Extensions
and maybe you should read What are your biggest complaints about Sharepoint? to see what you're up to ;-)
To learn SharePoint Workflow development,you can start at Step by Step Tutorial. Creating Workflows for Windows Sharepoint Services and MOSS2007
While it's true you need SharePoint installed on your development computer for most SharePoint development, you can get away without it for workflow development. Follow these steps:
Copy the SharePoint DLLs to your development computer (for workflow you'll need microsoft.sharepoint.WorkflowActions.dll).
Open Visual Studio and open the Toolbox tab
Add a new tab (call it SharePoint Workflow Items)
In the new tab, click "Add Items"
Click the "Activities" tab
Locate and add microsoft.sharepoint.WorkflowActions.dll
You'll see a few new tasks show up and already selected.
Once you do this, you'll be able to develop WF workflows that can use SharePoint-specific tasks. Deployment and testing the workflow is another task altogether.
Also, it was casually mentioned in this thread, but you cannot develop SharePoint workflows on a 64-bit SharePoint Server at this time. You will have to have a 32-bit Windows Server and SharePoint Server installation.
Here is a link to some SharePoint workflow how to videos.
http://chrisbarba.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/sharepoint-workflow-how-to-videos/