New Power Tool for handling display name change in TFS

In an earlier post, Dan had posted the details on how a display name change in Windows or Active Directory doesn't automatically get updated in all the areas in TFS. We had a tool to help address this issue that was available only through our Customer Support.

Now, in our latest Power Tool release, we have added a new tool (TfsUsers) that helps administrators update TFS when user display names are updated in Active Directory. Brian gave a preview of the available Power Tools in his post. We now have released the latest set of July '08 Power tools.

There are two commands available on this new tool: computedelta and update. The first command, computedelta, helps generate a snapshot of the current state of valid users in TFS and identifying the fields that store person data . This snapshot is used as a baseline for computing the user display names that changed at a later point in time and automatically generating a mapping file. The mapping file is used as an input for the update command which updates the display names in TFS.

The latest Power Tool removes the manual mapping file generation that was previously needed and is also more easily available than our old tool, TfsWitDisplayNames. TfsUsers will help you till our next release where we are plan to make the updates transparent.

Please let us know what you think by emailing 'tfswitf at microsoft.com' or leaving a comment.

Sunder Raman

Program Manager, Team Foundation Server