TFS2010 Automatic folder structure

Question

I want to use TFS like a project repository; I have had a very good experience with SVN, CVS alike. But I am not sure how to achieve this with TFS2010.

I have following collections

• CUSTOMERS (Contains customers and their products)
• PRODUCTS (Contains baselines)

Note that:

• I have multiple customers.
• Multiple customers can have several multiple solutions (.SLN),
• Each solution can have multiple .PRJ files.

QUESTION 1: I want to have following project folder structure generated automatically. How to? Is there any script/addon/functionality/even a possibility to achieve this in TFS?

Every time a new customer comes in for a product; I want:

• Following folder structure to be created automatically (I've been doing this with CVS and SVN)
• Checkout a product from the PRODUCTS, and Checkin the solution files in CUSTOMERS collection.

x

CUSTOMER 1                          
--------PRODUCT 1                       
----------------Management artifacts    (.docx, xlsx, .vsd, .mpp files)
----------------Design  (.vsd files mostly)
----------------References  (Any help files provided by the customer)
----------------Requirements artifacts  (.docx, xlsx)
----------------Development                 
------------------------Solution Files (.SLN)   
--------------------------------PRJ 1   
--------------------------------PRJ 2 (Referenced in 1) 
--------------------------------PRJ 3 (Referenced in 1)     
--------------------------------PRJ n (Not referenced, standalone tool) 
----------------Testing and QA artifacts    
----------------User guide artifacts                    
----------------Deployment artifacts    
.........................................................                           

--------PRODUCT 2
--------PRODUCT n


CUSTOMER 2
.........................................................

CUSTOMER n

QUESTION 2: Is this folder structure in even realistic, from TFS perspective (since TFS primarily focuses on solutions and VS IDE)?

Note that we are small shop 20+ devs; Thanks very much in advance!

Mazzola

Answer 1

To store your office documents you can use Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), it is possible to customize the structure :

At first you need to download a process template. Lunch VS.NET, click onto menu Team / Team Project Collections Settings / Process Template Download Manager… There is a Windows SharePoint Services folder containing a file WssTasks.xml, you will find same sample on to add folders in it like this :

<documentLibraries>
      <documentLibrary name="Shared Documents" description="Shared Documents"/>
</documentLibraries>  
<folders>
     <folder documentLibrary="My Custom Folder" name="My Custom Folder"/>
</folders>

The key benefit of this approach is to allow everyone to get access to documents, not only the vs.net owners.

Broomcorn

Answer 2

I've the same requirement a few years ago. I've created a PowerShell script which automatically creates the "graceful project structure".

In TFS you have to think about various components. The SourceControl is only one part of TFS and it's also only one part from any TeamProject.

First I would say you could create 2 team project collections

• customers
• products

So you could separate all the stuff. It's also physically separated. Each TeamProjectCollection (tpc) has it's own storage.. and each requires it's own build infrastructure.

You could customize the TFS project templates to automatically create such a folder structure in source control for each new project. but I think you'll be missing some of the ALM features and concepts that TFS offers to you.

You should have a look at WorkItems and the Reporting around these WorkItems. ALM was main focus in TFS 2010 so there is a lot of new stuff...

Photobathic