Team System: TFS Event Handler

TFS Event Handler v1.3 released

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:08:37 GMT

Updated and improved for Team System 2008.

http://www.codeplex.com/TFSEventHandler

The TFS Event Handler makes it easier to notify users of changes to Work Items in Team Foundation Server. You will no longer need to add individual alerts to users.

It is developed in .NET 3.5 SP1 for Team Foundation Server 2008 and is deployed as a system service.

I have added support for groups. If you add a TFS group into the Assigned To drop down all members of that group will receive notifications!

You will need to allow groups in your Assigned to list. Below is a snippet from me Bug work item type as it stands at the moment.

   1: <FIELD reportable="dimension" type="String" name="Assigned To" refname="System.AssignedTo">

   2:     <HELPTEXT>The person assigned to act on the bug, either to fix it or to verify the fix</HELPTEXT>

   3:     <ALLOWEXISTINGVALUE />

   4:     <ALLOWEDVALUES filteritems="excludegroups">

   5:         <LISTITEM value="[project]\Contributors" />

   6:     </ALLOWEDVALUES>

   7: </FIELD>

You can see on line 4 that there is a filter for excluding the groups from the list. If you are using TFS Event Handler v1.0 or v1.1 then you will need this line. If you install the new TFS Event Handler v1.3 then you will be able to remove that and start assigning work items to Groups.

Note: Although they will now get an email, the work item will not appear in their “My Work items” query. You may want to consider creating a Query for each Group.

The Alerts that you no longer need users to individually setup are:

A work item is assigned to you, or a group you are a member of.
A work item that is assigned to you, or a group you are a member of is, reassigned to someone else.
A work item that you created is assigned to someone else, or a group.

There is also a framework for creating and deploying your own event handlers that can do pretty much whatever you want. One of the shipped examples updates “Heat ITSM” whenever a work item that contains a Heat Id is changed.

Technorati Tags: TFS,VSTS,Team System,Team Foundation Server,Visual Studio Team System,TFS Event Handler

TFS Event Handler v1.1 released

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:38:25 GMT

Updated and improved for Team System 2008.

http://www.codeplex.com/TFSEventHandler

The TFS Event Handler makes it easier to notify users of changes to Work Items in Team Foundation Server. You will no longer need to add individual alerts to users.

It is developed in .NET 3.5 SP1 for Team Foundation Server 2008 and is deployed as a system service.

The Alerts that you no longer need users to individually setup are:

A work item is assigned to you.
A work item that is assigned to you is reassigned to someone else.
A work item that you created is assigned to someone else.

Technorati Tags: TFS,VSTS,Team System,Team Foundation Server,Visual Studio Team System,TFS Event Handler

.NET Service Manager

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:23:45 GMT

A while a go I create a Service Manager. A way of wrapping local and remote services (widgets, bits, things) for use in any application within your business or just in your own code…

I made the source available before, but as I am now going to be using and updating it again, I have created a Codeplex Project for it and put it up on my own site and called it .NET Service Manager.

You can download the source code, and in a very short while I will have a first release up…

It is quite simple, but has a plethora of uses… One of the best is creating Client side API’s for web services and components of applications…

Technorati Tags: .NET Service Manager,RDdotNET,widgets

RDdotNET

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:19:02 GMT

Well I finally got of by behind and set up a site for RDdotNET, its not special or clever, but it does let me host ClickOnce Applications like the TFS Sticky Buddy and give a single portal to my other tools. I only have TFS Sticky Buddy and TFS Event Handler up at the moment, but I will expand on that.

Eventually all my bits and bobs will be up there with my blog over here.

Hopefully you will find the ClickOnce hosting useful, if not the site content…

Technorati Tags: RDdotNET,TFS Event Handler,TFS Sticky Buddy

TFS Event Handler Update

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:48:20 GMT

The TFS Event Handler project on CodePlex has been updated today to take care of a number of bugs that were introduced in the last update. These have all been fixed and we are currently dogfooding with the new release. The Event Handlers have also been updated to take care of some issues that we found when using them in anger...

Download the latest working release here

View the Documentation here

Technorati Tags: TFS Event Handler, Team Foundation Server, TFS

Linked in VSTS Group

Martin Hinshelwood — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:52:22 GMT

If you are a developer who customises or extends Visual Studio Team System then this LinkedIn group is for you...

