Upload or download a process template

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019 | TFS 2018 - TFS 2013

When you create a project, the Project Creation Wizard (PCW) reads the process template to configure initial settings and upload artifacts and template files. Each process template defines the building blocks of the work item tracking system and other subsystems. For the Hosted XML and On-premises XML process models, you can customize a process template to either update a project or create a project. For the Inheritance process model, you customize work tracking through a process. To learn more, see Customize your work tracking experience.

You can upload, download, and delete process templates for a project collection. Also, you can mark a template to appear as the default when you add projects.

Tip

To access the latest versions of the default process templates:

• Install or upgrade to the latest version of TFS.
• Download the zipped template file using the Process Template Manager. You'll need to use a version of Visual Studio that is at the same version level as TFS. You can install the latest version of Visual Studio Community for free.
• You can access the latest versions of the default process templates installed on TFS 2017 here: %programfiles%/TFS 15.0/Tools/Deploy/ProcessTemplateManagerFiles/1033 (for TFS 2015, the main folder is TFS 14.0). For descriptions of each file and folder, see Overview of process template files.

Prerequisites

• Open the same version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio Community, or Team Explorer as the on-premises Azure DevOps Server that you connect to. For example, if you connect to an instance of Azure DevOps Server 2019, you must connect from Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio Community 2019. You can always download a free version of Visual Studio Community from the Visual Studio download site.

• To manage process templates, you must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group, To get added to this group, see Change project collection-level permissions.

Manage a process template

Note

The way the Process Template Manager works changed with the release of Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio 2019. Opening the Process Template Manager from Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio 2019 opens the web portal Collection Settings or Organization Settings.

Visual Studio 2019

1. From Visual Studio 2019, connect to an on-premises Azure DevOps Server collection that uses On-premises XML process model.

2. Choose Team>Team Project Collection Settings>Process Template Manager from the menu bar.

   

   A web browser tab opens to the Organization Settings>Process page.

   

3. To upload a process template, choose the Upload Process Template option.

   

   In the Upload process template dialog, choose the .zip folder that contains the root file, ProcessTemplate.xml, for the process template that you want to upload. See also Process template restrictions and validation checks.

   

4. To download or export a process template, choose the actions icon, and choose the Export option.

   

5. To set a process as the default when adding new projects or to disable a process from being used, choose the actions icon for the process, and select either the Set as default process or Disable process options.

   

Visual Studio 2017

1. From Visual Studio 2017, connect to an on-premises Azure DevOps collection.

2. Choose Team>Team Project Collection Settings>Process Template Manager from the menu bar.

   

   A web browser tab opens to the Organization Settings>Process page.

   

3. To upload a process template, choose the Upload Process Template option.

   

   In the Upload process template dialog, choose the .zip folder that contains the root file, ProcessTemplate.xml, for the process template that you want to upload. See also Process template restrictions and validation checks.

   

4. To download or export a process template, choose the actions icon, and choose the Export option.

   

5. To set a process as the default when adding new projects or to disable a process from being used, choose the actions icon for the process, and select either the Set as default process or Disable process options.

   

Visual Studio 2015

1. From Visual Studio 2015 or earlier version, open the Process Template Manager from the Team>Team Project Collection Settings>Process Template Manager bar menu.

   

   You'll see a list of each process template that has been uploaded to the project collection.

   

   Tip

   For a comparison of the default process templates—Agile, CMMI, and Scrum—see Choose a process.

   The Upload, Download, Make Default, and Delete buttons are disabled when you don't have the necessary permissions to manage process templates.

2. Select the process template that you want to work with and then choose from the following actions.

Upload

To upload a process template.
In the Upload Process Template dialog box, choose the folder that contains the root file, ProcessTemplate.xml, for the process template that you want to upload. See also Process template restrictions and validation checks.

Download

To download the process template to a local computer.
In the Download Process Template dialog box, select a folder where the process template will be downloaded.

If you're downloading a process template to use to configure new features, manually add new features or update a custom process template to enable new features--choose the process that corresponds to the one you used previously to create your project. For example, if you're updating a project based on the Scrum process template, then select Scrum. All version numbers have been removed from the process templates. If you don't see Agile, CMMI, or Scrum, then you need to update TFS.

You can determine which process template to select based on the work item types defined for your existing project.

Make Default

To cause the selected process template to appear as the default selection in the New Team Project Wizard.

Delete

To permanently remove the selected process template from the collection.

Correlate a process template with an existing project

To determine the type of process template that was used to create your project, review the work item types that appear in the New Work Item menu for Team Explorer and then compare them with the work item types in the following chart. If your work item types differ from those items shown, then a custom process template might have been used.

Scrum

Agile

CMMI

Process template restrictions and validation checks

If you upload the process template through the web portal, you may come across errors such as those shown in the following image.

Resolve each error and then retry the upload process. You may find additional information about resolving process template errors from Resolve validation errors for process import.

Uploading a process template requires that it pass the following validation checks.

• Process template names must be unique and 256 Unicode characters or less. Same-named templates will overwrite existing templates.
  Also, names can't contain the following characters: . , ; ' ` : / \ * | ? " & % $ ! + = ( ) [ ] { } < >
  For more restrictions, see Naming restrictions.
• Process template folders can't contain any .exe files. If they do, the process template may upload successfully, however project creation will fail.
• Process template total size should be 2 GB or less, or project creation will fail.
• The upload process runs a partial verification check to make sure that the XML of each process template XML file is valid. If you receive any errors when you try to upload the process template, review the XML to determine the cause of the error. Duplicate tags in an XML file can cause errors. If there's no error in the XML, check to make sure all the appropriate files are included in your process template in the correct folder locations.

Important

The schema definition for process templates uses a mix of camel-case and all capitalized elements. If you encounter errors when validating your type definition files, check the case structure of your elements. Also, the case structure of opening and closing tags must match according to the rules for XML syntax.

See Process template plug-ins: Index to XML element definitions.

Related articles

Periodically, updates are made to the process templates to support new features. For details, see Changes made to process templates.

• Create a project
• Customize a process template
• Process template and plug-in files
• Import and update a process (Hosted XML)
• Customize your work tracking experience

Update a process template to enable new features

When you upgrade your on-premises Azure DevOps to a later version, new features may become available. To gain access to these new features, you may need to update a customized process template.