We have been using TFS 2013 for over a year now and have been using the Team Rooms (basically an IRC clone) without any problems. Additionally, I set up an automated build of our main project whenever anyone checks in a change. I then configured the Team Room to post a notification in the chat room whenever a build completed. Everyone appreciates this feature because it lets us know that there is a new update, and it lets us know if there is a problem compiling the current code base, usually prompting ridicule of the poor fool for being so careless.
Unfortunately, I recently took a two week vacation and while I was gone the Team Room stopped reporting build completions. Everyone claims there were no changes. I am the senior dev and the junior guys don't have access to the server anyway. I have verified in the "Manage events..." dialog that the room is still configured to post a notification when a build is completed, and I have been unable to find any trouble shooting guides on where else to look.
Is there a service I should be looking for? An error log somewhere? Has anyone else seen something like this?
Related
We're having some serious issues with the mfbclient.exe tool that is part of the feedback platform of VSTS. Basically, our stakeholder's uploads are not being sent.
This is extremely frustrating as you can imagine, as the ability to take screenshots etc is a major benefit of using the tool.
Members of the development team who have VS2017 installed on their machines as well as the feedback tool, can access the feedback request via the email that is automatically sent out when you click on "Request Feedback". Everything works perfectly.
If we send the request to a stakeholder, they can click on the link and it opens up the tool correctly, they can step through the items and make notes etc., and when they submit, their responses come through into VSTS. However, none of their attachments come through. They all say '(Uploading) filename.png' in VSTS.
Upon looking at one of the stakeholder's machines, I can see the mfbclient.exe tray icon says '0MB of 10MB transferred'. Restarting the machine doesn't change this - the attachments don't get uploaded.
Upon further investigation, under %localappdata%\microsoft\team foundation\x.0\testmanagement\ i can see an XML file which contains the list of all the screenshots / attachments etc that are to be loaded. The screenshot files themselves also exist (so, the files aren't missing/deleted). For some reason, the files just aren't uploading.
If I remove the XML file, it clears the attachment 'queue', but as soon as more feedback is entered and a screenshot added, the same issue occurs.
I noticed there was an mfbclient.exe.config file, which I edited on one of the stakeholder's machines and changed the trace level to '4' (verbose), which I thought would shed some light on the issue. However, I can't see anywhere that the logs might be. Does anyone know?
I have tested this with the stakeholder being part of the exact same security group as myself and the team (as I thought perhaps it was a permissions error), but this doesn't change the behaviour.
The only real differences I can think of between myself and team, and the people who are having the issues (and there are quite a few users who have the same issue so it's not just 1 person's problem), is that these people are stakeholders rather than subscribers (shouldn't make a difference), and they don't have Visual Studio installed on their machines (also, shouldn't make a difference).
Can anyone please shed any light on this issue? Has anyone else had the problem? Can someone from MSFT help?
Just as Sebastian mentioned, the solution is changing the Access Level from Stakeholder to Basic.
Basic provides access to most features, except for Test and other premium features. Stakeholder access to those users who need to
enter bugs, view backlogs, boards, charts, and dashboards, but who
don't have a TFS CAL. See About access levels for details.
Basic provides most features, Stakeholders can use the Feedback Client since TFS 2013 Update#5 based on this user voice. Can't attach pictures seems a permission limitation for Stakeholders.
Whatever seems it's by design or a feature missed or an issue on current version of TFS and VSTS based on the Stakeholders license limitation. However the requirement make sense and I have submitted a new user voice here to suggest the feature, you can go and vote it up to achieve that in future.
UPDATE:
I agree with your point of view, it's more inclined to be a bug. And you have submittetd a feedback here: Feeback Client - Upload fails for Stakeholder
Whether user voice or bug, development team will take care of them. So, let's wait for the response. And for now, you can change to the Basic Level to upload the pictures.
I have the same problem with our VSTS.
The problem really is because of the Stakeholder-License.
If I submit a feeback with a stakeholder account the upload stays at 0%. When I change the user then to Basic in VSTS, the upload starts automatically and completes.
EDIT: this issue has been fixed, as per this forum post: Feedback Client - Upload fails for Stakeholder
I'm on update 4. I want to let business users submit "tickets" in TFS for research. However, they less rights to the project and aren't part of the contributors role. In addition, TFS documention indicates that once you deploy a "team alert" that the "#ME" variable changes to actually referring to the team, and not the person.
What is the approach to take to ensure that someone with less permissions, and not part of contributor group, will always get notified when a work item they created gets changed.
NOTE: TFS 2013 UPDATE 4 -- ON PREMISE
Related item: TFS 2013 (Update 2) Team Alerts not sending emails
* this doesn't help as I can't add them as contributors, need narrowing security permission.
UPDATE 2016-02-22
In looking through the alerts section, as an admin I see I can actually search and find an individual and setup an alert for them on the workitem change. However, this is a manual process, and I would like to do this in bulk. I will work on tracing the query execution that is called when the alert is created and see if I could replicate with a sql command to insert alerts for all users. However, I'd like to avoid running a direct sql query to do this if possible, if there is some bulk processing functionality that allows an individual alert to be deployed to each person on a team without doing it manually.
Anyone aware of any extensions, scripts, or other functionality that does this?
According to the comments of this issue TFS 2013 Update 2 Team Alerts not sending emails.This issue is not fixed with TFS 2013 UPDATE4. So, if you can't add the users as contributors, then they can't receive an email.
As a workaround, you can use events of team room. Adding events lets your team know when builds finish, source code is checked in, work items are updated, and requests for code reviews occur. This can be visible to all members of the team room. Detailed steps and more info from MSDN Collaborate in a team room
I have an existing team working on one solution using Visual Studio Online. Now I have to add new developer to work on one of the projects. Due to security concerns I have to hide other team members' contact details and ideally names as well.
How can I accomplish this?
You're not going to be able to have everyone working in the same team project and keep this information hidden. There are ways to minimize the avenues through which someone can see the information -- for example, you could isolate the one developer into their own team, so names/emails wouldn't show up on the team's home page -- but if they're working on the same code in the same repository, they'll be able to see things like commit history, which will definitely have identifying details attached.
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.
I'm getting into SDK documentation, but this site has so many eyes and great answers I figure I'd throw this one out there to get some leads.
In project Server 2007, you can manage whether or not you get "task Alert" emails whenever a new task is assigned to you or existing tasks are modified. You can change this manually and individually via the web application under your personal settings.
As the project manager, say, I cannot toggle that for the entire team or manage it from my side. So if a resource or stakeholder who is assigned to a task(s) does not want email every time the plan is updated, I cannot handle that for them. I would have to walk them through the Project Web Access application to set it themselves manually.
So, has anyone crossed this bridge, and if so how did you toggle that flag for Task Alerts either through the SDK classes or via the PSI webservices? Before I slog through the docs, if I could get some "take a look ats..." that'd be great...Thanks!
You can change it in the SQL Tables. Here's a posting on it at the project server experts page.
www.projectserverexperts.com/ProjectServerFAQKnowledgeBase/SetDefaultEmailSubscriptions.aspx