Configuration Changes Made to Add New Features

  • Article

When you run the Configure Features wizard, it assesses your team project and determines which features are missing and adds them. Before you can use this wizard, you have to upgrade to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012. See TFS Upgrade Requirements.

Note

To see the Configure Features link to access the wizard, you must be a member of one of the following groups: Team Foundation Administrators, Project Collection Administrators, or Project Administrators for the team project. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

The Configure Features wizard adds new objects to your team project and might update a few existing objects, but does not change your data or the workflow. It adds the new objects based on the best match of settings defined within the installed process templates and your team project. The wizard references both updated customized process templates and the latest version of Microsoft process templates installed to your team project collection and added during the upgrade process. If the wizard determines that there is more than one process template that could be used to configure features, select the one that best meets your needs.

Important

Certain work item types are required for the wizard to configure a feature. If you have renamed or deleted any of these work item types, the wizard will return the following messages:

There are no process templates available with valid configuration settings for this team project.

Your team project cannot be configured automatically.

You will have to rename or reinstate the missing work item types to your team project, and then rerun the wizard. Or, you can modify the process templates on Team Foundation Server to add the features and then rerun the wizard.

Here’s what the Configure Features wizard does:

  1. Scans the definitions in the team project to determine which features are and aren’t configured.

  2. Determines which process template stored in the team project collection contains the best match of definitions to configure missing features.

  3. For each feature that can be configured, uploads the definitions for new objects or modifies existing definitions. To learn how the wizard configures each specific feature, see Configuration actions made to add each feature.

Global dependencies

The following dependencies apply to all features that are added by the Configure Features wizard. If any conflicts occur, you will receive an error message. See Resolve Errors Received When Configuring Features.

  • For each field defined for a team project collection, the following attributes must match:

    • Friendly name

    • Data type

    • Assignment to synchronize personal names with Active Directory (syncnamechanges).

    • Reporting attributes: reporting reference name, reporting name, reporting type, and reporting format

  • Reference names assigned to fields and link types must be unique within a team project collection.

  • Friendly names of the categories must be unique within a team project.

Configuration actions made to add each feature

The Configure Features wizard performs the following actions to configure each specific feature.

Note

The wizard determines which work item types to update based on the category assignments defined in the process template selected to update your team project. For example, the Requirements Category specifies the work item types associated with the backlog.

  • Agile planning tools that support the Backlog and Board pages:

    • Adds the Task Category for the team project and the Bug Category if it is not already defined.

    • Imports the process configuration files, AgileConfiguration and CommonConfiguration. The contents of these files differ slightly across Microsoft process templates because they are each customized to work with specific work item types. The wizard may make slight modifications to the process configuration files, as needed, before it imports the files. For example, for team projects based on the CMMI process template, the CommonConfiguration file is modified to map the Original Estimate (Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.OriginalEstimate) field to support calculation of team velocity.

    • Agile planning tool dependencies:

      • Agile tools display work item types assigned to the Requirements Category and Task Category.

      • States defined for the workflow of backlog items and tasks must map to the metastates defined for the common configuration of the process template. Metastates define how planning tools treat each workflow state. At least one workflow state must map to the InProgress and to the Complete metastates as described in Customize the Backlog and Board Pages Using Process Configuration.

      • Agile tools reference the following fields, which can differ depending on the process template used to create your team project:

        • Effort assigned to a backlog item, which is used to calculate team velocity: Story Points for Agile (Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.StoryPoints), Scheduling Size for CMMI (Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.Size), and Effort for Scrum (Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.Effort).

        • Sort order assigned to a backlog item, which is used to manage the sequence of items on the backlog pages: Stack Rank (Microsoft.VSTS.Common.StackRank), or for Scrum, Backlog Priority (Microsoft.VSTS.Common.BacklogPriority).

        • The field defined to the task type of work item that is used to display capacity by activity: Activity (Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Activity) or Discipline (Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Discipline).

        • The field used to specify Remaining Work(Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork).

    To learn more about customizing the pages used by Agile planning tools, see Customize the Backlog and Board Pages Using Process Configuration.

  • Code Review to conduct and track code reviews:

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

    • Adds the Code Review Request Category and Code Review Response Category to the team project.

  • Feedback to request and track stakeholder feedback:

    • Imports the Feedback Request and Feedback Response work item types.

    • Adds the Feedback Request Category and Feedback Response Category to the team project.

    • Imports the metadata in the CommonConfiguration file that is used to display the request feedback form.

  • My Work for developers to manage their personal backlog:

    • Adds the Task Category to the team project.

    • To the task work item type definition: Adds ACTION statements to capture when work is started (Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.StartWork) and stopped (Microsoft.VSTS.Actions.StopWork)) based on workflow transition.

      Important

      The workflow definition for the task work item type must contain required STATE and TRANSITION statements.

  • Storyboarding to Link storyboards to work items:

    Inserts the Storyboard links control tab to the type definition for backlog items.Backlog items correspond to the work item types defined for the Requirements Category for the process template selected for configuring your team project.

    Note

    If there is no Requirements Category defined or if there is no TabGroup element within the type definition, then you’ll receive a warning and the Storyboards links control will not be added.

  • Hidden Work Item Types

    Adds the Hidden Types Category to the team project. This category specifies the set of work item types that users should create through a form or tool, and not manually.

    The Hidden types Category specifies the following types of work items by default:

    • Code Review Request and Code Review Response

    • Feedback Request and Feedback Response

    • Shared Steps

See Also

Concepts

Customize the Backlog and Board Pages Using Process Configuration

Update an Upgraded Team Project to Access New Features