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Get your users for nothin' and your sync for free

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Many folks have written on the forums about trouble getting new users to access Team Foundation Server. There are a few things that are important to know here. The first is that we actually cache external identities in our databases so there can be a delay while we sync the external data and then populate our tables with the necessary information. When does that sync happen? Well, in TFS 2005 (codename Whidbey), there are three times when the sync is supposed to occur:

  1. When the system first starts up
  2. When a user adds an external identity to a TFS group
  3. When our sync timer fires once per hour

Unfortunately, we discovered that the third case doesn't work in the RTM version. We're expecting the fix for this to come out in an upcoming release. In the meantime, however, there is one important thing to note. By default, the application pool that runs the TFS service on the application tier will shut down after 20 minutes of inactivity. Hence, if there are no server requests for 20 minutes, the next time someone makes a request we'll restart the service and then kick off a sync. Unless your org has people working 24/7, this means that the AppPool will shutdown overnight and restart the following morning as the first user performs any TFS operation. In addition, you can force this to occur by resetting the AppPool (or IIS) on your AT yourself, though this will cause a service outage. You can also directly add users or groups to TFS groups to begin a sync of that particular external group.

Kudos to anyone who can identify the source of the title

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2006
    Quite so, Børge. As a reward, do you have any requests for more information on anything related to setup and administration of Team Foundation Server? Let me know, and I'll try to furnish an answer in a future blog post.
  • Anonymous
    November 15, 2006
    Adam Singer on Get your users for nothin' and your sync for free. Buck Hodges on Updated version of...
  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2007
    As with many of my other Administration and Operations posts, this one stems from posts I've seen on
  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2007
    I'm still alive! Yes, I know you all agree that's great news. At least, I think it's great news so will
  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2008
    We've seen a couple of customers run into a rare problem where the account being used to set up a new