HP has recently published a white paper titled “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 on HP ProLiant Servers – Performance Summary” that has been authored by Jimi Ibbett. The paper is available here:

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA1-1793ENW&cc=us&lc=en

For any enterprise server like MOSS, capacity planning for the required performance levels is always tricky. It’s difficult to get optimal capacity without testing different types of loads on various configurations of different hardware. This paper has been published after testing various workloads on 12 different servers which were mix of HP Proliant Blade and Rack servers. The servers had various combination of  Processors – single core and dual core, AMD and Intel, x86 and x64.

You can expect to have answers for the following questions (but not limited to these) after reading this paper:

• What are best practices or example configurations for different types of environments: entry level, highly available and application optimized?
• What kind of performance can be expected for example configurations for different types of workloads (read only/read write) for parameters such as Throughput, CPU utilization for Web Frond Ends(WFE) and Database (DB) servers?
• How 32 bit and 64 bit processors are different in terms of performance and what’s HP recommendation?
• What are general rules of thumb one can follow for MOSS performance planning? One example thumb rule provide in the paper is:
  “For the 2-server SMB configuration (all Office SharePoint Server services running on a single server), assume a maximum throughput of 75-100 requests/second. For a single-server SMB configuration (All Office SharePoint Server services and SQL Server running on one server), assume a maximum throughput of 50-75 requests/second.”

• What should one do for IIS application pool tuning and memory usage?
  How different types of Caches provided in MOSS be used to get optimal performance
• What kind of network traffic be expected between different servers?
• How do you size your solution for expected throughput?
• How to determine required Throughput?
• How to estimate storage for different MOSS servers?

You’d also get to know some interesting facts such as:
The performance (server throughput) of Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be less than SharePoint Portal Server 2003 when characterized on the same type/class of server.

ssRecently, I had to get a few of my team members ready quickly for implementing Search in MOSS to search in multiple content sources (Oracle, Lotus Notes, SQL Server). So I prepared a list of URLs about the information available publicly and that would be sufficient to get started with. Sharing those URLs here:

General Search

• Overview Article: Find It All with SharePoint Enterprise Search

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/01/Search/default.aspx  

• TechNet Webcast: An In-Depth Look at SharePoint Server 2007 Search Technology (Level 200)  Event ID: 1032309959

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032309959&CountryCode=US

• TechNet Webcast: Installing and Configuring Search in SharePoint Server 2007 (Level 300)  Event ID: 1032325467

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032325467&CountryCode=US

• Enterprise Search in MOSS Overview @ MSDN

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms495418.aspx

• Operations/How-To: Add a content source for search (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/82c7c354-6347-4ae8-b5f8-7d0cdfe432401033.mspx?mfr=true

BDC and Search

• BDC Overview Video

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=221016 

• What is the Business Data Catalogue?

http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2006/10/05/What-is-the-Business-Data-Catalouge_3F00_.aspx

• BDC Overview and Links at MSDN

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546541.aspx

• TechNet Webcast: Extending SharePoint Server 2007 Search Capabilities by Exposing Data with the Business Data Catalog (Level 300)  Event ID: 1032325420

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032325420&CountryCode=US

• Blog: BDC – Enabling Search on business data 

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-4-SharePoint_2007__BDC_-_Enabling_Search_on_business_data.aspx

• Tool: BDC Meta Man is the first application that provides the ability to create Application Definitions for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) Business Data Catalog (BDC) without writing a line of code.

http://www.bdcmetaman.com/default.aspx

• Database Sample: AdventureWorksDW SQL Server 2005 Sample

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms494876.aspx

•  Web Service Sample: Walkthrough: Amazon Web Service Sample 

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms498501.aspx

• Enabling Business Data Search

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms492695.aspx

• BDC and Oracle Blogs:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/sethnidhi/archive/2007/02/04/19004.aspx

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/ldusolier/archive/2006/12/22/17172.aspx

Search In Lotus Notes

•  Configure Office SharePoint Server Search to crawl Lotus Notes (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

 http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/82c7c354-6347-4ae8-b5f8-7d0cdfe432401033.mspx?mfr=true 

