Configure TFS portal afterwards

Posted on Ewald Hofman See other posts from Ewald Hofman
Published on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:46:34 +0100 Indexed on 2010/12/29 18:00 UTC
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Update #1 January 8th, 2010: There is an updated post on this topic for Beta 2: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/post/2009/12/10/Configure-TFS-portal-afterwards-Beta-2.aspx

Update #2 October 10th, 2010: In the new Team Foundation Server Power Tools September 2010, there is now a command to create a portal.

tfpt addprojectportal   Add or move portal for an existing team project

Usage: tfpt addprojectportal /collection:uri
                             /teamproject:"project name"
                             /processtemplate:"template name"
                             [/webapplication:"webappname"]
                             [/relativepath:"pathfromwebapp"]
                             [/validate]
                             [/verbose]

/collection Required. URL of Team Project Collection.
/teamproject Required. Specifies the name of the team project.
/processtemplate Required. Specifies that name of the process template.
/webapplication The name of the SharePoint Web Application.
Must also specify relativepath.
/relativepath The path for the site relative to the root URL for the SharePoint Web Application.
Must also specify webapplication.
/validate Specifies that the user inputs are to be validated.
If specified, only validation will be done and no portal setting will be changed.
/verbose Switches on the verbose mode.

I created a new Team Project in TFS 2010 Beta 1 and choose not to configure SharePoint during the creation of the Team Project. Of course I found out fairly quickly that a portal for TFS is very useful, especially the Iteration and the Product backlog workbooks and the dashboard reports.

This blog describes how you can configure the sharepoint portal afterwards.

Update: September 9th, 2009

Adding the portal afterwards is much easier as described below. Here are the steps

Step 1: Create a new temporary project (with a SharePoint site for it).

  1. Open the Team Explorer

  2. Right click in the Team Explorer the root node (i.e. the project collection)

  3. Select "New team project" from the menu

  4. Walk throught he wizard and make sure you check the option to create the portal (which is by default checked)

Step 2: Disable the site for the new project

  1. Open the Team Explorer

  2. Select the team project you created in step 1

  3. In the menu click on Team -> Show Project Portal.

  4. In the menu click on Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings...

  5. The following dialog pops up


    alt

  6. Uncheck the option "Enable team project portal"

  7. Confirm the dialog with OK

Step 3: Enable the site for the original one. Point it to the newly created site.

  1. Open the Team Explorer

  2. Select the team project you want to add the portal to

  3. In the menu open Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings...

  4. The same dialog as in step 2 pops up

  5. Check the option "Enable team project portal"

  6. Click on the "Configure URL" button

  7. The following dialog pops up

     alt

  8. In the dialog select in the combobox of the web application the TFS server

  9. Enter in the Relative site path the text "sites/[Project Collection Name]/[Team Project Name created in step 1]"

  10. Confirm the "Specify an existing SharePoint Site" with OK

  11. Check the "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" option

  12. Confirm the dialog "Project Portal Settings" with OK

Step 4: Delete the temporary project you created.

  1. In Beta 1, I have found no way to delete a team project. Maybe it will be available in TFS 2010 Beta 2.


Original post

Step 1: Create new portal site

  1. Go to the sharepoint site of your project collection (/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">http://<servername>/sites/<project_collection_name>/default.aspx)

  2. Click on the Site Actions at the left side of the screen and choose the option Site Settings

    alt

  3. In the site settings, choose the Sites and workspaces option
    alt

  4. Create a new site

    alt

  5. Enter the values for the Title, the description, the site address. And choose for the TFS2010 Agile Dashboard as template.

    alt

  6. Create the site, by clicking on the Create button

Step 2: Integrate portal site with team project

  1. Open Visual Studio

  2. Open the Team Explorer (View -> Team Explorer)

  3. Select in the Team Explorer tool window the Team Project for which you are create a new portal

  4. Open the Project Portal Settings (Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Setings...)

    alt

  5. Check the Enable team project portal checkbox

  6. Click on Configure URL...

  7. You will get a new dialog as below

    alt

  8. Enter the url to the TFS server in the web application combobox

  9. And specify the relative site path: sites/<project collection>/<site name>

    alt

  10. Confirm with OK

  11. Check in the Project Portal Settings dialog the checkbox "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project"

  12. Confirm the settings with OK (this takes a while...)

  13. When you now browse to the portal, you will see that the dashboards are now showing up with the data for the current team project.

