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How to Configure Integration with TFS in System Center 2012 R2

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager

In System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, you can synchronize Operations Manager alerts and TFS work items. After enabling synchronization, information technology (IT) operations can assign alerts to the engineering team. When you first assign an alert to engineering, TFS creates a new work item. The workflow then tracks and synchronizes changes that are made to TFS work items and changes that are made to associated Operations Manager alerts. You can synchronize alerts with team projects in TFS 2012, TFS 2010, or both.

Important

If your environment was upgraded from System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to Operations Manager and used the versions of the management packs that shipped with System Center 2012 SP1, you can continue to use them, but you will be limited to the scenarios that System Center 2012 SP1 supported. If you want to simultaneously synchronize Operations Manager alerts with Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Service Manager, you need to use the management packs shipped with System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager.

Important

Before you enable configuration, you must have TFS administrator credentials to be able to import the Operational Issue Work Item Type Definition that is used by integration with TFS. Additionally, you must have a configured domain account with TFS contributor rights in the team projects that you want to synchronize Operations Manager alerts with.

To prepare your environment for synchronization with TFS

  1. Import and configure the Alert Attachment Management Pack. For more information, see How to Configure File Attachments for Operations Manager Alerts in System Center 2012 R2.

  2. Decide which management servers you want to use to synchronize Operations Manager alerts and TFS work items. Each management server that is used for synchronization must have TFS Object Model installed. You can install the TFS Object Model for TFS 2010 from the MSDN Download Center (Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1 Object Model Installer) or by installing the TFS Object Model for TFS 2012 from the MSDN Download Center (Team Foundation Server 2012 Object Model Installer). You can also install the TFS Object Model for TFS 2012 when you install Visual Studio 2012. Installing TFS on a server also installs the TFS Object Model on that server.

    Important

    You can use TFS Object Model 2010 or TFS Object Model 2012 for synchronization with TFS. TFS Object Model 2013 is not currently compatible with the version of synchronization released with System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager. To synchronize with TFS 2013 or TFS 2015, you need to install TFS Object Model 2012. However, in order to synchronize with TFS 2012 using TFS Object Model 2010, you must manually import the Operational Issue work item type definition (WITD) into each team project that will be used for synchronization. Do this by using the witadmin command-line tool. For more information about manually importing the Operational Issue WITD, see How to Manually Import an Operational Issue WITD to TFS in System Center 2012 R2.

    Tip

    Installing synchronization on all management servers in the management group will help to simplify maintenance and bring redundancy into the integration between Operations Manager and TFS.

  3. Create a domain account that will be used for TFS synchronization.

  4. Give this domain account TFS contributor permissions for each project that you plan to use for TFS synchronization. For more information, see Add Users to Team Projects.

  5. If you intend to synchronize alert file attachments with TFS work items, give this account read/write access to the Alert Attachment file share. This is the file share that was established when you configured the Alert Attachment Management Pack.

To configure synchronization for the TFS Work Item Synchronization Management Pack

  1. Import the TFS Work Item Synchronization Management Pack from the Operations Manager installation media. In the Operations Manager console, click Administration, click Management Packs, and then, in the Tasks pane, click Import Management Packs. In the Import Management Packs Wizard, click Add, and then click Add from disk. Import the TFS Work Item Synchronization Management Pack (Microsoft.SystemCenter.TFSWISynchronization.mpb) from the ManagementPacks folder on the Operations Manager installation media. Click Install, and then click Close.

  2. To begin configuring the TFS Work Item Synchronization Management Pack, in the Operations Manager console, in the navigation pane, click Authoring, click Management Pack Templates, and then, in the Tasks pane, click Add Monitoring Wizard.

    Important

    You must run the Add Monitoring Wizard for each team project collection that you want to synchronize alerts with.

  3. To open the TFS Work Item Synchronization template, in the Add Monitoring Wizard, on the Monitoring Type page, select TFS Work Item Synchronization.

  4. On the General Properties page, type a display name for this team project collection and a description, and then select a target management pack to store your configuration settings.

  5. On the Server Settings page, enter the Team Project Collection URL (for example: http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/), and then select the Synchronization Resource Pool of the management servers that are used for load-balancing synchronization. Each server in this resource pool must already have the TFS Object Model installed. Then, create or select a Run As account that will be used for synchronization. This Run As account must have contributor permissions in each TFS team project. If you want to synchronize alert file attachments, the Run As account must have read/write access to the Alert Attachment file share. Make sure that these credentials are distributed to all management servers that are used for synchronization. For more information about using Run As profiles, see Managing Run As Accounts and Profiles.

    Note

    You can get the TFS Team Project Collections URL from the Team Foundation Server Administration Console. If the TFS Team Project Collection that you choose is offline or otherwise unavailable, the wizard will warn you, but it will still let you finish the configuration. Additionally, when TFS is not available, there is no validation for your input in the wizard. The team project and area path will not be prepopulated with existing values.

    Server Settings page

    TFS configuration Server Settings page

  6. On the Project Settings page, specify the Project and Area Path that will be used to synchronize all alerts. You can customize these settings for each .NET application component that was previously configured for monitoring with .NET Application Performance Monitoring (APM). To customize the team project and TFS area path for an APM component, click Add, which will add a new row. Choose a target Team Project and Area Path combination, and then click the (…) button to select which configured application components will synchronize with this team project and area path. The application components must already be configured for monitoring with the .NET Application Performance Monitoring template. For more information, see .NET Application Performance Monitoring Template.