• MOSS2007 – Search and Index Lotus Notes

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/helloitsliam/archive/2007/01/09/17654.aspx

• Using SharePoint 2007 to index a Lotus Notes Database

http://meiyinglim.blogspot.com/2007/01/using-sharepoint-2007-to-index-lotus.html

• Displaying correct Titles of  Lotus Notes Documents in SharePoint Search Results

http://meiyinglim.blogspot.com/2007/01/displaying-correct-titles-of-lotus.html

• How to Configure Search to Honor Lotus Notes Security Settings

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3bEN-US%3bQ288816#appliesto

For someone who has not been involved till now in any solution development which requires interoperability across web services developed on different platforms, it’s quite easy to believe that he/she can use web services specifications to achieve the required interoperability.  Because web services specifications and standards have been developed to get interoperability – so when one uses them, he should achieve it.

Unfortunately that’s not true. As far as the basic web services standards such as XML, WSDL, SOAP etc. are concerned, software vendors have been able to make their products interoperable to a great extent because of wide adoption of the WS-I’s Basic Profile. However, when one feels the need of advanced functionalities such as security, transactions, reliable message delivery in web services – many vendors are providing this through WS-* specifications such as WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging (WS-RM), WS-AtomicTransactions (WS-AT) etc. But when one needs to interoperate between web services being developed on different platforms using WS-* specifications – life is not that easy.

One might need to take care of many aspects. Even then, achieving interoperability might not be possible in some contexts. So whenever someone is designing a new solution that involves web services across different platforms – he need to provide special attention to selection of platforms and the way the solution is built.

I have recently worked on a project that involved three different platforms: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), BEA Weblogic Server and IBM Websphere Application Server and uses many WS-* specifications: WS-Security, WS-Federation, WS-RM, WS-AT. The experience was not very good as there was lot of tweaking and changes that we had to make to get different web services interact with each other; however we also learned quite a few lessons. I’ve documented these lessons in my recent article that is published in SOA Web Services Journal. You can read the article at the following location:

http://webservices.sys-con.com/read/314083.htm

Process Templates and lifecycle methodologies are one of my personal favorite areas in VSTS. So I’ve written another article on the topic in Sys Con’s The Dot Net Journal: Understanding the Methodology Workbench of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System – Underlying Concepts and Architectures

The article provides a starting point for those who are evaluating VSTS for managing and automating lifecycle methodologies in their organizations. While it provides information on what types of solutions are available for managing lifecycle methodologies and where VSTS fits in those solutions, it also explains how non Visual Studio based developers (for example java developers) can leverage the benefits provided by VSTS platform. Other topics that I covered are:

o       List of benefits and limitations of only methodology management area of VSTS

o       Introduction to Process Templates and its components

o       Implementing lifecycle methodologies using VSTS Process Templates

Happy
Reading!

Software Development Methodologies are there for a long time. Though there are quite a few tools available for business process automation, there aren’t many options available for software processes automation. VSTS address this issue to a large extent. My article – “Software-Development Methodologies and Visual Studio Team System – From Documents to Automation” that is published on Microsoft Architecture site recently – describes how VSTS addresses process automation and what you need to do to automate your processes. Specifically it discusses:

• Need for automation
• Automation using VSTS
• Different phases of developing a new VSTS process template
• Analyzing typical life cycle methodologies and implementing their artifacts using Process Template elements

As an enterprise product goes RTM, its deployment options gain more focus. The customers who adopt that product need to pay attention to non-functional areas in addition to functional features of that product. Two key non functional areas are:

• High Availability
• Capacity Planning

This is true for Team Foundation Server also. We (HP) have been involved in all these areas with Microsoft right since early Beta stages of VSTS. When VSTS was in development stages, we extended TFS to develop an enterprise project and process management solution, APPRISE. Since TFS went RTM, we’ve been working on other two areas: Capacity Planning and High Availability.

For capacity planning, HP had released deployment configuration paper with HP Servers that i had written about in one of my earlier blog. This paper had given deployment configurations of different capacities in terms of numbers of users: 10-50, 10-500, 100-500, 500-3500.

