Cannot open a TFS query in Excel

After successfully upgrading from VS2008/TFS2008 to VS2010/TFS2010 in the last few months, I today realised my machine still had an outstanding issue opening TFS queries from Visual Studio in Excel . After running the query in VS and clicking Open in Microsoft Office –> Open Query in Microsoft Excel, I was the reluctant recipient of this error message and no Excel openage:

Team Foundation Error

TF80012: The document cannot be opened because there is a problem with the installation of the Microsoft Visual Studio v10.0 Team Foundation Office integration components.  Please see the Team Foundation Installation Guide for more information.

While a number of solutions were offered, what follows is the complete set of steps I followed to fix the problem in my workstation environment (Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 with Office 2010 x86 and VS2010 RTM + TFS bits):

1. I first repaired Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate from Control Panel. This took a while and required a restart of my workstation. All of my extensions and settings were retained (I think). On its own, this didn't fix the problem but others have reported is did for them.

2. From a command prompt running as administrator (I'm in the local administrators on my machine but that's not good enough), I re-registered the TFSOfficeAdd-in.dll. I only ran the x86 command because VS2010 is a 32-bit app and I'm running the 32-bit version of Office on Windows x64; while the same assembly exists in the 64-bit Program Files directory, I'm assuming it's for the 64-bit version of Office 2010 (just guessing):

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\TFSOfficeAdd-in.dll"

3. Starting Excel from that same command window to ensure Excel started as an admin, I removed the v9.0 Team Foundation Add-In since I noticed it was showing alongside the v10.0 add-in and I wasn't sure if it was wreaking havoc. At this point, the Team menu was visible in Excel when running as admin but not when running as myself. In Excel 2010, you can manage add-ins from the File –> Options menu; click the Add-Ins tab and then choose COM Add-Ins from the Manage drop down.

4. I finally opened Excel again as myself and enabled the Team Foundation Add-In (v10.0). The Team menu now appeared in Excel.

At this point I can now open a TFS query in Excel.

Note, others have suggested deleting their Windows profile solved the problem for them, at the cost of deleting all of their settings, My Documents, etc. If you go down that path, be careful!

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Centralising global TFS alerts/notifications

TFS email alerts are critical to keeping your team informed about changes in the TFS projects they care about. At the very least, most users probably want to know when they've been assigned a work item.

Although Visual Studio 2010 includes the Alerts Explorer (Team –> Alerts Explorer) for signing yourself up for alerts, there's no obvious way to do the same thing for a group of users. Adding custom business logic into the mix really means you'll need to find a better alternative.

Behold! My latest Codeplex project is live, I call it TFS Global Alerts:

http://tfsalerts.codeplex.com/

When we last faced this problem with Visual Studio Team System 2008, we landed on a solution from vertigo.com--I'd link to the original blog post but it's been removed from the site. Moving forward a few years, it was recently time to upgrade our TFS 2008 install to TFS 2010 and the question naturally arose about what we do with alerts: continue using the Vertigo web service or not?

The custom logic originally added to the Vertigo solution was flailing a bit due to the kludge of time so we decided to refactor the current solution to better meet our needs and keep everything working with TFS 2010. I've uploaded a generalised version of the end result for your alerting enjoyment as an example of handling TFS events in a web service (you may want to follow the links below for alternatives based on Windows services and event listeners).

The Solution

TFS Global Alerts is, at its core, a web service containing a single public method:

[WebMethod]
public void Notify (string eventXml)

Notify() accepts a single parameter, a string containing XML detailing the change that occurred and some information about the work item itself. The Notify() method signature changed slightly from TFS 2008: it previously included a second string parameter, tfsIdentityXml. I removed this parameter to get things wired up successfully with TFS 2010.

Most elements in the eventXml look a bit like this—note the OldValue and NewValue child elements:

<Field>
<Name>State</Name>
<ReferenceName>System.State</ReferenceName>
<OldValue>Active</OldValue>
<NewValue>Resolved</NewValue>
</Field>

With the Notify() method called and most of the data you need at hand, sending an email to the relevant parties is then quite simple. TFS Global Alerts does some additional work to exclude the person who made the change from receiving a notification about that change (presumably they know what they've just done!) and avoid sending notifications about code check-ins linked to a work item.

