Configuring TFS to show diff for the office files - tfs

How can i configure TFS (maybe there is a setting or extension) to show diff between office openxml files (like .xlsx or docx). Now the TFS (online) just shows yellow banner like one below. I want to have side-by-side diff.

If such an extension exists, you will find it on the VSTS Marketplace, but unfortunately none produced a smart binary file differ like WinMerge or Beyond Compare.
The OpenXML format is a Zip containing many XML files, a text compare is useless. Your options are:
download the two versions and use Office (yes it has built-in diff for docs) or a tool like Beyond Compare (it may requires some plugin)
move to text based formats like CSV or Markdown

Related

TFS tool to show file changes when getting latest?

I know I can look at the "Source Control - Team Foundation" output in the Output window but it's hard to tell where the results from the current request begin and the last request ended sometimes, and any files that I want to compare that are in the list I have to go look up.
In the past when I used subversion, I had a tool (I think tortoise) that did an awesome job showing me all the files that were changed and I could click directly on them to compare with latest version. I would often use this to do quick code reviews, and it made it much easier to make sure I wasn't about to get an updated project file that had been improperly merged.
Are there any extensions/plugins or anything that can help with this for TFS when getting latest?
Unfortunately there isn't such a tool can exactly achieve that, there is a user voice submitted here, and it's ARCHIVED.
Based on my experience, the best thing to do is a folder comparison before you get the latest version. In Source Control Explorer, you can compare the differences between two server folders, two local folders, or a server folder and a local folder. Right click on the target folder and select Compare. Read more here.
To see the changes block you can introduce the third compare tools. (e.g BeyondCompare, ExamDiff, Code Compare etc, you can reference my answer in another thread : Visual Studio TFVC Merge Lines Misaligned). In short you can get the change list from Output window, then compare each file accordingly.
Besides, you can also try using the Tf Command Line Utility and the Visual Studio extension Diff All Files for VS2013. Reference this thread for details : TFS Shortcut to do a diff on all modified files with latest version

TFS Web Access and large files

When viewing a whole shelveset diff in TFS Web Access, the largest source files are accompanied with a yellow bar that says "Displayed content is truncated due to maximum viewable content limit."
When I click on that single large file to see just its diff, I get another yellow bar. This time it says "The file contents were truncated since they exceeded the maximum file content length. Browse to the individual files to download full content."
Okay, maybe this tool just won't show large files to me.
How do I "browse to the individual files" as the yellow bar suggests? Will that give me both versions that I need to diff (shelved and unmodified)?
Is the size limit configurable anywhere?
Is there any way to use TFS Web Access with a
user configurable diff tool? (I would have many other good uses for that.)
The only workaround I am aware of is to open Visual Studio, painfully look up the shelveset, and view it using my configured diff tool which doesn't care whether the source files are obese or not.
I'm using TFS version 12.0.30324.0.
If you select just a single file you should get a download button. Clicking this will retrieve just that single file in it's entirety.
On non-shelvesets it's next to the edit button, but I dought that edit is available on shelvesets.
After asking, I discovered some other ways to search and found out that this limitation is specific to TFS 2012 and unpatched TFS 2013. Maybe this helps someone.
(This does not solve my own problem as I cannot quickly achieve TFS server upgrade so I'm still interested in a better answer. I'd like to extend my knowledge of TFS Web Access and I found the online resources lacking.)

How to batch print folders of MS Office documents?

We have workers’ reports that are kept in folders. Mostly the files are saved as Word and Excel documents. I need to print them for each business meeting and have to open each folder individually. I wonder if there is a possibility to simplify the process.
Specifically for bulk printing there exists the software called Print Conductor. Here is the description of the files it works with: http://www.print-conductor.com/articles/print-documents.html. You will need to specify the folders, and the program will drag the files from there creating lists of files for printing. Then you will be able to print them all at once.

TFS 2010 - Modified Date on checked out files

When I checkout files from tfs the modified date of the files get set to "now" (checkout date and time).
This behaviour, however, is not wanted from me for files that belong to purchased 3rd party controls from other software vendors. If I distribute these files to customers then I can't reliably check which version of the file is installed if there is a problem.
I know that tfs 2010 will have an option where you can select the desired strategy, but until then I need a different workaround. anyone else had this problem? how did you solve, or get around it. any advice is welcome, thanks!
One possible work around is to look at wrapping all third party files and controls within a class library and embedding any binary files within either that project resources or assembly file, you can then extract them as required when the program runs (example here).
As your project is under version control you will know exactly which file is in use by the version number of your project.

