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Dashboards (Agile)

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Agile teams can quickly find important information about their team projects by using dashboards. Dashboards show project data, support investigation, and help teams perform common tasks more quickly.

To access a dashboard, choose Go to project portal in the ACTIVITIES pane in Team Web Access.

Note

To access dashboards, your team project must have a project portal enabled and be associated with a SharePoint site. For more information, see Access a Team Project Portal and Process Guidance. To view the project portal, you must also be a member of the Visitors or Members group for the portal.

To update or refresh Excel reports that appear in the dashboard, you must belong to a group that is granted access to the Single Sign-on enterprise application definition, or you must belong to the TfsWarehouseDataReaders security role in SQL Server Analysis Services. For more information, see Excel Reports (Agile).

In this topic

  • Dashboards Available to You

  • Sample Dashboard

  • Accessing a Dashboard

  • Using the Dashboard Toolbar

  • Using the Work Item Toolbar

Required Permissions

To view the dashboard, you must be assigned or belong to a group that has been assigned Read permissions in SharePoint Products for the team project. To create or modify work items from the dashboard, you must be a member of the Contributors group or your Edit work items in this node permissions must be set to Allow. For more information, see Excel Reports (Agile), Add Users to Team Projects, or Managing Permissions.

Dashboards Available to You

The dashboards and dashboard customization features that are available to you depend on the version of SharePoint Products that is installed on your portal, as the following table indicates. Also, the PivotChart reports and Excel Web Access Web parts that appear in dashboards require that your team project is provisioned with SQL Server Analysis Services.

Task

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard Edition

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition

Related topics

Quickly access work items that are assigned to you. You can use My dashboard to view and open the bugs, tasks, and test cases that are assigned to you.

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My Dashboard (Agile)

Review progress with the team. Agile teams can use the Project dashboard to view their own status and progress and to answer the following questions:

  • Is the team on track?

  • Is the team likely to finish the iteration on time?

  • Will the team complete the planned work based on the current burn rate?

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Project Dashboard (Agile)

Track progress toward completing an iteration. Agile teams can use the Progress dashboard to view its own progress and to answer the following questions:

  • Is the team on track?

  • Is the team delivering value (closing stories)?

  • How well did the team plan the iteration?

  • How many hours remain in the iteration?

  • How much work has been added to the iteration?

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Progress Dashboard (Agile)

Troubleshoot software quality issues with with the team. Agile teams can use the Quality dashboard to view the quality of the software that they are creating and to answer the following questions:

  • Is the team testing the correct functionality?

  • Is the team fixing bugs effectively?

  • Are tests stale?

  • Does the team have sufficient tests?

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Quality Dashboard (Agile)

Monitor test progress and find gaps in test coverage. Agile teams can use the Test dashboard to track its own progress toward testing user stories and to answer the following questions:

  • Is authoring of test cases on track?

  • Is the team analyzing automated test results?

  • Are automated tests broken?

  • Is the team's automation of test cases on track?

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Test Dashboard (Agile)

Monitor bug activity. Agile teams can use the Bugs dashboard to track its own progress toward finding and resolving code defects and to answer the following questions:

  • Is the team fixing bugs quickly enough to finish on time?

  • Is the team fixing high priority bugs first?

  • What is the distribution of bugs by priority?

  • How many bugs are being reactivated?

  • Is the team resolving and closing reactivated bugs quickly enough?

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Bugs Dashboard

Monitor code coverage, code churn, and build activity. Agile teams can use the Build dashboard to track the quality of the builds and to answer the following questions:

  • How much code is being tested?

  • How much is the code changing every day?

  • Is the quality of the builds improving?

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Build Dashboard (Agile)

Dashboards and Web Parts

Dashboards use SharePoint Products to display Web parts. You can add many types of Web parts to a dashboard. However, the two Web parts that are specific to the display of project data for Team Foundation are Excel Web Access and Team Web Access Web parts. Web parts for Excel Web Access display PivotChart reports or other data that is derived from Office Excel worksheets that access the Analysis Services database for Visual Studio ALM. Web parts for Visual Studio ALM show lists of work items, work item counts, and other project data that is derived from Team Foundation databases.

