Tuesday, 30 September 2014

How to show work item status in dashboard (Team Favorites) TFS

Team System Web Access can be used to create, view, and modify work items. For example, in Team System Web Access, you can create an instance of any work item that is defined in the project, assign it to the user who will be responsible for it, and track the status of that item as work progresses.

You can also modify the work item as the project progresses to reflect the current state of work. The purpose of tracking work status is to monitor project health, which team member the work is assigned to, and the status of that work. Team Foundation uses work items to track work on a team project. Various types of work items are available and are based on the type of work that they represent. For example, a bug work item tracks problems and issues discovered during product development. A task work item tracks tasks such as planned development, testing, customer requirements, and others.

In order to add a work item query to the Team Favorites below steps needs to be taken.

1. Create a desired query. for example Active Bugs or Resolved Bugs



2. Click on Save to give the name and location for the query. The location should be selected as "Shared Queries" as below.



3. Right click on the query from Shared Quarries. Select "Add to Team Favorites" option.


4. Then check in the dashboard, it will appear as below.


5. When ever you wan to remove it from the "Team Favorites" then again go to "Shared Queries" in work items. Then select "Remove from Team Favorites" option as below. It will be removed from the dashboard.


How to convert all child branches to folders via command-line in TFS (Team Foundation Server)



Currently, tfs branch /checkin does not automatically convert the folder to branch. However, if the source of the folder branched was already a branch the created folder will automatically be a branch as well and no conversion would be required.

The Sept TFS Power tools found here : 
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/c255a1e4-04ba-4f68-8f4e-cd473d6b971f has the tfpt commandline that has "branches" command that allows you to achieve that :

tfpt branches - Convert, reparent, list, and update branches



Usage: tfpt branches [/collection:uri] [folderspec]

                        - Displays information about the specified branch

       tfpt branches /listBranches:roots [/collection:uri]

                        - Lists all root branches

       tfpt branches /listBranches:children,related,ancestors [/collection:uri] [folderspec]

                        - Lists the child, related, and/or ancestor branches for the specified branch

       tfpt branches /convertToBranch [/collection:uri] [/description:text] [/owner:name] [/recursive] [folderspec]

                        - Converts the specified folder to a branch

       tfpt branches /convertToFolder [/collection:uri] [folderspec]

                        - Converts the specified branch back to a normal folder

       tfpt branches /reparent folderspec parentfolderspec [/collection:uri]

                        - Reparents the specified branch to the specified parent branch

       tfpt branches /update [/collection:uri] [/description:text] [/owner:name] [folderspec]

                        - Updates the description and/or owner of the specified branch

       tfpt branches /properties [/collection:uri] [folderspec]

                        - Displays and edits branch properties in a GUI



 uri               Specifies the URI of the team project collection.

 folderspec        Server or local path of the root folder of a branch.

                   If not specified, the current local folder is used.

 parentfolderspec  Server or local path of the root folder of the new parent branch



More information about power tools in Brain's post: 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/09/09/sept-2010-tfs-power-tools-release-available.aspx