I was wanting to know (as the title suggests) if anyone had any information on reporting in TFS 2010.
I know there have to be options for this, but I can't seem to find any literature on where any built-in reports are, nor where I could build custom reports.
Also, I have it set up now where I get email notifications upon a completed build. However, the email notification is just that--a notification. It doesn't give me much information outside the basics (for instance, it doesn't say details on any errors or warnings). It does give me a link in the notification that directs me to a page that lists further detail about the build. But I was wondering if there was any more flexibility on these notifications.
The long and short of it is this: I'd like to know what kind of reporting options are available in TFS 2010, and I'd also like to know if there was a way I could possibly customize the email notifications to somehow contain the aforementioned reports, or at least link to said reports.
Reporting with TFS2010 is pretty rich. Any chance that you have it installed on your workstation? Reporting is not supported in the workstation version of TFS.
What's New for Reporting for Visual Studio ALM
The reports are hosted inside of SQL Server Reporting Services so you can create custom reports using a standard SSRS project in TFS. You can do a lot to manipulate the reports using just the report manager that is available from within the project portal.
The email is done using a XSL transform that is normally located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\TFSJobAgent\Transforms. You can manipulate any of these XSL files to create a new presentation of the data that is passed along from TFS. Of course you can create links to the reports by just including them in the XSL template.
Related
I'm having trouble figuring out whether this exists.
I've got multiple projects in Visual Studio Online, and each one of these has its own dashboard where you can add widgets to see useful stuff like build progress.
I'm wondering whether I can use one central dashboard to see this information for all of my projects, but I can't find it. Anyone had any luck?
The short answer is no. In TFS (and VSTS) you have Collections (accessible in TFS but not accessible in VSTS), then Team Projects, then Projects/Repositories. In TFS OnPrem you can do some 'magic' to build queries that cross the Team Project boundaries but it's not supported or even recommended.
If you are looking for a way to have information about multiple Team Projects, for an OnPrem version of TFS you would use SQL Report Server. This option is not available with VSTS so your only option is Power BI.
This is exactly the use-case for Teams. Teams allow you to, within a single team project, manage and report on multiple simultaneous development efforts, including reporting across team boundaries and in aggregate. The current recommendation is to keep everything contained in a single team projects and use teams instead.
I just created a Report Project with 1 .rdl in Visual Studio 2008. I then deployed the report to the SSRS Server and I can now see the report in the Report manager.
I made a change to the report using report builder 3.0.
Is there a way that I can "get latest version" from the report server of the .rdl when I open my report project in Visual Studio again?
I am guessing that 1 way would be to download the .rdl and add back (overwriting) to the report project but I am wondering if VS has a built in function to take care of this for you?
There is no built in functionality in VS to attach to an SSRS instance and pull down the .rdl files. Since they can be moved, edited and deleted, outside of the designer there could be numerous issues with doing that. Just check all your local project files into source control and manually update if needed. Since I don't edit outside of VS I never had to deal with "pulling the latest version from ssrs". However, I have come across third party tools that may have functionality to make it easier.
If this is going to become a daily struggle for you then you may want to take the time now to automate the process using the ReportExecution2010 or ReportExecution2005 web service api.
Visual Studio is used to create and deploy reports, once they are deployed, there are no links between the report in Visual Studio and the Report Server, and there will never be. Think about it, you can deploy the report to X servers, so how could Visual Studio find which report you are talking about.
To ensure you are working on the latest version, you will have to download it and overwrite as you say, although I would compare it instead to see if there are changes not deployed.
If you are working with other developers that would potentially redeploy the report, then you can just check the last modification user of the report.
In all cases, I would strongly suggest to always check-in/commit when you deploy a report.
If you want to download several reports from the report server, then you could use a tool like RSScripter for example.
Has Microsoft addressed the difficulty of creating a SP site after creating the Team Project in TFS 2012? I am aware of the methods outlined here, but I was hoping they had come up with something slicker in the new version. If not, does anybody know of a better method or tool than the one suggested in the previous link?
The TFS Power Tools has a command tfpt addprojectportal that will create the SharePoint site for you after the Team Project has already been created. You will need to know process template that was used to create the team project. You will be able to find all the options you need for the command by using the /? switch.
I have developed a sharepoint 2010 visual webpart application with multiple visual webparts using visual studio 2010. I am able to deploy it successfully to Production server using commands given below:
Add-SPSolution c:\sp\MySampleProject.wsp
Install-SPSolution -Identity MySampleProject.wsp -WebApplication https://MYURL -GACDeployment
In my visual webparts, I am referencing some of the sharepoint custom LISTs and doing add/update operations with list items. Now If I deploy the webpart manually using the commands above, I also need to create all of the reference LISTS at production server. For this what I do, i just take list template to production and replicates the list structure to production.
Is there any way, I could create a auto installer(EXE SETUP or MSI) that should be able to create all the lists as well as deploy all of the webparts to production server. I know this can be done, as whenever we purchase some third party webparts from other vendors, they provide us MSI or other executables that we just execute, and it does everything for US. But I am not sure how to do it. What tool they use to develop these kind of installers.
Any HELP or suggestion ? ?
CodePlex may have the utility you need. Microsoft doesn't provide an out of the box solution that I'm aware of. From the looks of it, this may be what most 3rd party developers use as well
http://sharepointinstaller.codeplex.com/
Your feature should be creating these dependant lists/list items on activation, then add the web part to the gallery. This is exactly what feature activation is for!
In reality, I would have them as two features (both scoped to the site collection level). One feature creates the lists/list items, and the second deploys the web part. The second would be dependant on the first. The first one could be a "hidden" feature if you wish.
Whether or not you remove those lists on deactivation is up to you. There's good arguments either way.
I am trying to figure out how to add the work item field Outcome to my queries in TFS 2010 and/or Test Manager 2010 so that I can see our test case results and use them for reporting purposes.
While I realize this column is available through the default reports provided by linking TFS to a SharePoint site, I am currently unable to set this up since our client hasn't configured their SharePoint to do it yet.
My current plan is to create my own reports within Excel, but to break my question down simply, is there anyway to query for this field from within TFS or Test Manager?
I found that there really isn't a way to access the Outcome field from TFS or Test Manager currently (up to TFS 2012 for sure).
The easiest way to do it for a project that doesn't have its reports setup (or for Visual Studio Online which doesn't have the test reports) is to do it manually from the results in Test Manager.
Thanks to everyone for viewing and for the help.