Managing Permissions

When you add a user or group to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, you might also need to add that user or group to two other components on which your deployment might depend: SharePoint Products and SQL Server Reporting Services. If your deployment is configured with these resources, you must add users and groups to those programs and grant the appropriate permissions for those users or groups before all operations will function correctly in Team Foundation Server.

Because of this complexity, it can be difficult to manage individual users and their associated permissions in deployments of Team Foundation Server. It is much simpler to use Active Directory to organize users into role-based groups and then add each group to Team Foundation Server, SharePoint Products, and Reporting Services with the appropriate permissions. By taking this approach, you must manage only a few groups across these three programs, instead of many individual users. You can add users to Active Directory groups as needed without having to change that group membership or permissions within those three programs.

As an administrator, you control what tasks users can perform by specifying group membership and permissions. To simplify this task, Team Foundation provides default groups and permissions settings. You can use the default groups and settings as they are, customize them, or create your own. The topics in this section provide details about permissions.

In This Section

  • Team Foundation Server Permissions
    Describes the various permissions that you can set for users and groups in Team Foundation Server.

  • Team Foundation Server Default Groups, Permissions, and Roles
    Describes the groups and permissions that are created by default when you install Team Foundation Server or create a team project.

  • Change Permissions for a Group or User
    Describes how to change the permissions for a group in Team Foundation Server or an individual user account that has been added directly to Team Foundation Server.

  • View Permissions
    Describes how to view permissions for users and groups at a server or project level.

  • Add Users to Team Projects
    Describes how to add users to default groups in Team Foundation Server, SharePoint Products, and Reporting Services in order to grant those users the permissions that they need to act as readers, contributors, or administrators within that project.

  • Set Administrator Permissions for Team Project Collections
    Describes how to add users to default groups in Team Foundation Server, SharePoint Products, and Reporting Services in order to grant those users the permissions that they need to administer a team project collection. 

  • Set Administrator Permissions for Team Foundation Server
    Describes how to add users to default groups in Team Foundation Server, SharePoint Products, and Reporting Services in order to grant those users the permissions that they need to administer Team Foundation Server.

Configuring Users, Groups, and Permissions

Team Foundation Server Services and Service Accounts

Control Access to Team Foundation Version Control

Configuring Your Server Using the Team Foundation Administration Console

Organizing Your Server with Team Project Collections

Interactions Between SharePoint Products and Team Foundation Server

Understanding SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services

Team Foundation Server Architecture

Team Foundation Server Concepts