For high availability, TFS Data Tier (DT) supported HA using SQL Server Clustering, however, AT HA configuration (using NLB) required manual intervention. Read Brian’s blog for more details on that. HP provided a sophisticated and automated solution for AT HA using HP Insight Manager. HP has released a white paper on this configuration also. This is a 53 pages paper that provides each and every step in detail:

• Configuring NLBs
• Installing and configuring TFS AT
• Installing and configuring HP SIM
• Configuring the RDP Job
• Configuring HP SIM and creating Tasks

Rob Caron has also blogged on these papers here. You can find HP’s VSTS related paper here.

And while testing TFS on HA setup was going on, we also tested our solution, APPRISE on the same setup and made it compliant to both the setups: SQL Clustering and AT warm stand-by failover. We demonstrated both TFS and APPRISE HA configurations in Tech Ed 2006.

There is lot of confusion around Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS) licensing. Although, Microsoft has published a detailed whitepaper (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=55933) around licensing, still I find many questions in VSTS Forums. So I’m writing the following FAQ that answers many commonly asked questions: 

Q1.  What are the different options available for using TFS?

At present, you can have one of the following options:

Q2. How many TFS Server licenses I need when I’ve installed TFS in a dual server deployment mode (AT and DT on different servers)?

You need one server license for every server where TFS is installed. So you’ll need TWO TFS server licenses for a dual server deployment. However, you do not need extra CALs.  

Q3. If I’m using Data Tier (DT) in a SQL Server Cluster, do I need TFS Server license for every instance of cluster? Yes. For example, if you have deployed TFS in dual server mode, where AT is installed on one server and DT in installed on a SQL Server cluster with two nodes, you’ll need in total three licenses for TFS. In this case also, you do not need extra CALs Q4. Do I need additional TFS server license if I’m using TFS Proxy also?

Yes, you need full TFS license even for TFS Proxy. However, you do not need extra CALs. 

Q5. Do I need additional TFS server license for using TF Build? No, you do not TFS license for Build even if TF Build is installed on a different machine from a machine that hosts TFS. Also, you do not need Client Access License (CAL) for a device where TF Build is installed for server to server communication between TF Build and TFS. However, you need a CAL for users who are managing builds. Q6.  What are different types of clients available from Microsoft? At present, the following licensed Team Clients are available:

1. Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
2. Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
3. Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers
4. Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite 

Each of the above clients contains one CAL for TFS. So if a user has license for one of the client, he/she does not need additional CAL to access TFS. However, if you access TFS or SQL Server (where TFS is installed) in other ways such as with Team Explorer or through MS Project or MS Excel or with a third party – you need to additional CAL for each user. Only in the following situations, you don’t need addition CAL:

• View static TFS data that has been manually distributed outside of the server software e.g. MS Project or MS Excel files containing work items (Note that if you use these files to update or publish work items, you need CAL)
• Receive TFS reports through e-mail and do not indirectly access the server to refresh, create, or update data.
• Receive printed TFS reports.

Q7. There are users who access Team Project Portal in Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). Do I need CAL for such users?

As far as I understand, if they using WSS site in the following ways, you do not need
CAL:

• Accessing reports that have been manually distributed
• Accessing files containing static TFS data (such as MS Project or MS Excel files containing work items) for READONLY purposes. However, if your files are connected with TFS and  get refreshed you will need CAL
• Using WSS for any other WSS functionality (such as Threads, Events, Announcements, Lists etc.) 

Q8.  Do I need CAL if I just access Process Guidance through WSS Team Project Portal?

I think, Process Guidance is “static TFS data” – from that angle, a CAL is not required. But I’m little doubtful here. I would appreciate, if someone from Microsoft can clarify here. 

Q9. I heard that you need extra license for TFS Load Agent also. Isn’t the included in VS Team Edition for Software Testers?

Team Edition for Software Testers does not include the ability to “harness” multiple physical devices to generate additional load; load generation scenarios are limited by the hardware. Typically, for the recommended software configurations, this is approximately 1,000 virtual users (VU). If you need to simulate more VUs using multiple machines, you need to buy one Load Agent license for every 1000 VUs (i.e. capability of TFS Load agent on one machine).    Q10. Where can I Download Trial Editions?

