Team Foundation Server - Move project to a new collection? - tfs

I have a project that is in the default collection on my TFS server. Is it possible to move the project from this collection to a new one that I created? Thank you

The project exists within the Collection Database, you can't just pickup and move a Team Project out of a database.
There is a TFS Integration Platform that can copy Team Projects between services.
Generally it's best to plan this sort of stuff upfront as to avoid issues like this down the line. I have heard rumours Microsoft are working on improving this, but I don't think anything will be available for a while.

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TFS 2010 team project Migration

Is there any way to move/migrate team projects of a Team project collection from one TFS server to another (both in TFS 2010 version). The destination Team Project collection contains a Team Project already and I want to move the source Team projects in to this particular team projects. So at the end I will have a Team Project which contains several projects in it. Is that possible? I want the history to be preserved as well.
If the above scenario is not possible, can I migrate Team projects from one server to another without going through the database backup-restore-TFS detach-attach process?
I thought of trying the TFSIntegration tool, but could see many people advised to avoid using this due to issues in it.
So if you have any information in accomplishing this, that would be great..
If you want all the history then you really only have 2 options:
TFS Integration platform - http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com/
Back up /restore the collection database - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd936138.aspx#Backup
I would recommend moving the database. This sounds pretty onerous but is actually quite easy.
Good Luck!
TFS INTEGRATION PLATFORM used for integration.
A tool which helps a lot named "witAdminUi".

TFS 2010 - Create a new project from an existing one in TFS

I need to create a new project from an existing one in TFS. This is for source control only. I do not need to copy any work items.
so now i need to create NewTeamProject in NewProjectCollection and use the source branch of OldTeamProject in OldProjectCollection.
Kindly advise to go ahead with this.. Thanks a lot for your help in advance..
Manual Split
Create a new team project in your existing collection
Pick the branch from team project option in the creation wizard
Follow the split a team project collection guidance
However, I have a feeling that this will not bring all the history along with it, and it's not a particularly nice option, especially when it comes to the collection splitting.
TFS Integration Tools
Another way is to use the tfs integration platform, which basically replays all the checkins on a new team project, which can be in your new collection. You will lose the original date/time of the checkin, due to the way this program works but will still be able to see what each checkin changed.
TFS Integration Tools
Tfs integration tools blog posts and references
There is one risky way to get your timestamps correct, by manually updating the database

Moving a Team Project from one Collection to another

is there a (simple) way to move a single TeamProject from one collection to another (in one server) in TFS 2010? Including source code, work items, documents, project site...
No not really simple, you can split a collection and creata a new collection with the team projects you move in it, but you cannot out-of-the-box merge a team project into an existing collection.
What you can do is to use the TFS integration platform http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/eb77e739-c98c-4e36-9ead-fa115b27fefe or http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com to migrate your team project over to the new collection. This is however a DataMigration that doesnt keep or even move all data, but it will move Source Code & Workitems. Moving a team project site (if needed) , including documents can be done by using the STSADM Export and Import commands, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288191%28v=office.12%29.aspx for more info about moving SharePoint sites
No there isn't.
But it is a requested feature: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2037613-make-it-possible-to-move-a-team-project-between-te
It is not easy, but it is doable: Split a Team Project Collection
Yes there is a feature request, but I don't think it will be shipped in the box, so the other option to use TFS Integration Platform
There is a way to move from one collection to another using git-tfs and git-tf tools, it is a kind of workaround, but works if this is really required to be done.
This is posted step-by-step here:
https://fabiostawinski.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/tfvc-to-git-to-tfvc-is-it-possible/
In VS 2013 - map both collections to some folders, and then "Move" command will be available:

