Configure a Project Portal or Process Guidance

  • Article

If you created your team project with the basic configuration, which didn't include a SharePoint site that integrates with Team Foundation Server (TFS), both the project portal and process guidance are disabled for your project. When the portal is disabled, the Document nodeDocuments page does not appear in Team Explorer. When process guidance is disabled, the Open process guidance for work item does not appear in work item forms in Team Explorer and team members do not have quick access to guidance for the work item type.

You can enable the portal or process guidance independently of each other. Also, you may want to redirect the Open process guidance for work item process guidance icon to content that you customize to reflect changes you make to work item types and reports.

Process guidance helps team members to follow business and workflow processes that the team has adopted. From the MSDN library, you can access the process guidance of most artifacts defined by each of the process templates that Team Foundation Server (TFS) provides. This content provides information about how to complete work item fields, change workflow states, and generate useful reports, and it gives examples of healthy and unhealthy reports. As a result, process guidance helps team members coordinate their efforts and reinforce team roles and responsibilities.

You can browse the MSDN content from any of the following topics: Visual Studio Scrum 2.0, MSF for Agile 6.0, and MSF for CMMI 6.0.

Note

The artifacts available to your team depend on the process template used to create your team project and the resources available to the team project collection. To learn more, see Get Started with a New Team Project.

Note

You can download the MSDN process guidance, customize it, and redirect guidance links to point to it. See Customizable Process Guidance Content for VS ALM 2012.

In this topic

  • Access process guidance from work items or reports

  • Enable a project portal or links to process guidance

  • Redirect links to process guidance content

Requirements

  • To configure a project portal or process guidance links, you must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group or the Project Administrators group for your team project.

  • To download a process template, you must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group. If the security permissions are set explicitly, then your Manage process template permission for the team project collection must be set to Allow.

  • To upload process guidance content or support files, you must have Contribute permissions set for the project portal in SharePoint Products or similar permissions for the web site configured for the team project.

  • To download and upload a report, you must be a member of the SQL Server Reporting Services Team Foundation Content Manager role.

For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Access process guidance from work items or reports

  • Choose the Open process guidance for work item process guidance icon from an open work item from in Team Explorer.

  • Choose the How to Use this Report link at the bottom of a report that you open in Report Manager.

Depending on your settings, a web browser page opens to display the MSDN content, or your local help content opens.

Note

The Open process guidance for work item process guidance icon appears only on the work item forms that you open from Team Explorer, and only if you have enabled process guidance for the team project.

You can choose from the following options to support your team project portal or links to process guidance. You can configure these resources separately.

  • A SharePoint site that integrates with TFS, and therefore provides a Document nodeDocuments page in Team Explorer for managing the document library.

  • A web site or SharePoint site that isn't integrated with TFS.

To enable the project portal, see Enable your team project portal.

To enable links to process guidance, perform these procedures:

  1. Enable process guidance for your team project.

  2. Upload process guidance support files.

  3. Verify access to process guidance.

The above steps configure the process guidance links to the default process guidance content available in the MSDN library. Optionally, you can redirect the links to process guidance content hosted elsewhere, typically so that you can provide customized guidance. See Redirect links to process guidance content.

Enable your team project portal

  1. In Team Explorer, from the Home page, choose the Settings icon Settings icon, and then choose Portal Settings.

    The Project Portal Settings dialog box opens.

    Project Portal Settings dialog box

  2. Select the Enable team project portal check box, and then choose the radio button corresponding to your choice of project portal site:

  3. Choose OK.

Enable process guidance for your team project

  1. Continuing from the previous procedure, choose Portal Settings, and then choose the Process Guidance tab.

    Process Guidance dialog tab

  2. Select the Enable the link to process guidance check box, and then choose the radio button that corresponds to the type of site that hosts your process guidance:

    • If the site is a SharePoint library, choose Link to a SharePoint document library and then choose Configure URL.

      Note

      This option is available only if a SharePoint web site has been added to your deployment and configured for the team project collection that stores your team project. See Add a SharePoint Web Application to Your Deployment and Add a SharePoint Web Application to a Team Project Collection.

    • If the site is not an integrated SharePoint library, choose Link to a Web site and then, in the URL text box, type the URL of the server and directory that holds the process guidance, such as http://MyServer/Process Guidance/.

  3. Choose OK.

Upload files that support linking to process guidance

  1. To obtain the process guidance support files for your team project, download them using the Process Template Manager. See Download the Latest Version of the Process Templates.

  2. Upload the contents of the Windows SharePoint Services/Process Guidance folder to the web site you have configured for process guidance.

    Depending on your process template, upload the following files into the indicated folders.

    Folder

    Scrum

    Agile

    CMMI

    Process Guidance

    ProcessGuidance.html

    ProcessGuidance.html

    ProcessGuidance.html

    Process Guidance/Supporting Files

    Bug.htm

    Impediment.htm

    ProductBacklogItem.htm

    SharedSteps.htm

    Task.htm

    TestCase.htm

    AboutWorkItems.htm

    Bug.htm

    Issue.htm

    SharedSteps.htm

    Task.htm

    TestCase.htm

    UserStory.htm

    AboutWorkItems.htm

    Bug.htm

    ChangeRequest

    Issue.htm

    Requirement.htm

    Review.htm

    Risk.htm

    SharedSteps.htm

    Task.htm

    TestCase.htm

Verify access to process guidance

  1. In Team Explorer, choose the Refresh refresh icon.

  2. Create a new work item or open an existing work item.

  3. Choose the Open process guidance for work item process guidance icon.

    If you don't see the Open process guidance for work item icon, choose the Refresh refresh icon for the work item.

Redirect links to process guidance content

You can redirect users to customized content by modifying the redirect links contained within the process guidance support and report files.

The Open process guidance for work item process guidance icon is designed to look for a .aspx, .htm, or .html file. These files can either contain the content or provide a URL that redirects to it.

These files must be uploaded to a folder labeled Supporting Files, within the site configured for process guidance for the team project.

Upload .aspx content pages

  • For each work item type for which you want to provide process guidance, upload to your process guidance web site the .aspx content page that you named to match the work item type.

    You must name the .aspx file to match the WORKITEMTYPE value in the type definition. For example, if the process guidance content is about the bug type of work item, which has <WORKITEMTYPE name="Bug"> within its type definition, name the file Bug.aspx.

Modify a process guidance support file

  1. In the Process Guidance folder and its subfolder Supporting Files, open each .htm file that you downloaded in step 1 of Upload process guidance support files, above.

  2. In each file, locate the meta statement that specifies the URL. For example:

    <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0;URL=https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190653" />

  3. Replace the value specified for the URL with the URL of the customized guidance stored on your configured process guidance web site. For example:

    <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0;URL=http://YourPortal/Process Guidance/scrum/html/Bug.html" />

  4. Save and close each file.

  5. Upload each file to your process guidance web site.

    These files must be stored in the appropriate folder as indicated in step 2 of Upload process guidance support files, above.

  1. From Visual Studio, choose Team, Show Report Site.

  2. Open the folder that contains the report that you want to modify.

  3. Open the short-cut menu for the report and choose Download.

  4. Open the file in Visual Studio or a text editor.

  5. Locate the Hyperlink statement within the report.

  6. Replace the URL in that statement with the URL of the file that contains your customized content.

  7. Save and close the file.

  8. Return to the Report Manager folder of the report, and choose Upload File.

See Also

Tasks

Configure a Default Location for Team Project Portals

Other Resources

Get Started with a New Team Project