• TFS Trial Edition: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=64135
• VSTS Team Suite Trial Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5677DDC4-5035-401F-95C3-CC6F46F6D8F7&displaylang=en  

Q11.  If I use TFS Trial Edition or Workgroup Edition, would I be able to upgrade these editions to a full Edition

Yes, Microsoft support different types of upgrades for TFS. You can look here (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404844.aspx ) for more details. 

Q12.  Where can I find more details?

The TFS licensing whitepaper (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=55933) published by Microsoft explains the licensing considerations and scenarios in detail. You should read that document before making your final decision about the TFS licenses. The pricing info is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/default.aspx.        

DISCLAIMER: The information provided here is just my understanding gained from licensing whitepaper (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=55933) and other publicly available information. I’m providing this with the intention of helping community. However, this should not be regarded as official FAQ from Microsoft. If you find any anomalies here, please point me, I’d correct those.  

Jeff Beehler recently posted a blog about the topics he plans to write in near future. I would like to see few blogs on opportunities of Solution Integrators. There are so much of documentation available on how to deploy and use VSTS. But what’s Microsoft’s plan. Do they expect customers to deploy VSTS on their own or they expect customers to engage Solution Integrators (SIs) for the purpose? However, is only deployment of development environment (can we address VSTS as that) large enough opportunity for SIs to pursue. Would they put money to define service offerings around this small opportunity? In this case, what a SI can offer?

- Physical Deployment of TFS (but how hard is it – would customers really buy that?)
- Customization of Process Templates as per customer needs
- Training workforce on using VSTS

Somehow, I feel that such a huge product with great extensibility options is being targeted to a smaller domain as compared to its capabilities. I feel Microsoft can do much better in selling VSTS, if it can come up with scenarios or solution that use VSTS as one key component of overall solution than just as a development environment. They can come up with many more examples like The Requirements Authoring Starter Kit that i wrote about in one of my earlier blog.

I keep getting questions and comments for my article, “Combine Microsoft Project and Visual Studio Team System for a One-two Punch of Productivity”. The article is available at:

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/30187

So, I thought of creating this blog entry, so that I can answer those questions here. The article covers the following topics:

• Problems in day to day Project Management activities
• How VSTS centralized architecture addresses those problems
• How do you create a new Project Plan and connect to VSTS
• How do you work with project tasks (creating, updating, deleting, resolving conflicts etc.)
• Column Mappings and Areas and Iterations
• Comparison with Microsoft Project Server

Happy
Reading!

As I’m from a Solution Integration and Services background, I always used to think what kind of solutions and services we can offer around VSTS. One option is to provide consulting, deployment and training services to the organizations that are planning to adopt VSTS. The other could be to provide a solution that is purely and completely based on VSTS and TFS such as APPRISE, an enterprise project and process management solution. But aren’t that too less options for a product that is extensible and customizable to such a great extent? 

TFS is such a feature rich product that it should be used in many more solutions than just in development related environments. Requirements Authoring Starter Kit is a perfect example of such a solution. The solution integrates and uses a number of Microsoft products including TFS:

• Microsoft Office Word 2003
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server

The article about RASK introduced it as:

“The Requirements Authoring Starter Kit (RASK) provides a customizable requirements-authoring solution for software development teams. RASK serves two purposes. It provides the basis of a Requirements Authoring solution and illustrates how to access Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server programmatically from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System (Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office). RASK has broad functionality that you can extend with minimal effort.” 

You may not use the solution for the functionalities it provides, but you may still like it to learn so many ideas like:

• How TFS can be integrated in a solution that comprises of so many products that are not related to development environments
• Get few more example on TFS extensibilty
• Another example of the capabilities of Visual Studio Tools for Office and Office
• …

MSF Process Guidance has been very useful, but one of the least talked about area in VSTS. Both out-of-the-box Process Templates: 

• MSF for Agile Software Development
• MSF for CMMI Process Improvement

in VSTS provide very informative, user friendly and intuitive way of learning the artifacts defined in a software development lifecycle methodology. A lifecycle methodology may define different types of artifacts such as processes, work streams, activities, roles, metrics, enforcement policies etc. Generally, all these artifacts are documented in large static documents. Practitioners need to learn about these processes and artifacts by reading these long boring documents. However, the Process Guidance makes the learning process efficient and interesting by providing all the information about the methodology in an inter-connected set of HTML pages. You can browse through these pages according to the role you are performing or according to the activity you are pursuing. You can also see different work items and their fields involved in different steps of the activities.  

