Changing Work Item Icons – TFS vs VSTS

It is now possible to change the work item icons  in on premises TFS  2017.2 and in VSTS. This is a cool feature allowing you to, recognize the type of work item at a glance. However there is a significant difference  between TFS and VSTS how you apply this change. Let’s explore how we can change icon for existing and any new tem projects in both TFS 2017.2 (works just same in TFS 2018 RC1) and in VSTS.

Add Reporting Services to an Existing Team Project in TFS 2018 RC1

From TFS 2015 it was possible to create Team Projects for on premises TFS, using the web interface. But when you create a team project from web interface it does not create Reporting Services or SharePoint integrations. With TFS 2018, SharePoint server integration has been removed and if you want to integrate with SharePoint, setup your SharePoint site using the SharePoint’s own interface. However, Reporting Services is still in use with TFS 2018, and integration to Reporting Services gets created when a Team Project created via Visual Studio (you can use VS 2017 to create a Team Project in TFS 2018 RC1). A Team Project created with web interface will not have a Reporting Services integrated and let’s look at how to create that integration using command line.

Download Offline Installer for VS 2017

There is no ISO available to download for VS2017. You can view why Microsoft did not make ISO available, is discussed in here. However if you want to download VS 2017 to perform an offline installation you can follow the steps described below.

• Download the relevant VS installation .exe (for example vs_enterprise__984310617.1489458965.exe).
• Copy it to your local hard drive folder let’s say E:\Install
• Create a folder to download installation files say E:\Install\VS2017 (can be in a different path such as D:\VS2017)
• Open command prompt as administrator and change the directory to where your downloaded .exe is available
• Execute the command below

TFS 2018 RC1 – Installation in Windows Server 2012

TFS 2018 RC1 is now available and you can download it from https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/. Release note here explains the new features you can expect in TFS 2018. Below features are going to be removed from TFS with this version.

• SharePoint Extensions
• XAML Builds
• Team Rooms
• Lab Center and automated testing flows in Microsoft Test Manager support

Requirements for TFS 2018 can be found here.  Let’s look at the installation experience with TFS 2018 RC1 on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2016 SP1.

Cloning Your TFS Server Part 03 – Configuring the AT

To clone an instance of a TFS server while the current live instance is running it is required to take backups as explained in “Cloning Your TFS Server Part 01 – Backing Up and Restoring Databases” and restore the DBs in new hardware. After that there should be preparation activities run as described in “Cloning Your TFS Server Part 02 – Prepare Restored Databases” to make sure the current and cloned TFS instances are not getting corrupted, when both running simultaneously in the same network. Let's go through the configuration steps to configure the cloned TFS instance.

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.