VSTS Developer

NOTE: All requests to join these groups will be checked before they will be approved. Evidence of your participation in VSTS development.

Technorati Tags: VSTS, TFS, Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio Team System, LinkedIn

Linked in Codeplex developers group

Martin Hinshelwood — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:41:37 GMT

If you are a developer on Codeplex then there are now two Codeplex LinkedIn groups for you to join.

Codeplex Developer

All members must have an account with CodePlex and be a developer on at least one project. Please provide your account name after requesting to join...

Codeplex Coordinator

All members must be a Coordinator of at least one Codeplex project.

NOTE: All requests to join these groups will be checked before they will be approved. Please provide a link to your Codeplex profile.

Technorati Tags: Codeplex, Developer, LinkedIn, Coordinator, Codeplex Developer, Codeplex Coordinator

Another day another Codeplex Project

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:18:46 GMT

I have been using the Useful Sharepoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities project on CodePlex to augment the capabilities of SharePoint Designer to add such features as "Start another workflow" which is very useful for compartmentalising your workflow so as to not make it too complicated.

Well I found a wee problem. The "Lookup user info" activity only looks up information from the site and not from the users MOSS profile. So I started another CodePlex project for activities I will be building and I am creating once called "Lookup user profile" on my shiny new MOSS Designer Workflow Activities project.

This one Activity will alleviate my immediate need, but I can see many more in the future...

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint Designer, MOSS, Sharepoint 2007, Custom Activity, WF, Activity, Sharepoint

New Event Handlers

Martin Hinshelwood — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:20:28 GMT

I have added an extra event handler to the TFS Event Handler (Prototype), and this makes two.

Assigned To Handler

The Assigned to handler send a users an email when a work item is assigned to them unless they did the assigning themselves.

Reassigned Handler

The reassigned handler send an email to a user to whom a work item used to be assigned, letting them know that they no longer have that piece of work in their list.

These handlers are easily added to a current deployment and are packaged together. You will need to update the version of your prototype deployment by downloading the latest version, but it does fix a number of found bugs.

Once you have the new version, download the Assignment Handlers rar file from the release page and extract them into the "c:\Program Files\RDdotNet\RDdotNet Team Server Event Handler (Prototype)\EventHandlers\WorkItemTracking" folder.

Stop the "TFS Event Handler (Prototype)" service and open the "RDdotNet.TFSEventHandler.exe.config" file with notepad.

if you want the AssignedToHandler to work ad the following line:

<Handler type="RDdotNet.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.AssignedToHandler"
         assemblyFileName="RDdotNet.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Assignement.dll"
         assemblyFileLocation="~\EventHandlers\WorkItemTracking\">
</Handler>

And if you want the Reassigned handler to work add the following line:

<Handler type="RDdotNet.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.ReAssignedHandler"
assemblyFileName="RDdotNet.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Assignement.dll"
assemblyFileLocation="~\EventHandlers\WorkItemTracking\">
</Handler>

If you want both to work...then add both...easy.

Technorati Tags: TFS Event Handler, Visual Studio Team System, TFS, Team Foundation Server, VSTS

TFS Event Handler (Prototype) Refresh

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:04:33 GMT

I found a couple of bugs in the TFS Event Handler Prototype release. As I am still supporting this release (many people use it in production) I have fixed the bugs and uploaded new installers.

The config files have not changed, so you should make a copy of your config file before you uninstall the application. Then reinstall it and copy the config files back and you will be sorted. I have this version working on a server and sending emails with the default event handler.

I had already upgraded the solution to Visual Studio 2008, so I went all the way and .Net 3.5 'ed all of the projects as well. The documentation already exists for you to create your own event handlers and apply them to you team server, but let me know what you are getting your Team Server's to do.

Some ideas for Event Handlers:

Send someone an email when they are assigned a Work Item.(Included in the Prototype release...)
Notify project managers when a new work item is added.
If a user checks in code and bypasses the check-in policies, send an email to the entire team to name and shame them
Send an email to all of the developers when a check-in occurs...
...

Can you think of any more you would like? Send them on a postcard to...

Technorati Tags: TFS Event Handler, Visual Studio Team System, TFS, Team Foundation Server, VSTS