Process Guidance is provided as a part of VSTS Process Templates and is processed by Windows SharePoint Services plug-in during project creation. Like most of the constituents of VSTS Process Templates, Process Guidance can also be customized according to the requirements of your methodologies. Many articles, blogs, documents have been written by a large number of authors on customizing Process Templates parts: Work Items, Classifications, Roles and Permissions, Source Control Policies etc. However, there was hardly any documentation available on how to customize the Process Guidance.  

The final Process Guidance is available in the form of simple HTML pages, however customizing the Process Guidance is not as simple as editing the HTML pages. The Process Guidance is based on XML files and you need to use different tools including InfoPath, XML and XSL editors, and MSFWinBuild to get those inter-connected intuitive HTML pages from the source XML files. Finally, some attention has been given to Process Guidance and a set of 6 articles have been published on how to customize the Process Guidance. The articles are:

• Customizing the MSF Process Guidance
• Customizing Activities, Workstreams, and WorkItemTypes in the MSF Process Guidance
• Customizing Roles, RoleGroups, HowTos, HowToProcedures, and WorkProducts in the MSF Process Guidance
• Customizing Reports, Queries, Views, and Overview Pages in the MSF Process Guidance
• Adding Cross Referencing and CMMI Adherence to the MSF Process Guidance
• Building the MSF Process Guidance HTML Content Pages with MSFWinBuild

Jorgen Thelin and Kirill Gavrylyuk from Microsoft announced the next Web Services Interoperability Plug-Fest : September 26-28, 2006

These are the snippets from their message:

The Interop Plug-fest is an ad-hoc, open forum for companies who have implementations of various Web Services protocols to meet with engineers from the Connected Systems Group and test against the upcoming version of Microsoft’s Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as codename Indigo) product. …

This plug-fest event is open to anyone who desires to participate and who can bring an implementation to test interoperability with Microsoft’s Windows Communication Foundation product in any or all of the following areas:

• Basic Messaging Scenarios using protocols: SOAP1.1, SOAP1.2, WS-Addressing 2004/08, MTOM
• Message Security Scenarios using WS-Security 1.0, WS-Security 1.1, WS Secure Conversation 2005/02, WS-Trust 2005/02, Username Token Profile (1.0, 1.1), X509 Token Profile (1.0, 1.1), SAML Token Profile (1.0, 1.1), Kerberos Token Profile 1.1.
• STS- Security Token Service scenarios
• Reliable Messaging using WS-RM 2005/02
• Transactions using WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-Coordination
• WS-Policy and WS-MetadataExchange are included in several scenarios

For partipating, you can have a look at their complete message:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WS-Builders/message/98

HP GDAS is demonstrating its VSTS based solution APPRISE in Tech Ed India Venues. If you want to have a look at this solution, Visit HP booth at the next venue i.e. Bangalore on June 22 and June 23.

HP used Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server, TFS, to deliver APPRISE, an enterprise wide solution for software development project and process management. Through the extensibility, flexibility, and pre-built features of Team Foundation Server, HP rapidly and cost-effectively delivered APPRISE, a solution that supports and enforces HP GDAS’s own development methodologies, processes, and reporting needs.

The key benefits of the solution are:

• CMMi Level 5 Compliant
• Provides the aggregated view of individual team projects
• Web Based: to enable non .Net based projects
• Schedule Tracker Service for sending alerts/notifications for better project management
• Provides additional methodologies such as Waterfall

For detailed information about APPRISE, you can read the following case study published by Microsoft.

https://members.microsoft.com/customerevidence/Common/FileOpen.aspx?FileName=21147_HP_13595_final.doc

As I mentioned earlier also, one good feature that was added in Release Candidate was support for “Friendly Name” for “assigned to” field in work items. Earlier, the field supported only “Windows Account Name”. It made assignment much more meaningful. But for the organizations that use “comma” (,) in friendly, it created a bit of problem in MS Project Integration. For example, if my friendly name is “Narang, Sanjay”, MS Project doesn’t accept that because “Resource Names” field of MS Project doesn’t allow “comma”. It treats it as two separate resources “Narang” and “Sanjay”

