How to get tfs to notify affected developers of changes? - tfs

I'm on a small team and we are emailing each other when we make changes telling each other to get latest; pretty inefficient. And error prone.
How can we set up TFS to do this notify via email, perhaps with a change summary including the affected files?

You can use alerts in TFS to setup those notifications.

Related

How to manage comments on a large TFS shelvset used for code review?

I am reviewing a large shelveset from another developer in TFS web view, TFS server Version 15.117.26714.0. There are a large number of changes over a large number of files. I have been making comments on specific lines of code and using # mentions to notify the developer. They are getting the notifications but there is no link to the comment I made and no indication to which file or which line. Likewise if they reply I get a notification but again no indication as to which comment or file where the comment was made.
Is there a better way to manage this back-and-forth for code review? It's very convenient to make the comments in line but hard to track and manage. I know I can filter by comment type but the number of comments is still to large to identify a specific comment easily.
I realise this may not generally be an issue as shelvesets or changesets are typically not so big. This shevleset is big as a result of a first pass of a static analyzer on a large code base.
Thanks.
It seems like this is the default behavior that there is no link to the comment I made and no indication to which file or which line in the notification email.
I tested on TFS server and also on Azure devops cloud service. They have the same results that no links to the files or lines are included in the email.
You can submit a user voice to microsoft development team. Hope they will improve this feature and provide more detailed information in the notification email.
Alternatively, you can have a try reviewing the code in Visual studio. See tutorial here for reviewing code in Visual Studio.

Is there a standard way to add some approval procedure/or at least notification for changes in task groups/builds/etc.?

We had a few cases when:
Someone changes a task group (or build/release/whatever).
Makes some mistake.
Then publishes/saves it.
But doesn't notify anyone that such changes were made.
Some hours later some dependent build breaks because of those changes.
And we have to spend even more time trying to find what and when has changed as it is not often that simple to find out with external task groups.
What we want to have:
Ideally - some approval process for such changes. Kind of like code review, but for task groups/builds.
If not - then at least some way to receive notifications about changes in task groups and etc. we are interested in?
I found neither, and, honestly, doubt that such features are present in the TFS version we use (TFS 2018.2), but perhaps I've missed something.
There isn't any workflow security or approval process for the groups. You could suggest that kind of feature on the developercommunity. Restrict access to edit Task Groups to only those who understand how to bump the Task Group version. That way at least you will keep backward compatibility across your builds unless that explicitly upgrade to that version.
There aren't any built in notifications, but you could create an automated process to send email notifications using PowerShell using the existing API.
Get the Id for the task group using the taskgroups list api
Use the revisions api to get the history _apis/distributedtask/taskgroups/{taskgroupid}/revisions
Send an update for anything that edited today

Discussions and email notifications on TFS tasks

We're new to TFS and have some tasks set up in Team Explorer. It seems the History pane is the right/best place to add notes/discussions (although it's very different from other tools I'm used to like bugzilla, jira, redmine)?
But how can we set it up so interested parties get notified of new comments on a task, preferably by email? We're all making it up as we go along with no prior TFS experience but I'd hope my experience with other tools (the project hasn't used a proper issue tracker before) would help me figure things out but it all seems rather confusing.
If you install the TFS 2010 Power Tools (this is removed for 2012 as it's setup in the web interface according to this link although I've not played with this in 2012), under Team > Alerts Explorer you can add alerts for email notifications.
It's pretty simple, you can get alerts for when work items are modified, created under a certain path, assigned to you etc, they are basically configured in a similar way to the work item queries so it's quite easy to setup what you want.
They can be setup by any users, so you might want to let your users setup their own custom rules as they like, then you logon as a generic user (such as your admin user) to setup team specific queries, or else you might end up with users complaining about getting emails no longer relevent to them or need changing, when the user that set them up leaves/moves etc... Else you'll be hunting round to find who setup the original rules.

Integrate kayako and tfs

I am in need of replicating all kayako helpdesk tickets into TFS. This includes creation of the ticket, updates of the ticket, and closure of the ticket. I've looked around and I can't seem to find any elegant solution to this. Can any of you point me int he right direction?
You can roll your own integration by building on the TFS Integration Platform.
Does Kayako support webhooks? webhooks allow you to send data when it happens, so for example when a ticket is created or when it is resolved - you can then have your application process that data. This is far better than having to make repeated calls to an API to see if there are changes to a system.

subscribe via email to incoming tfs issues?

I'm wondering if there's a way to write a tfs query such that when the results change, I will receive an email notifying me.
side question - is there a way to subscribe to updates to specific pieces of code?
Thanks!
I have the TFS Power Tools installed. The Alerts Explorer appears to have pre-configured alerts for several check-in activities. One of them is Check-In of a specific file happens.
And, I'm not sure which results you're talking about, but... You can also create various alerts for Builds and Work Item actions. I've got mine set up to alert me when something is assigned to me or when something assigned to me changes.

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