How to accommodate for add-ons in tfs - tfs

I have to create a custom add-on to tfs. This add-on basically a 5 step process that needs additional forms that uses the data of users and manipulates it and saves it accordingly (CRUD).
I'm new to this so any advice, articles or links will be highly appreciated.

When the customized task is created (Package your extension), it will generate a package (*.vsix file). For on-premise TFS server you just need to upload the extension (*.vsix file) and install it for your collections. Please see Install extensions for disconnected TFS for details.
Then users in all projects under the collection will be able to use your customized extension.
To create a custom task you can follow the steps mentioned in this article: Add a build or release task
Microsoft also has created a GitHub repo with a number of samples and reading material to get you started, some tutorials for your reference (same for TFS):
VSTS Extensions Samples
Develop Extensions

Related

Ceate repository for android on tfs

I want to upload android source code on TFS using visual studio and my server side is written using C#
how to create repository for android on TFS
UPDATE1:
Please read Get Started documents first:
Get Started with Git and Team Services
Get Started with TFVC
UPDATE2:
If you just want to isolate the documents from the source code, you can create a new folder under the project, or create a new branch to store the documents, of cause you can create another repository, it's based on your requirements. Please see this article for details.
Do you have any special requirements? If not, nothing different with other projects. Assuming you are using TFVC, just try following below steps:
Connect from Visual Studio or Team Explorer
Create a team project
Add repositories
Configure your workspace and check in the source files/changes.
You can create the repository individually for client and server projects as needed.
If you just want to upload the existing source code to TFS, you just need to Put an existing solution under version control
Please see the overview documents for more information.
If you are using Android Studio, you can install the Team Services Plugin for Android Studio with Git repositories used. See here fro more info.

Is it possible to add custom build runners to MS Team Foundation Build Server?

I've recently developed custom build runners (plugins) to TeamCity and Jenkins. The plugins enable the users to start automated load tests as part of the build process.
To give you some idea here's the Jenkins plugin page with a lot of description:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Apica+Loadtest+Plugin
Here are a couple of screenshots of the TeamCity plugin:
The setup GUI: https://i.imgsafe.org/5221a01.png
Build log: https://i.imgsafe.org/c93f7f9.png
Custom tab with load test summary: https://i.imgsafe.org/f5b6937.png
Setup validation example: https://i.imgsafe.org/52cc9a2.png
These Continuous Integration frameworks allow a high level of customisation for plugin development: the UI, the output, client and server code etc. can all be tailored.
I've received a question whether we can develop a similar build runner for MS Team Foundation Build Service. I've completely new to TFS, I've never used it for anything. I've read through a couple of tutorials on how to install and set up TFS but there seems to be very little material available regarding custom build runners. The closest I've got are the following pages:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb130146.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2010/02/12/how-to-create-a-custom-workflow-activity-for-tfs-build-2010.aspx
However, they don't provide any example on GUI extensions, validation, customisation etc.
Therefore I'd like to get the opinion of experienced TFS users before we get any more serious with the framework:
is it possible to develop plugins for TFS build?
what are the limitations? E.g. can I build a custom GUI with custom client/server actions?
can I include custom pages, show graphs etc?
Any advice is welcome.
Thanks for your help,
Andras
When it comes to TFS Build, you first need to know that there are two build systems: XAML Build and a new, now default, build system.
XAML Builds are based on Windows Workflow Foundation. You can create custom activities and add these to a Build Definition Template. XAML Build only run on Windows and extending them is not very easy.
The new Build system is based on Node, runs cross-platform and is very easily extendable. Microsoft has open sourced all the tasks they have for TFS Build (see GitHub for the repository).
Targeting the new build system means that you support on-premises installations of TFS 2015 and the cloud hosted version of TFS: Visual Studio Team Services (see visualstudio.com for more info).
The easiest way to get started is by creating a new VSTS account (free!), adding some code and running a build. If you have that working, you can start exploring the existing build tasks and learn what's possible. You can then easily create your own task and start experimenting.
One thing that might be of interest to you is that TFS/VSTS already support load testing. You can run a very simple load test with a couple of mouse clicks or configure more complex Web Tests and use these in TFS in combination with Application Insights. I'm not sure if that's what your customers are looking for but it's worth checking out (see Cloud-based Load Testing for more information)

What is the recomended TFS build template for FAKE integration?