The only real complexity in this code is retrieving an email address for each user from Active Directory. In our production environment I found TFS listed users by display name however in development, with TFS running as a service account in the dev domain, users were returned as domain\username. In production, if a user had multiple accounts (some of our admins), their name was returned as "First Last (domain\username)".

In terms of deployment, I simply deploy the web service to the web server hosting TFS itself and TFS web access.

The notification system hangs off TFS' own event subscription tool, bissubscribe.exe (you'll find it at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools\bissubscribe.exe). TFS raises events for all sorts of different happenings and bissubscribe.exe allows you to subscribe an email address or SOAP web service to handle those events.

Since I had some problems creating a server-level subscription, here's the command I use to create a project collection subscription (which captures all events in our case):

bissubscribe /eventType WorkItemChangedEvent /address http://localhost:8080/{vdir_path}/Alerts/WorkItemChanged.asmx /collection http://localhost:8080/tfs/{project_collection_name}

Result:

TF50001:  Created or found an existing subscription. The subscription ID is 36

Debugging

TFS 2010 only sends alerts every two minutes by default and events subscribed to via bissubscribe.exe adhere to the same policy. This can be a bit annoying when you're developing so you may want to dial down the batch wait time. I've included a Powershell script in the solution to configure this but otherwise, check out chrisid's post on the subject.

For additional help debugging bissubscribe, Grant Holliday has some useful tips.

Finally, don't forget to actually configure your TFS server to send email!

Resources

• Creating your own event handler for the TFS Event Handler Service
• TFS Event Handler (Codeplex project)
• TFS Event Handler for Team Foundation Server 2010
• Team Foundation Server Event Service

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How to change the service accounts used by TFS 2010

As with many Microsoft products running with specific service accounts, TFS offers an easy way to change the service account it uses or update the account password.

You can do this manually by mucking with application pool identities and database permissions but there's a much easier way using the TFS Administration Console.

Assuming you have the right permissions, fire up the console and click into the Application Tier node; in the Application Tier Summary you'll find two links: Change Account and Reapply Account.

Change Account allows you to change the service account used by the system while Reapply Account allows you to change the password for the currently configured account. You can easily switch from Network Service to a local or domain account (or vice versa) but be sure to grant any local/domain account the Log on as service permission.

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TFSDeleteProject /Collection Parameter in TFS 2010

As far as I can tell, deleting a team project in TFS 2010 is still a task that must be completed at the VS2010 command line; while the operation is relatively straightforward, this command changes slightly with the introduction of project collections in TFS2010 and the value expected by /collection:<url> parameter may not be glaringly obvious.

Firstly, see the documentation.

Next, determine the URL for the team project you want to delete. I wasn't sure how to discover this but after some trial and error I found this format seems to work:

http://server:port/tfs/collectionName

I've since realised the URL can be determined from the TFS Administration Console (in the General tab under the Team Project Collections node) and other derivatives returned a 404 error.

Note http://server:port/tfs is the Server URL configured for my TFS instance in the Administration Console so your mileage may vary.

How to do a test TFS 2008 migration to TFS 2010

Planning an evaluation (or trial) migration/upgrade from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 seems to be a rather confusing affair; with most Google results still referring to the beta or RC, I haven’t come across many definitive guides pertaining to the RTM release. I haven’t spend any time with the TFS beta either and have never migrated a TFS install so the entire process is new to me. A throwaway install would therefore be required—preferably one that doesn’t impact the production 2008 install!

Most importantly, remember the tfsconfig import is a destructive command. Just stop and think before you do anything—or at least back up your existing databases! Also, a disclaimer: there may be other ways to accomplish the same thing using the upgrade wizard (at install time?? as an in-place upgrade??) but I didn’t follow up this option since I wanted to maintain the existing TFS 2008 environment; it may be worthwhile investigating in your case.