You can workaround the problem by changing the “list separator” of the machine to something other that comma e.g. semi colon(;). You can do that through Machines’ Control Panel -> “Regional and Language Options” ->  “Customize Regional options” -> “List Separator”

HP released a paper on High Availability Server Deployment Configurations for VSTS. This paper provides server deployment configurations and bills of material for four server deployments for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. A one server configuration for 10 to 50 users on tower- or rack-based system, a rack server configuration for 10-500 users, a scaled out configuration for 100 to 500 users and a HP BladeSystem configuration for the largest user count of 500 to 3500 users.

Snippets from the paper:
HP has developed a method of providing high availability for Team Foundation Server using HP Systems Insight Manager and tools from HP ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack.

This solution uses Systems Insight Manager to monitor Team Foundation Server for a failure and then enables a standby server to come up in its place. Using HP Systems Insight Manager and HP ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack the services from Foundation Server can be highly available to mission critical deployments of VSTS. Check out more at:

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/tech/tech_TechDocumentDetailPage_IDX/1,1701,9460,00.html

As Microsoft is close to finalize the feature set for next version of Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), I’m noting down my wish list of the features that i would like see in the next version. As i could not participate in SDR, thought this could be another way to give my feedback. Hope that some of this finally make to the released VSTS V2. It is little long, but i wanted to cover all that i had in mind. Here the list goes:

Work Items Related Improvements

Field Rules that I missed a lot

I consider work items as the most useful feature of VSTS. It provides large number of field rule to define the behaviors and constraints on fields. The following is the list that I missed a lot: 

1. Minimum and Maximum Values: There could be many integer fields where customers need to limit the value of integer fields of a WIT between some minimum and maximum values. But WIT schema does not provide any such rule. For example, We are using Percentage Complete field in Task WIT. So we need to limit this field between 0 and 100
2. NotLessThan, NotGreaterThan rules: We have many work item types that have "Start Date" and "End Date" fields. The obvious constraint for "End Date" is that it can not be less than "Start Date". I'm sure, this would be very common requirement for many customers.

But there is not tag to define above rule in WIT definition language. Can't we have tags like <NOTLESSTHAN field="Example" /> and <NOTGREATERTHAN field="Example" /> added to the language?

Allow Schema Changes for work item types

There are some scenarios, where you need to add extra elements or attributes to the default WIT schema. For example, I’ve provided my wish list of two field rules above. Others would have their own list. It’s not feasible for a product to fulfill everyone’s wish list. 

If VSTS can allow developers to extend the WIT schema, they can add extra fields or attributes on their own. This becomes important, when some organization is using its own custom client for work items. TFS and Visual Studio can ignore such additional fields, but custom clients can make use of these. It would be great for such custom “work item clients” developers if such WIT extension can be allowed.

Programmable capability to hook on to work item changes before commit

Allow schema change will help only those customers who have their own custom UI. It won’t help customer who use Visual Studio as their work item UI (which would be the case most of times). It is because the solution does not stop users for entering wrong values through Visual Studio. So customers get limited only to the rules that are available in WIT schema.

One solution for this could be providing “WorkItemChanging” event, which is fired before the changes to a work item are committed to the TFS. Customers can subscribe for this event and verify their business rules in the handler for this event. If the changes do not comply with business rules, there should be mechanism to throw a particular type of exception. This exception should cancel the work item commit operation and send appropriate messages back to the caller. This will make work item types definitions very extendible and customers would be able to add any kind of business rule.

Just check with any developer who had to change design of his work item type because he/she didn’t find a particular “field rule” in the schema. They would rate this as high priority enhancement. 

