Customizing TFS Process Templates - Part 2: Process Template Name, Areas, Iterations and Standard Work Items

The second part of the TFS process template customization series talks about changing the name of the process template, customizing areas and iteration and finally how to control which standard work items that are always created when a project is created from the customized template.

Update the GUID in version.txt

But before you do anything else with the process template you should ensure that you have an unique id for it.

According to https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194949(VS.80).aspx you need to update the version.txt file (found in the process template root directory). The item to change is the GUID which is found at the end of Type (see below), this GUID needs to be unique as this is the actual id of the process template inside TFS.

Sample content of version.txt:

Type=VSTF-PT-0348c5e0-621b-4747-8486-d23236993d0d
Version=1.00.0000.00

Change Process Template Name

If you downloaded one of the two standard templates as the basis for your customized template you will probably not upload our new template using the same name as the standard template, because you will then overwrite it. Hence you need to change the template name.

Locate the ProcessTemplate.xml file which can be found in the root folder of your downloaded template. The first few lines looks like this (but with other value):

<ProcessTemplate>
<metadata>
<name>Enter you custom template name here</name>
<description>Enter a description of your template here</description>

As all that I intend to do is to update how some of the Work Items operate there are no more changes necessary in this file. If you do make more advanced changes you may be required to edit this file in more ways.

Areas and Iterations

Customization of Areas and Iterations in the process template can be useful it you don't agree with the default values of the MSF process templates. However, you can also argue that there is no reason to customize these as you can easily change them on a per-project basis, there is even a UI provided in Team Explorer which you reach by right-click on your project Team Project Setting / Areas and Iterations.

The default Iterations in the MSF templates are Iteration 0, Iteration 1 and Iteration 2 and as long as you accept that projects start with Iteration 0 I don't see any reason to change these. There is really no reason to add Iteration 3 to the list as some projects don't have as many iterations and if they do you can easily add it when the project has been created.

I think it more probable that you will modify the standard areas, it is even more probable if you work in an in-house development organization as apposed to working as a consultant.

The file Classification.xml found in the Classification directory contains the definitions of default Areas and Iterations.

Standard Work Items

When you create a new project from a process template you will get a number of default Work Items created for you. When using one of the MSF process templates it will add tasks that tell you to create Vision-Scope documents and plan iterations.

The file WorkItems.xml in the WorkItems Tracking directory contains a list of all work items that are created during project creation.

If your company has specific project startup processes, e.g. apply for project intranet web site, these can easily be added as tasks in all new projects. Even if you like the default tasks you might want to translate them to your local language.

 

Read Part 1 - Basic Structure to learn about how the files are organized in a TFS process template. Next time I will describe how you can change the fields available in the work items and also how to modify the values available in Severity to match the needs of your organization.

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• Anonymous
  January 29, 2007
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