In short, I want to use my existing TFS 2008 data in a clean 2010 environment while the 2008 environment ticks along until the real migration can be scheduled.

So, step-by-step:

1. Install and configure TFS 2010 in a test environment; make sure everything’s working—create a test project collection and project, dill around with it for while, etcetera.

2. Backup the following databases from the data tier running your TFS 2008 environment:

• TfsIntegration
• TfsBuild
• TfsWarehouse
• TfsWorkItemTracking
• TfsWorkItemTrackingAttachments
• TfsVersionControl
• TfsActivityLogging

3. Restore the 2008 backups via SQL Server Management Studio to the data tier in your TFS 2010 environment. In my case the 2008 database names were different than the 2010 database names so no name clashes occurred.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not follow this advice in production. You’ll likely want to point the tfsconfig import command at your old production server and, if not, there are safer ways to go about the database restore process.

4. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools in a command window and kick off the import, which will effectively importing from your 2010 environment to your 2010 environment (if pointed to a production server, this process is destructive!):

tfsconfig import /sqlinstance:dev-tfs /collectionName:Imported /confirmed

It took this command 208 steps to do its thing.

Much to my surprise, the TFS 2008 databases restored previously were gone when I next checked in SQL Server Management Studio! Gasp!

5. Open Visual Studio and connect to your new team project(s).

6. Brian Harry also suggests changing the GUID of the migrated database for Beta 2; in my experience, the changeserverid command completed successfully after a warning that I shouldn’t be doing this to “a set of Team Foundation Server databases that have no application tiers configured” but the subsequent registerdb command failed with the following:

TF246017: Team Foundation Server could not connect to the database. Verify that the server that is hosting the database is operational, and that network problems are not blocking communication with the server.

This is a single-server environment with the command being run locally and the database itself is seemingly happy so I doubt a communication problem. At any rate, the mighty Google is silent on this problem and the environment seems kaput—revert, revert! I won’t explore this further as this step isn’t required for a real migration but I suppose it could be related to step 5 where I access the new environment; maybe I should have run these two commands first?

Brian also advises disabling SharePoint and Reporting Services via the Admin Console but I have yet to do that.

Update: After upgrading, we came across an issue where changesets that were previously merged "came back to life" in the merge candidate screen in VS 2010/TFS 2010. This KB article describes the problem and a hotfix is available to correct it. I'm not sure what the official MS stance is on this hotfix but you might want to apply it just in case.

Thanks to http://www.devh.de/post/Team-Foundation-Server-2010-Beta-2-Import-finally.aspx for the Beta 2 steps.

Dirty Words (Michael Hanes) - blog.mediawhole.com mailto:info@mediawole.com

TFS 2010 Install and Western Australia Timezone Error (tf255356)

The TFS 2010 install is reportedly a walk in the park by comparison with previous versions so I thought it would be fun to give it a spin as we prepare to move from TFS 2008 to the latest and greatest.

First of all, if you’re doing a test install (or any kind of install, for that matter), the TFSInstall.chm guide included in the root of the installation media has a very well-documented process for installing both SQL Server 2008 and TFS. Unlike previous guides I’ve attempted to wade through, this one is actually quite a light read and presents just the information required to get up and running.

Apart from installing Windows Server 2008 R2 with Analysis Services and Reporting Services, I also installed SQL Server 2008 and SP1 before dropping into the TFS installer; the installer will add .NET 4, the Web Server (IIS) feature, WSS 3.0 if required, and SQL Server 2008 Express if required. I reused existing service accounts on the domain for SQL Server and TFS and created a new service account for Reporting Services. Some other bits were left to run as Network Service.

When installation completes, the configuration wizard kicks off. I went with the advanced option since I didn’t want to install SharePoint. 

The entire process was a smooth experience until I ran into an old nemesis for those of us opposed to daylight saving here in Western Australia:

tf255356 Error occurred while executing servicing step Create Warehouse for component TfsWarehouse during Install: The supplied DateTime represents an invalid time.  For example, when the clock is adjusted forward, any time in the period that is skipped is invalid.