Work Item Type based authorization

The way authorization is implemented currently in VSTS, a user can either write to all types of the work items or can not write to any type of the work items. It’s not possible to specify that a user can write to one type of work item and can not write to the other type of work item. But, generally most customers would need that kind of flexibility. For example, it is okay to allow developers to write to Task type work items but they should not be allowed to write to some other types of work items e.g. Risk

Work Items Delete

At present, if a WIT is imported into a team project, it can not be deleted. All the work items in a team project show up in the Add New Work Item menu option. So if a WIT is imported into a team project by mistake, you don’t have straight forward way to restrict users from adding work items of that type. This utility can be added in the next version.

MS Project Integration

This is one of features in VSTS that I liked most. You can also find my article on this area. I’d like to see the following features in next version

1. Support for hierarchies: Project Managers (PMs) use “Summary Tasks” in MS Project a lot. We generally use “indent” and “outdent” commands to change the level of tasks to give a hierarchical structure to our project plan. But the support for storing these hierarchy levels is not there in Work Items in the current version. You can use hierarchies as long as you store a local copy of that plan that synchronizes with TFS. But, other team members who don’t have access to that local file and take the work items from TFS won’t be able to see the hierarchies.
2. Multiple Resource Names: Another common thing that PMs do in MS Project is to assign a particular task to multiple resources. But, because a work item can only be assigned to one person, you can not assign multiple resources for a work item in MS Project also.

I feel, the multiple resource assignment should not only be added in MS Project Integration, but also in Work Items.

1. Using Display Name:  One good feature that was added in Release Candidate was support for “Friendly Name” for “assigned to” field in work items. Earlier, the field supported only “Windows Account Name”. It made assignment much more meaningful. But for the organizations that use “comma” (,) in friendly names, it created a bit of problem in MS Project Integration. For example, if my friendly name is “Narang, Sanjay”, MS Project doesn’t accept that because “Resource Names” field of MS Project doesn’t allow “comma”. It treats it as two separate resources “Narang” and “Sanjay”

Although there are work around available for this problem, but I’d like to some better solution in the next release.

Web Based Client

Team Explorer and Work Item related tools in Visual Studio are awesome! But still, if we can have a web based client for accessing Team Foundation data – nothing like that. It would allow even non Microsoft developers who don’t want to install Visual Studio to make use of TFS. Although there are some third party tools like TeamPlain available, but there is no match for Microsoft’ own product. 

Integration with Microsoft Project Server

I feel it’s very important to provide integration with Project Server; as that will help VSTS to gain much wider acceptance from customers. I understand that efforts are already going on in this direction both inside Microsoft as well as outside with the community. I’m adding this point here just to emphasize that it is important feature that we are looking for.

Support for organization Structure

Each Team Project is an independent entity without any relationship with the other one. So when you need consolidated data (e.g. total active review work items) or a drill down or drill up report (schedule variance) for a particular organization unit, there is no out of box way available for that. It would be much easier, if they can introduce some way to associate Team Projects to a particular organization unit of the organization structure.

The Classification service does the similar job for project work items and does a very good job. If this can be extended to one level higher to support organization structure, nothing like that!

Multiple Instances of TFS

In the current version, if you deploy two different instances of TFS in your organization, there is no out of box way to relate the data between the two instances. There could be number of areas, where you would like to have this synchronization:

1. Using Global Lists from one instance in other
2. Writing reports that collect data from multiple projects across the instances
3. Support for having single project span across different instances (could be required for big team or distributed teams)

Global List synchronization with External Sources

Most of times, the members of Global Lists would come from database or third party tool. It becomes painful for TFS Administrators to keep the Global List updated, if the main source changes frequently. There is way to have this kind of synchronization as explained in Team Foundation Blog. But, it would be great, if some “automatic” synchronization can be provided with external sources.

WSS Plug-In: Document Libraries should take source from web sites

WSS plug-in takes the location of documents to be uploaded to the team site from relative paths in the local machine. Most Customers would upload the document libraries with organization’s standard checklists and templates. Generally, such standard documents are stored in some central web site that is regularly updated with newer versions of those documents. But because WSS Plug-in takes source files locations only from local machine, TFS Administrator need to first copy the documents to local machine and then run the PCW. This may also be reason of inconsistencies between the latest version in central documents web site and team sites.

Is should be possible that “source” attribute in WSS Document Library elements to take HTTP based documents links so that PCW can automatically downloads the document from central web site and upload that to the team site.