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How to Synchronize Alerts with TFS in System Center 2012 R2

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager

In System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, you can synchronize Operations Manager alerts and Team Foundation Server (TFS) work items. When synchronization is enabled, IT operations can then assign alerts to the engineering team. Assigning an alert to engineering creates a new work item in TFS. The workflow will track and synchronize any changes that are made to TFS work items and any associated Operations Manager alerts. In order to synchronize alerts with TFS, you must first configure alert synchronization. For more information, see How to Configure Integration with TFS in System Center 2012 R2.

Note

Integration between System Center 2012 SP1 and TFS used the Ticket ID and Owner fields of the Operations Manager alert to store and display which work item is associated with an alert and who it is assigned to. Beginning in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, two new alert fields, TFS Work Item ID and TFS Work Item Owner, hold these values. These fields are read-only in the Operations Manager console to prevent accidental changes of the values that are controlled in TFS.

If you previously personalized any standard alert views or created your own alert views in System Center 2012 SP1 using Ticket ID and Owner fields to display TFS information, you must replace those fields with the TFS Work Item ID and TFS Work Item Owner fields to continue displaying the same information. The previous Ticket ID and Owner fields are still used for synchronization of alerts with incidents in Service Manager Alert Connector.

To assign alerts to engineering

  1. In the Operations Manager console, you can view all application problems that have been collected. To view alerts in Operations Manager, in the navigation pane, click Monitoring, and then click Active Alerts.

  2. To assign an alert to engineering, right-click the alert, select Set Resolution State, and select Assigned to Engineering. This action creates a TFS work item and adds the TFS work item ID to the alert.

  3. The system synchronizes all changes to the alert inside Operations Manager and all changes to the work item in TFS.

    Tip

    Any comments that you add to an Operations Manager alert on the alert History tab are automatically added to the corresponding TFS work items. You can use this function to provide additional information to engineering.

To review alerts that are awaiting evidence from engineering

  1. In the Operations Manager console, you can view all application problems that have been collected. To view alerts in Operations Manager, in the navigation pane, click Monitoring, expand Team Foundation Server Synchronization, expand Alerts, and then click Awaiting Evidence.

To review and close alerts that have been resolved by engineering

  1. In the Operations Manager console, you can view all application problems that have been collected. To view alerts in Operations Manager, in the navigation pane, click Monitoring, expand Team Foundation Server Synchronization, expand Alerts, and then click Resolved.

  2. When you want to close the resolved alerts, you can right-click an alert, select Set Resolution State, and then set the resolution state to Closed.