This is interesting because the push for daylight savings was defeated a while back and the latest timezone updates were reported to be installed on my new R2 machine.

Luckily Andreww posted a work around on the connect issue: change the timezone from (UTC +8:00) Perth to (UTC +8:00) Tapei (where daylight savings is also not observed and Windows recognises the fact…). Before I could continue I had to delete both the TFS_Configuration and TFS_Warehouse databases as they were created before this problem cropped up.

All good from there… configuration completed successfully. But groan nonetheless, Microsoft!

Building SharePoint Solutions with TFS Build 2008

After deploying Team Foundation Server 2008 in late 2008, the project’s second phase was intended to implement Team Build to automate builds and establish a continuous integration process for our key projects. At the time, the initial investigation work determined this to be all too hard, which is unfortunate because I’ve been doing the builds for our team ever since!

With our first-stab process templates and first-stab branch structure now being revised, and with Team System 2010 due any day now, I decided to review what “too hard” really meant and see for myself what it would take to get the 2008 build server running. In our case, we’re not only dealing with SharePoint builds and the need to output a .wsp/.cab solution file but a VS solution structure first established in 2006. One of our projects also builds a deployment (.msi) file.

Although I have yet to get the solutions proper tweaked and loaded up, I have got a relatively simple MSBuild-based SharePoint solution building, batch file post-build events and all. This post is a summary of my notes and findings from my efforts to get this working.

Andrew Connell has a detailed post on how to get MSBuild playing with MakeCab.exe, so I’d recommend starting there if you don’t have the MSBuild bits in place already. From that point I largely followed Jeremy Jameson’s advice to get the .targets and .ddf files working across desktop builds and TFS Build. For more information about MakeCab and DDF files, I highly recommend you read the MakeCab documentation linked from my earlier post.

Relative Paths

Perhaps most critically, note Visual Studio and TFS will build your source from different locations. This rules out using absolute paths in any of your scripts or things will break; you also need to be very careful with relative paths because even that old stalwart, \bin, doesn’t exist in the TFS Build environment (it instead uses \binaries).

What this means is relative paths are acceptable but you do need to suck them out of the environment variables/macros set by Visual Studio/Team Build—primarily $(OutDir) or whatever works best for you.

OutDir Cleanup

$(OutDir) may include spaces and will likely include a trailing slash, which needs to be cleaned up by adding quotes to avoid issues with spaces and removing the trailing slash before it can be supplied to MakeCab. I added this to the PropertyGroup element in my .targets file:

<QuotedOutDir>"$(OutDir)"</QuotedOutDir>
<QuotedOutDir Condition="HasTrailingSlash($(OutDir))">"$(OutDir)."</QuotedOutDir>

The property is subsequently supplied in the target:

<Exec Command="$(MakeCabPath) /F $(DDFName) /D CabinetNameTemplate=$(CabinetOutputFileName) /D Out_Dir=$(QuotedOutDir)" />

Remember, any changes to the .targets file will not be detected until the .csproj file is unloaded and reloaded (right-click in Visual Studio).

DDF and .Option Explicit

The Out_Dir parameter I supply to MakeCab (or rather the .ddf file, more precisely) is a custom variable unknown to MakeCab. With .Option Explicit enabled, you would normally be required to include a statement like this:

.define Out_Dir=

My understanding is MakeCab doesn’t support this, however, and .Option Explicit must therefore be turned off or you'll end up with an error like this:

ERROR: Option Explicit and variable not defined: OUT_DIR

Reference Other Projects and .Set SourceDir

To get the assemblies and debug symbols from the bin directories in your other projects to the deployment project, it’s easiest to to have the deployment project reference those projects; the DLLs and pdb files will then be copied to the deployment project’s bin directory—which is also the value of $(OutDir).

