TFS Integration Tools (Platform) … The world of TFS Project Template migrations - Part 1

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In Query => Is the migration from one process template to another a plausible scenario? we queried whether there is a need to perform Team Foundation Server (TFS) to TFS migrations … the response was an overwhelming yes. What we were also told is that there is a need to migrate TFS Process Templates, especially with the release of Visual Studio 2010 and the associated need to upgrade. An in-place-upgrade is the recommended upgrade path, however, many users are falling through to the TFS Integration Tools (Platform) and are therefore asking for the relevant configuration files.

Changing process templates is not an easy task, whereby you typically need to sit down, open a XML editor (or notepad) and work out a detailed expression of the mapping in XML. If we ponder over the TFS Integration Tools (Platform) configuration manual we notice a wealth of features we can use, such as:

  • FieldMap which defines the field mappings from source to target.
  • ValueMap which defines value mappings that can be used in field mapping.
  • Conditional Fields which is used to map fields conditionally.
  • Field Aggregation  which defines a combination of more than one field from the source in one target field

… but, to deviate briefly, why am I calling the product TFS Integration Tools (Platform)? The official product name going forward is the TFS Integration Tools, which shipped recently as per After much dog fooding, the first fully supported product has been released. Until we have a clear message around the Tools versus Platform, think of the  TFS Integration Tools as being built on top of the TFS Integration Platform :)

… back to the topic at hand, project template migrations.

Please meet Richard Banks (Visual Studio ALM MVP), who has created a set of configuration files and is happy to share them with the community.
Once again, THANK YOU Richard!

His hope is that the community will take them, improve them and re-share … in short, they need a few hugs. Find out more about Richard, who lives in Sydney Australia, here  https://www.richard-banks.org/p/about-richard.html.

clip_image001 … Richard Banks

The configuration files we will be sharing as part of this blog thread include:

  • MSF Agile v4 to v5.xml
  • MSF v4 to Emc Scrum v3.xml
  • Scrum v2 to Agile v5.xml
  • scrum v2 to v3.xml

… we will cover them in the listed order. See you in part 2.