Monday, May 2, 2011

Modify TFS for Agile development

TFS is a great tool for Agile development, especially if you are already using it to develop your code!  There are some very good templates out there already.  Scrum for Team System is my favourite, and Microsoft now has their own: Scrum 1.0.  You can modify any of these templates to add fields, change statuses, and modify the flow.

If you are running Visual Studio 2010, here's the quick and dirty on how to modify the templates:
1.  Open Visual Studio Command Console, then go to
     C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE>

2.  Run Command to Export the xml
  witadmin exportwitd /collection:http://tfs_server_name:8080/tfs/collection_name /p:"project_name" /f:"output_xml_file" /n:"Task"​

  This will generate output.xml in the same location.  


  Eg: >witadmin exportwitd /collection:http://vprdtfs2010:8080/tfs/quorumdevprojects /p:"er57q1" /f:"output.xml" /n:"Task"​
  If you want to export the User Story template, simply use "UserStory" instead of "Task".



3. Change the file as necessary.  Remember, the output is simply an XML representation of the template and it is pretty intuitive when you open it up and start digging.  Add states, fields, transitions, etc.



4.  Run Command to Import the xml

  witadmin importwitd /collection:http://tfs_server_name:8080/tfs/collection_name /p:"project_name" /f:"input_xml_file"​


Eg: >witadmin importwitd /collection:http://vprdtfs2010:8080/tfs/quorumdevprojects /p:"er57q1" /f:"output.xml"​

Qwinsta, better than a rap name

If I were to have a 3rd kid I think I would be inclined to name him Qwinsta...

One of the most underrated, secret, powerful commands out there, if you want to see who is logged on to a Server, simply type:

           qwinsta /server:[your server name here]

At the command prompt and voila, all users are listed. Pair that with a Powershell script and you are like Capt. Kirk sitting in his command chair.


I use it a lot to see who is logged in to a Server in case the max connections are exceeded.