What would be the best way to migrate work items from TFS 2010 to JIRA?

I am in the process of evaluating JIRA as a replacement to TFS 2010.
I know that JIRA has the capability to import from CSV but cannot figure out how to export fields like the History fields from TFS to a spreadsheet.
Any recommendations / tools would be highly appreciated.
I don't think there is an easy way to do what you want.
I am thinking you would need to make your own tool using the TFS API. I don't know if JIRA has an API to do the inserting, but TFS's api is fairly good. You could easily get that data out.
For "How To" on the TFS API I usually look to Shai Raitan's TFS API blog posts.
I do custom migrations from all sorts of databases (ClearQuest, TeamTrack, Remedy) into JIRA. It takes about a week to do the job so it isn't cheap but if you have a lot of data and want more information than the standard importers provide, it's one way to go. The CSV importer probably won't do what you want.
Have a look at Appfire's Enterprise Migration Utility. It migrates TFS to JIRA, amongst others.
Simple enough, create a Query that has all your work items, click on the icon to open in Excel,
Save the Excel file as CSV.
done.
Here's what worked for me (sorry about the formatting; it was a .docx):
For every TFS Server:
Create a query by using Iteration Path for all Product Backlog Items and Bugs for every Product and/or every Scrum Team.
A single query can be used for all projects/products by altering the iteration path(s)
Format the results in TFS by selecting the appropriate columns.
Save the query, run it, and open it in Excel an .xlsx file with the word RAW included (for example, XXXX_ALL_WIs_RAW.xlsx).
Using the same file, select Save As… to create and save an excel .csv file.
Note that not all columns/mappings will be used on all projects. Delete unnecessary columns, and change column headings as needed.
The TFS columns/fields, and the Jira fields (some custom) to which they are mapped, for me were:
Iteration Path maps to Scrum Team
ID maps to Legacy ID
Work Item Type maps to Issue Type
Title maps to Summary
Description maps to Description
Acceptance Criteria maps to Acceptance Criteria
Assigned To maps to Assignee (Users must exist in Jira for this to work!)
SubCategory maps to Component/s
Effort maps to Story Points
Severity maps to Priority
Case Number maps to Case ID
Client Name maps to Customer
Platform maps to Environment
Once the .csv has been modified, use File/Check for Issues/Inspect document to determine if modification are required so the inspection results yield no issues.
Save the clean .csv as _CLEAN (for example, XXXX_ALL_WIs_CLEAN.csv).
Rename spreadsheet headers for import to appropriate Jira field names.
Field modifications:
If the work item Acceptance Criteria field has nothing in it, enter “No Acceptance Criteria in the original TFS work item” on the csv.
If the work item Description field has nothing in it, enter “No Description in the original TFS work item” on the csv.
Bugs – Severity must be converted to a number (1 through 5).
Change column headings on the .csv to match the Jira field names, as defined above in 2d.
Clean/Inspect the .csv
If necessary, increase the advanced setting jira.bulk.create.max.issues.per.import in Jira appropriately to handle the number of items being imported (there is a 250 item import limit by default).
In Jira, at the Site Admin Level – Create new Jira projects based on individual products (NOT projects!)
Create or add users that will be used in the various projects.
In Jira, at the Site Admin level – Create Custom Fields as needed
Associate new and existing custom fields to appropriate project screens, and update.
In Jira, at the Site Admin Level – Re-index DB
At the Project level – Create components for the product by using subcategory from TFS. (Can be assigned to Component Lead)
You should now be ready for import into Jira.
Test Case Migration from TFS to Jira/Zephyr if you need it:
Test case migration is a 2-part process.
The first part will get the test cases from TFS, and create and format an Excel spreadsheet containing the data that will then be imported into Jira (Zephyr).
The second part of the process will use a Java tool to import the data from the spreadsheet created in Part 1 of the process.
Part 1 – Test Case Export
Install TCExport (Used to create the Excel spreadsheet that will be used to import the test cases into Zephyr).
When mapping fields while using the .jar tool, use the Excel column letter.
Part 2 – Test Case Import
1. Download the import utility zfj-importer-utility-0.38.jar
This utility can be run by double-clicking the file in most environments. To launch the utility double-click the .jar file or run through the command prompt as: java -jar .
Detailed instructions for using the utility can be found here: https://www.getzephyr.com/insights/getting-started-zephyr-jira-importer-utility

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