Instead of then referencing these files using a long path in the .ddf, they can now be referenced simply by name. You’ll first need to configure the SourceDir in the DDF, however before resetting it for the remaining files:

.Set SourceDir=%Out_Dir%
MyControls.dll
MyControls.pdb
.Set SourceDir=

Dummy Code File

I make use of a dedicated class library project responsible for wrangling the MSBuild bits, post-build events, and to otherwise contain all the SharePoint solution and feature bits. As a class library this project wants to compile and output an assembly but with no source code in the project, TFS Build will throw up a compiler error (everything will work fine on the desktop, however):

CSC(0,0): error CS2008: No inputs specified

To work around this, add an empty .cs file to the project (it’s a hack).

Long File Paths

Windows’ own maximum path length rules will kick in once you hit 259 or 260 characters. If you’re already working in a deep branch with a matching file system path structure, Team Build will likely cause you problems when it starts shifting sources into is own working directories below C:\Documents and Settings\{service}\Local Settings\Temp\. Consider the changes suggested by Aaron Hallberg to work around this problem.

Good luck!

MakeCab.exe SDK and DDF Reference

I just stumbled across an ancient but incredibly useful post from one of my favourite bloggers:DDF Command and Variable Syntax.

If you’re a tool monkey this won’t be of any interest but if you cut your .ddf files by hand or like to know what’s going on under the covers in the creation of your .wsp/.cab files, this post calls out some very relevant points from the Microsoft Cabinet SDK—which is also worth downloading, btw. If you ever wanted a reference to MakeCab or those weird ddf files, this is it.

(!) All conflicts resolved but no files checked in due to initial conflicts

A minor annoyance with VS2008 SP1 and TFS 2008 SP1 today when attempting a check in. Here’s the stack trace:

• Delete a folder and a bunch of images from VS Solution Explorer yesterday (right-click, Delete)
• Check in the deletion and explicitly check for the delete action for the relevant files during the check in process
• Arrive this morning to do a final cleanup and make sure everything in the project was checked in before Christmas… hey, all those images are still wanting to be checked in!
• Attempt check in from Solution Explorer (specify comment, work item as per our policy configuration); Resolve Conflicts dialog pops up with the message “(!) All conflicts resolved but no files checked in due to initial conflicts”. Try again… believing, from memory, I’d seen this problem before and a second check in attempt had solved it. Same deal.
• Resume Conflict Resolution from File –> Source Control. Nothing found, “All conflicts resolved”
• Attempt check in from Source Control Explorer window in VS; same deal.
• Drop into the VS 2008 Command Prompt and navigate to the solution; tf checkin and tf resolve produce the same results as VS. tf checkin tells me “Conflict: The latest version of item $/… is deleted.
• Try tf resolve . /r /auto:AcceptTheirs but the command tells me “There are no conflicts to resolve”
• Confirm folder and images are definitely not present in either the project (via Solution Explorer) or the source control tree (via Source Control Explorer).
• Get Specific Version with ‘Overwrite all files even if the local version matches the specified version’ option checked; no change to the project or file system; same error message on check in.
• Undo Pending Changes… from Solution Explorer context menu. Success! Now I have nothing left to check in (any other files not involved in the deletion process were checked in separately) and TFS is tangle-free yet again.

TFS Screen Captures with Snagit

If you’ve been working with TFS and TFS Web Access (Team Plain) you’re likely aware the product is graceless about screen captures—a critical part to describing many types of bug.

With products like JIRA you can simply PrtScn and paste the resulting screen grab directly into their web-based interface; TFS offers nothing of the sort (maybe in 2010?) and you must use a third party tool to save out your screen shot and upload it to the work item as a file attachment.

I’ve seen a few attempts to write controls to make the necessary magic happen within the Visual Studio environment but that doesn’t cut it where the majority of TFS users interact with the system through a browser. I have yet to find a solution for the browser end but in my travels did today come across a free Snagit output from TechSmith that will attach a Snagit screen shot to a work item for users with Team System installed.

As an extra output, you simply Finish your capture to the Team System output and a new work item window appears so you can fill in the basics. It’s not web-based but does work quite well, dropping the screenshot under the File Attachments tab and it is free if you’ve already got Snagit installed (which isn’t free).