Using TFS as a Q/A tool - tfs

I'm looking for a tool to track questions and answers between the development team. After then I want to compare the employees based on their activities via some reports. Currently we're using MSF for CMMI 4.2.
Is there any process template to support this situation? For example having work item types like Question, Answer, Article.
Is using TFS a proper tool for this purpose?
Or maybe there's some better tools available which I'm not aware about.
Is there something like StackOverflow which I can use locally in the company?

You can upgrade tfs to tfs 2013 which supports team rooms where your team members can chat which also can be used as q&a tool. You can try this now in tfs service.
http://tfs.visualstudio.com/en-us/learn/collaborate-in-a-team-room.aspx
You can also set up your own company wiki website where your team members can update q&a.
What is the best ASP.NET WIKI out there?
Or set up your own in house stackoverflow
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones

It sounds like you want a discussion forum. If you are using SharePoint (e.g. for the TFS Project Portal) you can create a discussion forum in SharePoint.
In TFS Work Items there is also the ability to track a discrete list of comments/discussion under the History tab.

you can also integrate them with Microsoft Project Server Or Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
there are many tools there , waiting for you , to solve your other problem.
http://www.quantumwhisper.com/dynamics-crm-microsoft-tfs-integration/
crm has many feature for that
http://intovsts.net/2012/12/28/integration-of-dynamics-crm-2011-solutions-with-tfs/
in the project server also exist many lists like issue tracker, or risk for send messages interactive between your team and others.

Related

TFS 2015 Kanban - Database tables? Where did dbo.workitemsare go?

My work group recently upgraded from TFS 2013 to TFS 2015; and migrated the database to the new environment. We use the TFS kanban for tracking our work, and for allowing customers to see all the possible items in the input queue to vote on which item is worked on next. We had built a custom SSRS report to get this data out of the TFS database for review from our customers... But now that we've upgraded TFS, a table that was integral to this report is now missing? The table which is now missing is dbo.WorkItemsAre.
Is anyone familiar with where/how the TFS kanban items will be tracked after migrating to 2015? It seems like the documentation on the TFS database has always been lacking when I try finding anything on MSDN or a microsoft site.
Thank you!!
For customized reports you should use the warehouse database (Tfs_Warehouse). You can find the documentation about work item tables here.
Or you can use the cube. The documentation about the work item perspective is here.
For data not available in either the warehouse or the cube you can use the RestAPI or the Client API.
The operational databases are not supported by Microsoft. You may also be asked to remove anything you have built against the operational store for any support to be given.

TFS Confluence integration, or alternative

We will probably be using Team Foundation Server (TFS). However, I see that it misses the agility of Confluence for managing requirements documentation, and I do not see SharePoint being close as good.
My question is, is it possible to integrate TFS with Confluence, in the same way Confluence integrates to JIRA? Or is there some other viable alternative to managing requirements other than Confluence that would integrate with TFS? To my knowledge, TFS Work Items aren't really a good fit for requirements documentation (other than short scenarios).
Thanks in advance.
Using TFS 2015 you can see and Markdown files directly in the browser resulting in a Wiki experience. You can explore this feature in Visual Studio Online and see if it fits your needs.

JIRA: How I can maintain project document

I am using JIRA from a pretty long time and its good, but now I want to store all the project document in a single place like sharepoint (with version if possible).
Do I need to create a ticket and then attach to it?
OR
Is there any separate place for it in JIRA?
I believe you should try using Confluence, which is itself part of the Atlassian stack of software development/productivity tools. Confluence is a feature-rich document/knowledge sharing application which is somewhat comparable to SharePoint and offers great integration with Jira and its other sibling products).

Extending Team Foundation 2010

We use TFS 2010 for source control, and have it configured so that team collections can have their own Sharepoint portal.
This works fine and we can create tasks/bugs etc using this.
However we want to extend this into some custom apps that log into our own databases, and TFS.
So bugs can be raised by people outside the normal realm of operation.
My question is, does anyone have or know of some resources that really get under the skin of TFS, all the APi tips and tricks. As well as the more advanced features.
I am happy to buy the books on this, just unsure which books are the right books to buy.
Thanks in advance.
I found this set of blog posts by Shai Raiten to be helpful
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/shair/archive/tags/TFS+API/default.aspx
How about Extending Team Foundation ?

Is there a customer-friendly web frontend for Team Foundation Server?

We would like to give our customers access to report bugs and to look at existing bugs and work items, through Team Foundation Server.
For that, we will need a web frontend, which is customer-friendly. It should be easy to use and with a nice UI. I am aware of Web Access, but think it is too developer-oriented for our customers to use.
Is there any good open source or commercial products out there for doing this? It is important that we will be able to customize the products for our needs.
There is WIWA, but it's quite similar to the regular web access tool. It exists more as a licensing aid (helping TFS admins ensure they don't overstep the CAL requirements) than as a fresh new UI aimed at non-developers.
Note: get it from the latest download package for TSWA SP1, not the CTP linked in the blog post
I don't know of any other solutions that are as customizable as you're hoping. I've seen (and contributed to) one-off solutions that were tailored for a specific work item type. At the broadest level, you could say that the bug pages # connect.microsoft.com and # Codeplex fall into that category as well. But none of them is publicly available, nor would they be helpful even if published.
You'll probably need to do a one-off of your own using the Work Item Tracking API. Luckily, this is far easier than writing a generalized workflow engine / forms designer that knows how to parse WIT XML.
A bit of a shameless plug as I'm the project owner: Spruce is an ASP.NET MVC2/jQuery driven front end for TFS 2010 aimed at replicating the user-friendly approach you find in products such as Fogbugz, Unfuddle and online sites such as Github, Bitbucket.
A few screenshots:
I'll be adding the list of features found on the blog at the start of the year.

Resources