Step 3: Download process template

  1. To get a copy of the documents that are default in a team project, we need to have a fresh set of files that are not attached to a team project yet. You can do that with the following steps.

  2. Start the Process Template Manager (Team -> Team Project Collection Settings -> Process Template Manager...)

    alt

  3. Choose the Agile process template and click on download

  4. Choose a folder to download

Step 4: Add Product and Iteration backlog

  1. Go to the Team Explorer in Visual Studio

  2. Make sure the team project is in the list of team projects, and expand the team project

  3. Right click the Documents node, and choose New Document Library

    alt

  4. Enter "Shared Documents", and click on Add

    alt

  5. Right click the Shared Documents node and choose Upload Document

  6. Go the the file location where you stored the process template from step 3 and then navigate to the subdirectory "Agile Process Template 5.0\MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0\Windows SharePoint Services\Shared Documents\Project Management"

  7. Select in the Open Dialog the files "Iteration Backlog" and "Product Backlog", and click Open

Step 5: Bind Iteration backlog workbook to the team project

  1. Right click on the "Iteration Backlog" file and select Edit, and confirm any warning messages

  2. Place your cursor in cell A1 of the Iteration backlog worksheet

  3. Switch to the Team ribbon and click New List.

  4. Select your Team Project and click Connect

  5. From the New List dialog, select the Iteration Backlog query in the Workbook Queries folder.

  6. The final step is to add a set of document properties that allow the workbook to communicate with the TFS reporting warehouse. Before we create the properties we need to collect some information about your project. The first piece of information comes from the table created in the previous step.  As you collect these properties, copy them into notepad so they can be used in later steps.

    Property How to retrieve the value?
    [Table name] Switch to the Design ribbon and select the Table Name value in the Properties portion of the ribbon
    [Project GUID] In the Visual Studio Team Explorer, right click your Team Project and select Properties.  Select the URL value and copy the GUID (long value with lots of characters) at the end of the URL
    [Team Project name] In the Properties dialog, select the Name field and copy the value
    [TFS server name]

    In the Properties dialog, select the Server Name field and copy the value

    [UPDATE] I have found that this is not correct: you need to specify the instance of your SQL Server. The value is used to create a connection to the TFS cube.

  7. Switch back to the Iteration Backlog workbook.

  8. Click the Office button and select Prepare – Properties.

  9. Click the Document Properties – Server drop down and select Advanced Properties.

  10. Switch to the Custom tab and add the following properties using the values you collected above.

    Variable name Value
    [Table name]_ASServerName [TFS server name]
    [Table name]_ASDatabase tfs_warehouse
    [Table name]_TeamProjectName [Team Project name]
    [Table name]_TeamProjectId [Project GUID]

  11. Click OK to close the properties dialog.

  12. It is possible that the Estimated Work (Hours) is showing the #REF! value. To resolve that change the formula with:

    =SUMIFS([Table name][Original Estimate]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task")

    For example

    =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Original Estimate]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task")

  13. Also the Total Remaining Work in the Individual Capacity table may contain #REF! values. To resolve that change the formula with:

    =SUMIFS([Table name][Remaining Work]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Assigned To];[Team Member];[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task")

    For example

    =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Remaining Work]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Assigned To];[Team Member];VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task")

  14. Save and close the workbook.

Step 6: Bind Product backlog workbook to the team project

  1. Repeat the steps for binding the Iteration backlog for thiw workbook too.

  2. In the worksheet Capacity, the formula of the Storypoints might be missing. You can resolve it with:

    =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS([Table name][Story Points];[Table name][Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))

    Example

    =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS(VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Story Points];VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))


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