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I have been tasked with researching TFS for use at my company. I know little to nothing about it. Can you guys recommend a decent book for setup and administration of TFS?
Thanks
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Kevin Marois wrote: Can you guys recommend a decent book for setup and administration of TFS?
Here 
In other words, avoid TFS if possible.
Marc
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Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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So you DON'T have an answer then?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Kevin Marois wrote: So you DON'T have an answer then?
Correct. We have a wonderful woman at work that took TFS training. Just yesterday, we asked her why one of our devs wasn't seeing my latest code commit. After some fussing, she suggested restarting Visual Studio and doing a "get latest" again. Yup, that solved the problem.
She actually is incredibly knowledgeable about TFS, this was one of those "tool flukes."
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Ya, but ALL tools have some issues. I've used TFS before, and aside from it's hideous web UI, the source control portion VS integration seems to work OK.
Any concrete reasons to NOT use it?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Kevin Marois wrote: Any concrete reasons to NOT use it?
Compared to tools like SmartGitHg, the UI is incredibly klunky. OK, granted it integrates with the task management / work ID BS that the company uses, which is more incredibly klunky UI implementation, and nobody uses it anyways except to create work ID's and supposedly track amount of work done on a task, which nobody keeps up to date anyways.
So, yeah, there again, I'm complaining more about processes than the tool itself. But still, the UI and UX is so much more inferior than what I experience using SmartGitHg.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Kevin Marois wrote: a, but ALL tools have some issues. I've used TFS before, and aside from it's hideous web UI, the source control portion VS integration seems to work OK.
Any concrete reasons to NOT use it?
Hi Kevin,
No, there are no concrete reasons NOT to use the thing. TFS works fine. Like any complex system it requires some administration. You're going to get the same response from the development community that you'll get any time you ask them what the best text-editor or compiler is. The latest "fad" among developers for this kind of thing is GIT. You're probably in a shop that has TFS and all the cute answers telling you to switch to GIT are as productive as all the "switch to Linux" crap. All you asked for was books on the subject.
Go to APress.COM and search the titles there. You'll find several pertaining to TFS so you can learn what you need to know.
[http://www.apress.com/us/search?query=tfs]
-CM
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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Slacker007 wrote: TFS is much better now.
The fact that there's no stand-alone tool for checking in/out code, the VS UI's (I'm usually spending minutes fussing with the include/exclude trees) sucks, and, while not TFS's problem per se, our network and the server hosting TFS is so slow that it can literally take a couple minutes to add a file to a solution. And "Get Latest?" That's usually a couple walks around the facility and it might be done when you get back if you're lucky.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Marc Clifton wrote: our network and the server hosting TFS is so slow
there you go.
Marc Clifton wrote: ussing with the include/exclude trees
I agree, but I am used to it now.
Bitbucket with Tortoise for Git is still my choice.
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These are all issues with your setup. Where I work, a couple of minutes is how long it takes me to get the entirety of our main project -- a million lines of source code spread across a few hundred files.
And there is a standalone tool (Team Explorer Everywhere). I chased it down when I was doing Linux development on some of our C# code. It's not very friendly, but it's there. I ended up not using it.
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patbob wrote: And there is a standalone tool
I remember reading about it and that it possibly was not compatible with whatever setup we're using. And yes, it did not look very friendly.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Thanks but that book is 10 years old. Probably not relevant to the latest version
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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For our implementation at work, I read and followed the Wrox Professional Team Foundation Server 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-94332-8; which I read from Books 24X7. It was very helpful and got everything set up the way I wanted except for the SharePoint site. I never got the permissions set properly, resulting in non-administrators having to login on every click; thus, that functionality was canned.
I'm planning on moving to probably TFS 2017 in the next year, though it could be TFS 2015; not sure at this point. And if these guys have a book, I'll probably look at them first. I will say that setting up TFS and administering is more difficult than SQL Server.
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For what would you use TFS?
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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So TFS of old was terrible, but 2013+ is a completely different story and is one of the best ALM tools out there in my opinion. Just make sure you know how you're going to want to use it and what the licensing implications of that usage pattern will be.
As one possible suggestion, rather than looking at TFS on-premise why not also consider Team Services[^] which is the on-line hosted version. It's the same product but receives all the updates first and is managed for you. You still need to think about how your going to set up your teams and projects but at least you don't have to think about software upgrades or server patching etc... It also makes working with external parties a lot easier as you don't have to give them access to your corporate network.
If you still need to go with an on-premise solution then the best place to start is the online documentation[^] which is actually pretty good. If you are going to work with external organisations who will need access then consider a multi-server setup where you keep the database internal and setup the application component inside a DMZ (other setups are available).
Have fun
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
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Best way (If you are talking about the online version) is to register a free account in Visual studio online and explore the options directly. I learnt everything just by fiddling with each options. Of course, few things needed me to look up to blog posts & post some questions in MSDN forums. So far, whatever we needed is covered. TFS/VS Online has come a very long way, its cool now.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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I'll second 2 other answers. It depends on what you want to use it for. We use it for version control and bug tracking and it works great. Do you want to use all features or just one? Also, just install it and start figuring it out. I don't think it's too complicated of a product to warrant reading a book, in my opinion.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I thought that people who were TFS couldn't read... 
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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Professional Scrum Development with TFS 2012 (Developer Reference)
[^]
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We are bringing up TFS 2017 here in our environment because supposedly it supports FIPS. So I can't give you much in the way of guidance as we are just getting it up.
But what I can tell you is what we've hear after the enabled FIPS deployment of TFS failed the install. That being that you can not install with FIPS support from the GUI. You must install from the command line to do so with FIPS support.
We work within a high security environment, so using an external repository is out of the question. Which is why we ended up with TFS.
Yet another award for MS with that call!
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as soon as I read this post I thought, "you aren't using GIT?"
I can bet there's pluralsight courses on TFS but even MICROSOFT internally moved all there repositories to GIT! GIT IT! Writing on the wall. Any business leader who doesn't understand that is making a grave BUSINESS mistake.
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chrisseanhayes wrote: Any business leader who doesn't understand that is making a grave BUSINESS mistake.
Since I know absolutly ZERO about GIT, and have used TFS before, this really means nothing to me.
I did work for a company not too long ago and they used GIT for source control, and I remember many painful experiences with GIT. My impression as a first time user was that it was horrible and was EXTREMELY difficult to work with.
Having said all that, I think my original question was wrong. I don't think I want TFS, I think what I really want is Team Services.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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i'm sorry you missed my point
MICROSOFT ISN'T USING IT
so if Microsoft isn't using it then guess what it's trajectory is?
saying "I don't understand it so i'm not using it" is like being a horse cart driver in the 1800's and saying "I don't know how to drive therefore i'm not buying into this automobile market"
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TFS. All my personal source code is now hosted under TFS at Microsoft.