NOTICE: The Release Candidate compatible version has been released. You can find the new version of the power tool here: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/a4f8a47e-1f6b-49d6-8f6e-34f705a2001b
The Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 Power Tools is our first public release that supports the new 2010 Server and its functionality. We recommend that you read our blog post outlining all of the changes that went into this release.
The following are the Power Tools supported in this release.
Team Foundation Server Power Tools installs Visual Studio Team System Process Editor, which is a process template editor for editing Team Foundation Server process templates inside the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The installation media includes separate documentation for the Visual Studio Team System Process Editor, which includes a user guide and a Readme file that includes known issues.
Note The Team System Process Editor no longer requires the Domain-Specific Language Tools for Visual Studio 2005 Redistributable Components.
The Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer (Team Foundation Server BPA) is a diagnostic tool that performs the following functions:
· Gathers configuration information from a Team Foundation Server deployment
· Performs specific tests on the Team Foundation Server deployment
· Analyzes the collected information according to specific rules and reports the findings as information, warning, or error messages
· Provides links to articles to resolve warning and error messages
You can use the Team Foundation Server BPA in either a pre-installation or a production Team Foundation Server environment. You can use the Team Foundation Server BPA to perform the following tasks:
· Proactively verify that the Team Foundation Server configuration is set according to recommended best practices
· Determine configurations that differ from default, recommended, or required settings
· Identify the source of problems in an unhealthy Team Foundation Server deployment
Team Foundation Server Power Tools also installs a set of check-in policies. The custom policies include:
Custom Path Policy
Works with existing Team Foundation Server check-in policies. It provides a mechanism that lets you specify the source control path or paths upon which a particular policy acts. This initiates a scenario where you can enforce a different sets of rules for different source control folders. For example, one folder can have more stringent code analysis policy rules applied than another folder.
Forbidden Patterns Policy
Allows you to specify a file extension or a regular expression that you can use to keep certain file types from being checked in to source control. This policy is most useful for DLL-files, build artifacts, or automatically-generated Web site files that are generated automatically during development. Versioning these files is not appropriate since they are on demand and specific to the development environment. The Forbidden Patterns policy scans each of the file names on check-in. It determines if there is a match. If there is a match, the check-in is blocked.
Changeset Comments Policy
The Changeset Comments policy allows you to verify that the Comments text box in the Check In dialog box is not empty. You cannot check in a file if the Comments text box is empty.
Work Item Query Policy
The Work Item Query policy allows you to specify a team query to which the work item associated with a check-in must belong. If the results of the query do not include the work item associated with the check-in, check-in is blocked.
Team Foundation Power Tools install a Work Item Templates feature that supports the ability to create, apply, capture, and set default work item templates. This feature adds additional menu items to the Team Work Item Templates menu.
You use work item templates to create or update work items. Work Item Templates automatically set field values. This feature conveniently reduces the number of steps to create or update work items. For example, you can create a task template that will set the area path, iteration path, and discipline whenever you use it to create or edit a task.
The Alert Editor tool is a Visual Studio plug-in and enables flexible subscriptions to events in Team Foundation Server.
Allows core version control operations within Windows Explorer without using Team Explorer.
Provides a PowerShell pipeline and cmdlets for Team Foundation Server. Initial support is for basic version control operations.
Team Foundation Server Power Tool is a command-line tool. To use these commands, start tfpt.exe at the command prompt. Some of the commands will display a graphical user interface (GUI) when used.