Merging team projects

In our current project we have four different TFS2010 Team Projects in the same Team Project Collection. The reason for this is that different parts of the project wanted to use different team project templates (CMMI vs Agile).
All projects now use the same template. Therefore we have now reached the conclusion that it would be better to merge the projects into a single team project. This raises several questions:
Is it possible / feasible to use one of the existing projects as the target project for the other three?
How do we move our existing work items into the new project whilst maintaining our area tree? We hope to create one root area for each of our existing team projects, and move all work items / areas underneath this root node.
Today we have work item links from one team projects into another - how do we keep these links when merging?
What is the best practice when moving the source code? One clear approach is to simply copy it to the new location, and locking and keeping the old team projects in case we need to access older versions of the code. But is it feasible to use branching for this, e.g. branching all existing code to the new team project? What kind of problems might this approach cause?
Thanks for your help!
Unfortunately, TFS 2010 doesn't allow you to merge team projects.
Stucturing Team Projects and Team Project Collections is one of the most important strategy decisions to make before starting to use TFS. Unfortunately, a lot of the customers we help don't make the up-front planning necessary and don't understand some of the limitations in TFS around merging, moving, splitting, etc. team projects before they start diving in to using TFS :(
When we have consulting engagements where customers want to consolidate their team projects, we end up having to do a lot of manual work to migrate the artifacts. We have built some tools to help us with this process for work items but for the most part it's a lot of tedious consulting work. The migration utilities always end up needing to be customized for each customer as well since they usually have different business rules for how they want to migrate.
Ultimately, a "migration" doesn't end up bringing over all of the information and you end up with some other problems like date/time stamps being different from what they were originally. (I have heard it referred to as a time compression issue with migrations.)
Some additional thoughts for each of your original questions:
Sure, you could theoretically use one of the existing team projects as the target for the migration of the other three. As long as you like the team project name and don't want to rename the team project. :)
This is where we have built custom work item migration utilities to assist our consulting customers. You would likely need to do the same.
This is possible as well with a custom work item migration utility. You can just keep track of the mappings between old work item IDs and new work item IDs and then add the links later once all of the new work items are created in the target team project.
That's ultimately up to you. I would do a "move" version control operation on the source code from the old team project to the new team project. This maintains everything. However, I would not delete any of the old team projects because that will cause the version control history to be destroyed as well.
It's not the best story for you but hopefully it will help your planning out some!

Archiving Team Foundation Server Projects

We're starting to user Team Foundation Server and my boss would like some way to "archive" projects. Meaning after they are completed, remove them from an "active" state so that only "active" projects are visible.
Does anyone have any experience with this?
I've thought of 2 options.
1) Create 2 base projects. 1 for active projects and 1 for achived projects
2) Remove all users from the archived projects.
Thanks,
Sam
I would personally recommend waiting for TFS 2010 when more functionality will be introduced that will assist you in the ability to "archive" Team Projects.
In TFS 2010 you will hopefully be able to move a team project to a new Team Project Collection. Actually you do this by duplicating your "active" project collection and then deleting all the team projects from it apart from the one that you want archived. In this active project collection, delete the archived project that you have a copy of in the duplicated project collection. This archived team project will then live in it's own project collection which means it has it's own database etc which can be easily backed up / archived etc.
The archived team project project collection can then be left as it is as it doesn't slow down the server any if not being used - or it could even be detached from the TFS Application instance so that it doesn't show up at all and re-attached at any time.
An advantage of using project collections in TFS 2010 is that full Version Control and Work Item Tracking history will be maintained.
I would use it just as you normally do, but when you are done with the project then you remove it from the visible list. (In Visual Studio you can right click on a project in the team explorer and say remove.)
If you are worried about changes after the project is done, then remove the users from the contributors list. If you really want to boot the users out (so they cannot even see it) then you can deny them rights to the project.
This way you don't have to see it, but you can keep all your projects on the base level.
I would NOT recommend having just 2 base project for active and in-active. A TFS project should not be based on a state.
We created an "Archive" team project and we regularly move unused source code to that team project. It has worked out well for us, the history is preserved so we can always reference the archive project for old code or information on past changes. We also limit access such that developers have read access but only TFS administrators have write access. I haven't checked to see how these moves impact the association of check-ins with work items - mostly because everything we archived was checked in before we moved to TFS.
As for the one active team project, I was led to believe by knowledge experts and online documentation that this wasn't the best way to organize team projects. I think ideally you group projects/solutions together into a single team project if they are related (i.e. by line of business or dependencies).
I'm sure you've already done your research, but there is plenty of documentation out there that might assist (especially if your team maintains a single application or a handful of applications). I would suggest starting with patterns & practices: Team Development with TFS.

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