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Changes Made to Team Projects and Default Process Templates During Upgrade of Team Foundation Server

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When you upgrade your server to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2012, several changes are made for all team projects defined on the server. A few features have been deprecated.

Changed features

  • Team Web Access: Administrators control access to specific features through the Web Access Permissions page. Users with permissions to connect to Team Foundation Server by default have access to a standard set of features. See Features Accessed Through Web Permissions.

  • Description field: Upon upgrade of Team Foundation Server, the Description field was changed from a field type of PlainText to HTML. Using the witadmin changefield command you can revert the data type for this field as needed. See Manage Work Item Fields [witadmin].

  • Insert images inline in HTML fields: You can now insert images inline in any work item form field that corresponds to the HTML data type. You can copy and paste HTML text or an image from another application directly into the text box using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V shortcuts.

  • Merge on save: Now when you save a work item that has been updated by another team member, the system provides you with an option to save the merged set of changes.

  • Work item change history: The History tab now contains two sub-tabs, Discussion Only and All Changes.

  • Full-text search: The Title field has been added to the full-text search index which now indexes Description, Repro Steps, and History. Also, the Contains Words and Does Not Contains Words operators have been added, which support exact matches of keywords and phrases, in addition to the Contains and Does Not Contain, which support exact and partial match searches. See Query Fields, Operators, Values, and Variables.

  • Team Queries are now Shared Queries: The Team Queries label has changed to Shared Queries to avoid confusion with team-related features. The same functionality still applies. However, if you have hardcoded URLs, you might have to update them.

  • My Favorites, queries, and query folders: You can no longer create folders under My Favorites. However, you can drag queries and query folders in Team Web Access to reorganize them between and within My Queries and Shared Queries. Queries and query folders that you define in one client appear like you defined them in the other client. When you refresh either Team Explorer or Team Web Access, changes made in one client will appear in the other.

  • Default team: A default team is configured when you add a new team project or when upgrading Team Foundation Server. If your development groups do not work in teams, you can simply work in the default team. See Get Started as a Team.

  • URL change: The virtual directory name has changed from web to tfs in this release. If you have hardcoded URLs to access a team project, work item, work item query, or other object based on the URL from a previous release, you might have to update them to access these objects from the upgraded server. See Working within Team Web Access.

  • Work Item Only View (WIOV) for Team Web Access: Using WIOV, users can now create any work item type. They aren't limited to just creating bugs. The requirements for configuring users to use WIOV have changed. See Manage Work Items in Work Item Only View (Team Web Access).

Deprecated features

  • Team Web Access: Several functions are deprecated: email work items as a list, view work items as a report, view workflow diagram for a work item type, and the work items summary control which appeared on the home page.

  • Team Explorer: You can no longer drag documents and reports into My Favorites. You can only connect to one team project at a time.

  • Extensibility and custom controls: Because the extensibility models for Team Web Access and Team Explorer are new, custom controls written based on previous versions are not compatible with the latest version of Team Foundation Server. To learn about writing new controls, see the following Microsoft websites: Work Item Custom Control Development in TF Web Access 2012 - Development and Work Item Custom Control Development in TF Web Access 2012 - Deployment.

Changes made to the default process templates for TFS Quarterly Update 1

Each of the default process templates that TFS provides has been updated to support additional regressive transitions. These transitions, shown in red in the following illustration, support moving items back to the backlog when they were incorrectly set to done or resolved. Now when you inadvertently drag a work item on the Kanban board or the task board to a resolved or closed state, you can drag it back to an earlier workflow state. The following work item types now support any-to-any workflow transitions:

  • Visual Studio Scrum 2.1: Bug, Product Backlog Item, Task

  • MSF Agile 6.1: Bug, Task, User Story

  • MSF Scrum 6.1: Bug, Task, Requirement

State diagram for Product Backlog Item

To apply the changes to your existing team projects, you need to replace the WORKFLOW sections defined for each of the updated work item types with the new definitions. You can do this by modifying the work item type definition. See Design the Workflow and Customize and Manage Work Item Types [witadmin].

To obtain the latest versions of the default process templates, you must upgrade your application tier server with Quarterly Update 1. You can obtain the upgrade from the Microsoft download site: Quarterly Update for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012.

To learn more about the update, see the Microsoft blog post: Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 1 now available.

Changes made to the default process templates

The following summary describes the most significant changes made to the default process templates provided with Team Foundation Server from their previous versions:

  • All process templates:

    • Added the Code Review Request and Code Review Response work item types.

    • Added the Feedback Request and Feedback Response work item types. Added a Feedback shared query.

    • Added process configuration to support Agile planning tools, code review, feedback, and My Work.

    • Added several new categories to the categories type definition to support the addition of new work item types.

    • Added the Hidden Types Category to hinder manual creation of specific types of work items that should only be defined through a form or tool.

    • Many work item forms have been updated to display the larger font for the Title field and a two column layout of tab groups.

    • Maintained mnemonic support only for the following fields: Area Path, Assigned To, History, Iteration Path, State, and Title. Mnemonics have been removed from all other fields within the type definitions.

    • Support files that contain forward links to process guidance content on MSDN have been updated to point to the latest content.

    • Added a version element to the ProcessTemplate plug-in file. The version number supports updating team projects when configuring new features.

    • Added a new build process template. When you upgrade from earlier versions of Team Foundation Server, you can continue to use legacy build processes. See Use Legacy Build Processes.

    To access the new work item types and other new tools, see Update an Upgraded Team Project to Access New Features.

  • Scrum Process Template:

    • Removed the Sprint type definition and All Sprints query, whose functionality has been replaced with the Agile planning tools.

    • Removed the Backlog Priority field from the work item form for the Product Backlog type definition. This field is used in the background to track the relative priority of items displayed on the backlog pages.

    • The Removed state was added to the workflow state for the Bug, Product Backlog Item, and Task type definitions, which supports removing cut items from the backlog.

    • Added the Storyboards tab to the Product Backlog Item type definition.

    • Added the Backlog Overview report to the set of SQL Server Reporting Services reports, similar to the Agile Stories Overview report.

  • Agile Process Template:

    • The New state was added as the initial state for User Stories and Tasks. This change was introduced to support transitioning User Stories and Tasks from a New state to an Active state. Without the New state, User Stories assigned to an iteration remain on the product backlog until they are resolved, which is not a desired or expected behavior. See Update the Workflow for Agile Team Projects.

    • To support removing cut work items from the backlog, the Removed state was added to the workflow state for the following work item types: User Story and Task.

    • Added the Storyboards tab to the User Story type definition.

    • The Product Planning and Iteration Backlog Excel workbooks have been removed. The Agile planning tools replace this functionality.

  • Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Process Template:

    • Added the Size field to the Requirement type definition. This field is used in calculating team velocity and forecast.

    • Added the Storyboards tab to the Requirement type definition.

    • Added the Corrective Action and Mitigation Action shared queries.

See Also

Concepts

What's New in Planning and Tracking

Compatibility between Team Foundation Clients and Team Foundation Server

Customize Process Templates

Update a Customized Process Template to Access New Features

Update an Upgraded Team Project to Access New Features