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.
Related
I have been converting access to Team projects using Active Directory groups.
I am a project collection admin and we host around 40 odd team projects.
On all the other proects everything is fine, I have been able to add all the AD groups I needed to the Various TFS groups that exist in a Team Project (Contributors, Readers etc).
When I come to the problem project I can see the add button, and I am able to search for and select the AD group I want, but when I click save, I see a red banner message with the text:
Unable to add members to this group.
Failed to resolve the specified groups to join.
You do not have sufficient permissions to add members to the following groups:
[Team Project]\Build Administrators
I have looked at the oi and all I can see around the time of the issue are activities reporting a 200 response.
I am looking at the api and the database to see what I can do but not sure where to start. I thought I might be able to see something about security but it is asking for a guid that I am not sure how to get hold of.
Looking at the database I thought there might be a security table, but not sure where to start.
I'm going to keep looking at what to do, so I am going to keep this updated
update 2019-03-27
We have a support call open with Microsoft, I still have issues managing the teams, but I have been able to update the team via the Apis, I even found a useful little CLI tool to help with the tasks I needed to do.
In my case, I was trying to add someone to a group that I was in - which I don't need since I'm a Project Administrator. Once I took myself out of the group, I was able to add others again.
Got the answer and the fix worked.
After a lot of back and forth, sending files and running some tfssecurity queries, they were able to determine the problem.
What I had done was add the domain User AD containing our project collection admin account in as a project reader, as the security on tfs works on a least level principle it was then applying a deny permision on my Project collection admin account, by simply removing the AD group from the reader level, which I was able to do, the ablity to manage the securities came back.
I havent been able to find the specific group that I belonged to that then set the deny, but there is no denying that removing the AD group from the reader level fixed the issue.
I am running Azure DevOps 2019 RC1 with an Inheritance Collection and a new Agile project.
I have a requirement that when a user creates a work item (task/issue), they must automatically be added as a follower of this work item. How can I achieve this? I have look in the rules for the work item under process customisation but it doesn't appear to be possible this way.
We are using the tickets to track issues. Whoever discovers the issue raises the ticket. The basic requirement is that anyone who raises a ticket should be automatically notified of its progress, even though they are not responsible for the development or testing.
Currently the work around is telling the user that when they create an issue they must click the Follow button, but it is easy for them to forget and then lose their updates. It seems like a very simple customisation so maybe I'm missing the obvious.
Thanks
I think you can't auto follow things currently, but you can add notification setting that will send automatically emails when work item is updated. To do this, go to Project Settings > Notifications page and create new subscription. Select "Work/A work item is changed" and put "Members of ... team by role" in Deliver to selection. Set roles to "Created by" and untick the "Skip initiator".
Your problem would be addressed precisely with the feature requested in the official Azure DevOps' feedback platform here:
479189 - Automatically follow work items I interact with
(That page also mentions workarounds, including per-team one answered here, and a per-person alternative. See this comment. The shortcoming of both is that they don't allow to you to unsubscribe for selected tickets.)
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
Not exactly like this - How to publicly share a Visual Studio Online Repository? - I am trying to share the source code repository (Git) from Visual Studio Online to registered stakeholders. They need to get at the latest stuff at the Master branch to eval it along with work items. How can I do that?
Thanks.
If you have people with a Stakeholder license they won't be able to see the code. The Stakeholder license only gives access to:
View team dashboards and portfolio backlogs
View, add, and modify items on the backlog
View, create, and modify work items such as stories, features, and bugs
View, create, and save queries
Create and receive alerts when changes are made to work items
Submit, view, and change your feedback responses.
For people to see the code, they will at least need a Basic license. If you then want to restrict their access, you can do so by creating a TFS Group and setting the correct permissions. In this case, you want to limit the Code permissions to only Read so they can't modify the code.
See Permission reference for Team Foundation Server for more information.
This means there is no free way to allow users to read your code. You do start with 5 free basic licenses however, so if that's enough you can assign those to your users.
What is the best way to store a task for multiple users in TFS 2010 ? I can only assign one for one task.
(for example: when I plan a demo to all developers)
(this is a scrum Msf Agile project, where the task is part of a user story)
I'm sorry to tell you that you can't assign multiple users to a single work item out of the box; At the same time, I do not recommended trying as this, as it does not fit the model in TFS. The conventional / recommended way to handle this type of scenario is to create multiple tasks; one for each developer in this case. You can easily accomplish this by copying a set of tasks using MS Excel. Another option (given the example you used) is to create a "Meeting" work item that has multiple drop-downs - one for each person that would attend meetings like for a demo or a technical review.
Yet another option is to create a custom control to format and store a list of users. This would likely be relatively complex to maintain, as you have to distribute it to each user's machine (it will need to be installed locally), and last I checked you would need 2 versions; one for the Team Explorer user interface and another for the Web Access tool that most people use to create work items from a web page on their TFS server. Future updates to TFS could possibly break your custom control. It is rarely worth the effort. Another downside is the you would likely be limited by how you can use MS Excel to work with the data you store in the field that the custom control works with. If you want to look into this further you can find some examples in the following CodePlex project: http://witcustomcontrols.codeplex.com/
You might consider your true goals in tracking such things as meetings and other items you want to assign multiple people to. Tasks are the heart of tracking progress of user stories in the MSF Agile Template. Tracking meeting attendance does not typically relate directly to a User Story, for example; so it won't typically assist you to determine how much close you are to being "done" with a User Story. If you want to take advantage of the existing reports, then you should organize your tasks so that they roll up as child work items to User Story (or Bug) work items.
Short story: you can't. Work items in the Process Template of Microsoft are designed to target nobody or only one User.
Now you can customize the Process Template to change this.
Take this post for instance, the customization works for group. But I don't recommend you to do so because TFS is basically not designed for that and you may end up disappointed.