The following illustration and table show and describe a sample dashboard, Bugs dashboard. For more information, see Bugs Dashboard.

Bugs Dashboard

Dashboard element

Element title

Source data

Data displayed

Related topic
Step 1

Bug Progress

Bug Progress Excel Report

A visual representation of the cumulative count of all bugs, grouped by their state for the past four weeks.

Bug Progress Excel Report
Step 2

7-Day Bug Trend Rates

Bug Trends Excel Report

Line chart that shows the rolling average of the number of bugs that the team has opened, resolved, and closed for the past four weeks. The rolling average is based on the seven days before the date for which it is calculated.

Bug Trends Excel Report
Step 3

Active Bugs by Priority

Bugs by Priority Excel Report

A visual representation of the cumulative count of all bugs, grouped by their priority, for the past four weeks.

Bugs by Priority Excel Report
Step 4

Active Bugs by Assignment

Bugs by Assignment Excel Report

A horizontal bar chart with the total count of active bugs, grouped by priority, that are assigned to each team member.

Bugs by Assignment Excel Report
Step 5

Active Bugs

Web part for Team Web Access 

A visual representation of the cumulative count of all bugs, grouped by their state, for the past four weeks.

Triage Workbook
Step 6

Important Dates

Web part for SharePoint Products

A list of upcoming events

  • Not applicable
Step 7

Project Work Items

Web part for Team Web Access 

A count of active, resolved, and closed work items. You can open the list of work items by clicking each number. This list is derived from a Team Web Access Web part.

Work Items and Workflow (Agile)
Step 8

Recent Builds

Web part for Team Web Access

A list of recent builds and their build status. You can view more details by clicking a specific build. This list is derived from a Team Web Access Web part.

Managing and Reporting on Builds
9

Recent Checkins

Web part for Team Web Access 

A list of the most recent check-ins. You can view more details by clicking a specific check-in. This list is derived from a Team Web Access Web part.

Develop Code and Manage Pending Changes

Accessing a Dashboard

You can access a dashboard if the following conditions are true:

  • Your team project is enabled with a project portal and associated with a SharePoint site.

    Note

    To determine whether a project portal is enabled for your team project, see Access a Team Project Portal and Process Guidance.

  • You are assigned or belong to a group that has been assigned the Read permissions in SharePoint Products for the team project. For more information, see Add Users to Team Projects.

To access a dashboard

  1. Go to the Team menu and choose Show Project Portal….

    A Web browser opens and displays the default dashboard for your team project.

    Note

    If you have a problem opening the dashboard, verify that your team project is enabled with a portal. For more information, see Access a Team Project Portal and Process Guidance.

  2. In the navigation pane, click the title of the dashboard that you want to open.

Using the Dashboard Toolbar

From the dashboard toolbar, you can create a work item, an Excel report, or a copy of the current dashboard, or you can open a work item based on its ID. The following illustration shows these functions.

Dashboard toolbar

Using the Work Item Toolbar

Web parts for Team Web Access that display a list of work items also provide a work item toolbar. By using this toolbar, you can perform the functions that the following illustration summarizes.

Toolbar for Query Results Web Part

You can perform the following actions by using the work item toolbar in Web parts for Team Web Access.

  • Create a task, bug, test case, or other work item.

    A blank work item form of the type that you specify opens in Team Web Access. For more information, see Create a Work Item.

  • Refresh the items in the list from the query that it references.

  • Add or remove columns, and change the sort order of the items in the list.

    The Column Options dialog box opens in Team Web Access. For more information, see Add, Remove, Reorder, and Sort Columns.

  • Run the query behind the work item list.

    A browser window opens in Team Web Access with the results of the query.

  • Copy work items to the Clipboard.

  • Send work items to Office Outlook. 

    A Send Email dialog box opens with the work items listed in a table. For more information, see Share Work Items.

  • Create a linked work item.

    The New Linked Work Item dialog box opens in Team Web Access. For more information, see Create a Linked Work Item.

See Also

Concepts

Artifacts (Agile)

Other Resources

Excel Reports (Agile)

MSF for Agile Software Development 6.0