    Project Settings page

    TFS configuration Project Settings page

    Note

    You can configure synchronization with multiple Team Foundation Servers or multiple Team Project Collections by running the configuration wizard multiple times. However, only one configuration can have the Default Team Project and Default Area Path specified.

  7. When you finish the wizard, you will be asked for TFS administrator credentials so that the wizard can automatically import the Operational Issue WITD to each team project that is used in the configured synchronization. You can skip this step if you want to manually import the Operational Issue WITD. You must manually import the WITD when you are synchronizing with Team Foundation Server 2012 using TFS Object Model 2010. For more information, see How to Manually Import an Operational Issue WITD to TFS in System Center 2012 R2.

    Note

    After you configure synchronization, the TFS Work Item Synchronization management pack will monitor the synchronization infrastructure, and it will generate alerts if synchronization fails. However, to monitor the complete TFS infrastructure, you need additional monitoring packs that can alert you about a wide range of potential problems with TFS components. When you import the TFS Work Item Synchronization management pack, you should also import and configure these monitoring packs. Together, they help you make sure that you are monitoring the complete health of the developer TFS environment. For more information, see Monitoring Integration between Operations Manager and TFS in System Center 2012 R2.

Changing Synchronization Settings

You can view or change synchronization settings for the TFS Work Item Synchronization Management Pack. You will need to change these settings to modify a destination team project and area path or to customize synchronization rules for a monitored .NET application component.

To prevent inconsistent synchronization while new settings are being applied, turn off synchronization before you change the configuration. For information about stopping and resuming synchronization, see How to Stop and Resume Synchronization with TFS in System Center 2012 R2. The process of replicating configuration changes to all management servers in the synchronization pool might take an hour or more, depending on the system performance of your management group. After the replication is complete, you can turn synchronization on again. If the configuration was changed while synchronization was running, you might have to force a reset of the configuration by restarting the System Center Management Service on all management servers in the synchronization pool.

If you change a destination team project for synchronization, the rules in the following table apply.

Changes in TFS team project location

How synchronization is affected

An application is mapped to a new TFS project within the same TFS project collection.

New alerts go to the new project and old alerts keep synchronizing with the old project. If you delete old ticket IDs and reassign the related alerts to engineering, new work items are created in the new project. These new work items are not linked to any of the pre-existing work items.

An application is mapped to a new TFS project within the same TFS server, but in a different TFS project collection.

New alerts go to the new TFS project. The old alerts stop synchronizing completely. If you delete old ticket IDs and reassign the related alerts to engineering, new work items are created. These new work items are not linked to any of the pre-existing work items.

An application is mapped to a project on a different server.

New work items are created for alerts that are newly assigned to engineering. Synchronization of any previously synchronized alerts stops.

To change synchronization settings

  1. To change synchronization settings, in the Operations Manager console, in the navigation pane, click Authoring, expand Management Pack Templates, and then click TFS Work Item Synchronization.

  2. Locate a previously configured team project collection, and in the Tasks pane, click Properties.

    Note

    If you recently changed configuration and the change has not been replicated to the management servers, you must wait for the changes to be replicated before you can view and work with the new configuration. The replication of configuration changes to all management servers in the synchronization pool might take an hour or more, depending on the system performance of your management group.

  3. On the Server Settings tab, you can change the Synchronization Resource Pool of the management servers that are used for load-balancing synchronization. Each server in this resource pool must already have the TFS Object Model installed. Also, you can change the Run As account that will be used for synchronization. This account must have contributor permissions in each TFS team project, and, if you want to synchronize alert file attachments, the account must have read/write access to the Alert Attachment file share. Make sure that these credentials are distributed to all management servers that are used for synchronization. For more information about using Run As profiles, see Managing Run As Accounts and Profiles.

    Note

    If you need to change the Team Project Collection URL, you must delete the configuration and run the wizard again.

  4. On the Project Settings tab, specify the Default Team Project and Default Area Path that will be used to synchronize all alerts. You can customize these settings for each .NET application component that was previously configured for monitoring with .NET Application Performance Monitoring (APM). To customize the team project and TFS area path for an APM component, click Add to add a new row. Choose a target Team Project and Area Path combination, and then click the (…) button to select which configured application components will synchronize with this team project and area path. The application components must already be configured for monitoring with the .NET Application Performance Monitoring template. For more information, see .NET Application Performance Monitoring Template.

    Note

    To configure synchronization with multiple Team Foundation Servers or multiple Team Project Collections, you can run the configuration wizard multiple times. However, only one configuration can have the Default Team Project and Default Area Path specified.

  5. Click OK.

  6. If you added a new team project to synchronize with, you will be asked for TFS administrator credentials so that the wizard can automatically import the Operational Issue WITD to the new team project that is used in the configured synchronization. You can skip this step if you want to manually import the Operational Issue WITD. You must manually import the WITD when you are synchronizing with TFS 2012 using TFS Object Model 2010. For more information, see How to Manually Import an Operational Issue WITD to TFS in System Center 2012 R2.

Procedures Related to Configuring Integration with TFS

For additional information, see the following procedures related to configuring integration with TFS in System Center 2012 R2: