Cloning Your TFS Server Part 02 – Prepare Restored Databases

You have to make sure you are not corrupting your current TFS instance that is up and running, while you are cloning a  TFS instance. For this you need to prepare the restored databases of the TFS, in new hardware, before configuring the cloned Application Tier of TFS. In the “Cloning Your TFS Server Part 01 – Backing Up and Restoring Databases” how to back up and restore TFS database was discussed in detail. Let’s look at each of the preparation steps required in order to guarantee both current TS instance and cloned instance can coexist in the same network.

Cloning Your TFS Server Part 01 – Backing Up and Restoring Databases

You might want to clone your TFS instance if you are doing a hardware move upgrade. There can be other situations such as you need to move one of your projects to VSTS (Team Services) using high fidelity database import, without migrating other projects in the same collection. If you prefer to keep your current TFS untouched while trying to create an isolated collection for a single project, you might want to clone and create an instance of your TFS. There can be several other experimental reasons you may have to clone a TFS instance.

TFVC History Report with PowerShell

Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) is widely used with Team Foundation Server and in Team Services, as a source control system to manage source code repositories.Usage of TFVC can be found here. If you want to generate history report for TFVC including details of files changed and any work items associated with the changesets, you can use the script available at TechNet Gallery.

Show Hidden Fields with Empty Values for Edit - Kanban Cards - Team Services

With the latest release to Team Services Kanban Card has been added with a new feature. Previously, if you want to edit a value in a field that is currently empty, in the Kanban Card You  had to keep it showing even if value is empty. With the new feature available now you can let Kanban Card to hide a field, if it is empty and expand the Card to show empty fields  so that you can edit them.

New Release Definition Editor–Team Services

Release definition in Team Services helps you to define deployment pipelines across target environments. You can setup a release definition to deploy via agents, deployment groups or execute agent less activities. With the latest update to Team Services a new release definition editor is introduced. Let’s ex[lore the new editor.

Sizing Backlog Items with Team Services

Backlog item sizing will help an Agile team to identify their velocity and plan for future iterations/sprints considering it. It is important the team members have discussed a backlog item and have a common understanding on what needs to be done before it is relatively estimated. Sizing for backlog items in Team Services work items such as User Story, Bug can be updated in Story Points or Effort field depending on the template you are using. Team Services extension, “Estimate” is available in Visual Studio Marketplace allow you to do effective estimating of backlog item, by enabling team to vote for each work item using on Team Services, while getting Story Points or Effort field update automatically with the size value, once team is committed to a size.

Ignoring Visual Studio 2017 Created Files in Git

Visual Studio 2017 creates few files such as slnx.sqlite, .suo and these files often give trouble if you get it added to a branch in Git version control. Every time you open a solution in Visual Studio 2017, these files are indicated as pending changes and you are unable to do a pull, push etc. without undoing or committing these files. This is annoying since you actually do not want these to be added as changes to version control repository. You can try completely removing the files not needed from repository but if you are not willing to go through somewhat risky procedure, what options you have for solving this problem?

Let’s look at how to fix this issue.

.gitignore

Adding unwanted files to .gitignore works as long as you have not initially committed them to any branch. But in this case where it is already committed adding .gitignore entry such as /.vs/slnx.sqlite does not help.

Ignore changes to the files

You can run below command to ignore the changes to these files by assuming they are unchanged.

git update-index --assume-unchanged filename

To run the command open command prompt from team explorer window of Visual Studio by right clicking on the repository name of the connect page.

The command git update-index --assume-unchanged slnx.sqlite gives error “fatal: Unable to mark file slnx.sqlite” because it actually cannot find the file.

To find the correct paths you can execute git ls-files command and use the path listed to mark the file. You can list git untracked files as well by executing git ls-files -o but untracked files cannot be marked. Adding them to gitignore would be sufficient.

Providing correct path to file from the location you are running the command will make it execute without error message.

slnx.sqlite file no longer considered as changed.

You can undo the the assume-uchanged state by executing command below.

git update-index –-no-assume-unchanged filename

Team Services - Custom In Progress Sate to Completed State – Closed Date Not Updating Issue

Update! – Issue described here is now resolved in Team Services and it has even included fix for last column order issue as well.

Team Services now allows work item states to be customized and you can change the workflow to your preference. This is explained in the previous post “Custom States for Work Items in Team Services with New Process Customization Experience” in detail. As explained there you can hide available default states and use your custom sates instead of them. But as of now state change from a custom state to Completed category state does not update the Closed Date and Closed By fields in Bug and User Story/PBI work items. For Task work item in custom state , changing to Completed category state, updates Closed Date but not the Closed By field.

Let’s further understand this issue with an example.