FAKE documentation has description for integrating with TeamCity but there is no detailed description on TFS integration.
I think I need a custom build process template but before I create one I wanted to make sure that none exists.
Could you recommend me TFS template that integrates FAKE?
You need to create a custom activity that hosts and runs your FAKE process.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExploringFAKEAnFBuildSystemForAllOfNET.aspx
There is some good documentation online for creating custom activities:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2009/11/18/how-to-create-a-custom-workflow-activity-for-tfs-build-2010.aspx
And I recommend that you add it to the Community Build Tool project.

Best Practices for TFS and MVC projects - deploying changes only

I have several websites that I manage for a company and they want me to transition to TFS. As part of their policy, I can only deploy files that have changed since the last deployment. I.e. if a view has changed then it gets deployed, if it has not changed then it not part of the deployment package. They use automated tools for the deployments.
Currently I use a custom tool I wrote that hooks into my local source provider (Vault Pro) and finds all the changes from a given date and copies those files to a zip file.
How can I accomplish something similar with Team Foundation Server?
TFS provides you with an SDK that you could use to query it from code. Here's the documentation of the client API.

Is it possible to set up continuous integration for MS dynamics crm 2011?

We are just beginning development and implementation for dynamics crm 2011 on premises. Is it possible to implement automation for code check-in to promote code from development to test systems? It looks like this would involve export/import of unmanaged solutions containing the development code that was checked in. I have not been able to find APIs around this functionality.
If that is not possible, how close can you get? It looks like there are APIs to automate the uploading of web resources and plug-ins (e.g. webresourceutility in the sdk), but the web resources still need to be manually linked to the form they are to be used on (in the case of javascript etc). Has anyone made progress in automating parts of their CRM environments?
for reference, we're using vs 2010 & tfs 2010 using MSuild for current continuous integration.
We have a few techniques that provides us a very solid CI structure.
Plugins
All our Plugins are CI Compiled on Check-In
All plugin code we write has self-registration details as part of the component.
We have written a tool which plays the Plugins to the database, uninstalling the old ones first based on the self-registration
details.
Solution
We have an unmanaged solution in a Customisation organisation which
is clean and contains no data. Development is conducted out of this
organisation. It has entities, forms, Jscript, Views, Icons, Roles,
etc.
This Customisation database has all the solutions we've imported from 3rd parties, and customisations are made into our solution which is the final import into a destination organisation.
The Solution is exported as managed and unmanaged and saved into
TFS
We store the JScript and SSRS RDLs in TFS and have a custom tool
which plays these into the customisation database before it is
exported.
We also have a SiteMap unmanaged Solution which is exported as unmanaged (to ensure we get a final resultant Sitemap we are after)
Deployment
We have a UI and Command Line driven tool which does the following :-
Targets a particular Organisation
Imports the Customisation managed solution into a selected environment. e.g. TEST. Additionally imports the unmanaged Sitemap.
Uninstalls the existing solution which was there (we update the solution.xml file giving it a name based on date/time when we import)
Installs/Uninstalls the Plugin Code
Installs any custom SQL scripts (for RDLs)
Re-enables Duplicate Detection Rules
Plays in certain meta-data we store under source control. e.g. Custom Report entity we built which has attachments and XML configuration.
It isn't entirely perfect, but via command line we refresh TEST and all the Developer PCs nightly. It takes about 1 hour to install and then uninstall the old solution per organisation.
We use CI extensively for Dynamics CRM. For managing solutions, I would recommend using a "clean" Dynamics CRM implementation which will be the master for your solutions and also for your "domain data". See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.crm.sdk.messages.importsolutionrequest.aspx for importing solutions. Also check out - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh547388.aspx

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