Customizing existing TFS reports

Occasionally I get asked how to create custom reports and modify the existing reports in TFS.

First, you’ll need to understand how the data cubes in the TFS Warehouse are setup.

Then, I recommend you check out the article by Ben Day on Edit the Remaining Report to Use Non-Default Status Values. He give a good step-by-step process on what you need to do to update an existing TFS Report, as well as how to recreate the two data sources, TfsReportDS and TfsOlapReportDS, which are used by the reports.

In my tinkering with creating reports, I use to think the main difference between SQL Server Standard Edition and Enterprise edition was the number of processors the server could support (and cost), but when it comes to reporting services, there’s definitely an advantage using SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Using the Standard Edition, it does not support cube perspectives, so you end up with one cube called Team System. With SQL Server Enterprise Edition, you’ll see at least seven different cubes. This makes working with the warehouse a lot easier. So if you plan to do a lot of customer reporting out of TFS, using your SQL Server Enterprise Edition licenses is going to be well worth the investment.

Excelsior!

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