BHAL Project Home Page / TFS Organizer User Manual

Installation

Installing the TFS Organizer is incredibly easy. All you have to do is download the zipped setup files and, after unzipping to a folder of your choice, installing it.

Configuration

Once you enter in the application for the first time you will see this screen:

This informs you that configurations must be done in order to use the application.

Configuration is done via a Tabbed-Interface called "Options". This interface can be accessed by clicking in a cog shaped icon.

General Options

The options screen appears in the "General Options" tab. It looks like this as of now:

So as you can see not much can be done in it in the current release. In future releases you´ll be able to configure refresh times, timeouts and a lot of other application parameters that are hardcoded now.

Adding Team Foundation Servers

By clicking in the Servers tab you can configure the TFS Servers that you want to access. The Servers tab looks like this:

By clicking in the Add Server button (the server with a + sign), you can add a server. The remove button (the server with a - sign) only will be enabled once you have selected a valid server. You can use it to delete a configured server.

When you have selected a server it´s information will be displayed in the boxes below.

If you´d like to edit it´s information, just click in the Edit button.

Adding Team Projects

If you click in the Team Projects tab you can configure the Team Projects that you will be monitoring. The Team Projects Tab looks like this:

Notice I already added two team projects. If you close this dialog after updating the Team Projects you will receive a notice that the application needs to close. This is due to a glitch on the Ascend Controls that does not redraw correctly.

Querying the Workitem Store

Once you´ve added the Team Projects (and restarted) you are ready to start querying the TFS WorkItem Store.

When you go to the Team Project that you want to query clicking in its name in the Main Screen, you will see that it has no query associated to it, just like in this picture:

Go ahead and click in the Create Query button. The following dialog will pop:

So let´s get to how this dialog works.

First of all you will have to select the Object Model that you want to work with. For more information on object models check out the other pages in this wiki.

We´ll select the CodePlex Object Model for now as it comes with project BHAL. Click in

the browse button (the folder button) and select Wom.CodePlexObjectLibrary.dll.

You´ll notice that the Object to Query For dropdown got populated and the DefaultWorkItem object is selected.

We will be querying for features, so we change the Object to query for to 'Feature'.

Now onto the dirty work. What we are writing is basically the WHERE part of the query, but in terms of filtering.

So let´s say we want to get the Active workitems that are assigned to me. We would use this query:

Filter.Equal("AssignedTo","Heynemann_cp") & Filter.Equal("Status","Active")

What this query says is get me all the WorkItems that have the AssignedTo property equal to "Heynemann_cp" AND the Status property equal to Active.

So let´s get more complex then! I want all the active items that are assigned to me OR closed ones. I´d write this:

(Filter.Equal("AssignedTo","Heynemann_cp") & Filter.Equal("Status","Active"))

|

Filter.Equal("Status","Closed")

See how easy it is? This string that you typed in the Query textbox will be actually compiled by the C# compiler at runtime and if it has any errors the application will report that your filters don´t work.

Try playing around with this and let me know of any problems!

Using the Main Application

Using the aplication is quite easy when you have configured the workitem queries.

In the main screen you can see all the configured team projects and on all of them that have queries you can see a grid with all the returned workitems (and ALL their properties. In the next version you´ll be able to choose which properties to see).

Here is a screen that shows this behavior:

Well that pretty much covers it. Any doubts please feel free to ask.

Last Update: 08th October 2006