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Automated Team Project creation

by N-Technologies 9 July 2008 18:31

Since the release of the March 2008 TFS Power tools, it is possible to write scripts to automate the creation of new Team Projects. So this is a little walk through on how to use this feature.

Two important remarks:

You need to have Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 installed. But as there's no Service Pack 1 for the moment, you could use the beta of it. Download it here.
If you have, like me a test VPC with and the server and the client, you need first install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and then also the Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1. You can download the TFS SP1 here.

The command you have to use is this : tfpt createteamproject /validate /server:tfsservername [/teamproject:teamprojectname] [sourcecontrol:Branch:[branchpath]] [/processtemplate:[templatename]] or you could use a settingsfile and the command would look like this tfpt createteamproject /validate /settingsfile:filespec. Using the settingsfile is a lot easier.

A bit about the parameters :

/validate	Validate all the settings, no project will be created. If you leave this from the command, your project will be created.
/verbose	Specifies that team project creation log information is to be printed to the console.
/log	Specifies that team project creation log is to be written to a specific folder
logfilespec	Specifies the folder where the team project creation log file is to be stored.
/server	Specifies that a TFS server is used
tfsservername	Specifies the name of the TFS server
/teamproject	Specifies the Team Project name
teamprojectname	Specifies that the source control is used
/sourcecontrol	Specifies the name of the team project
New	Specifies that the source control of the team project creates a new path
None	Specifies that the source control is not enabled when creating the team project.
Branch	Specifies that the source control of the team project branches from an existing path
/processtemplate	Specifies that a process template name is used.
templatename	Specifies the name of the process template.
/settingsfile	Specifies that a team project creation file is used
filespec	Specifies the file containing team project creation settings

OK, let's make a little example now. The example I will show make use of a setting file. Let's start with the XML. This XML file contains all our settings for our project.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<Project xmlns="ProjectCreationSettingsFileSchema.xsd"> 
  
<TFSName>win2k3</TFSName> 
  
<LogFolder> 
c:\RemoteTFSProjectStart
</LogFolder> 
  
<ProjectName> 
My
First Auto project
</ProjectName> 
<ProjectSiteTitle> 
<!--
default to project name if not specified --> 
My
First Auto project
</ProjectSiteTitle> 
<ProjectSiteDescription> 
<!--
default to empty string if not specified --> 
This
is my first attemp to automaticly create Team Projects
</ProjectSiteDescription> 
<SccCreateType> 
<!--
none | new | branch --> 
New
</SccCreateType> 
<SccBranchFromPath> 
<!--
string.Empty for none and new; supplied for branch --> 
string.empty
</SccBranchFromPath> 
<ProcessTemplateName> 
MSF
for Agile Software Development - v4.2
</ProcessTemplateName> 
</Project>

So this is pretty easy. Next step is to run the createteamproject command :

Start the command prompt
Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools
Usage: tfpt createteamproject /settingsfile:<path to >AutoCreate1.xml (be sure that you put the path to the settingsfile with it)
If alle settings are correct your team project will be created.

Three things are missing:

Area's
If necessary creating of new TFS security groups
Adding your users to the correct groups

But all three items can also be in the automated process by calling a service afterwards. This service will can the TFS API's to do these jobs.

Why would you use this?

Well in our company we are busy with creating an Infopath form, where project leaders can request a new team project. After they submit the form, one of the three TFS administrators approve this request and then a workflow will start to automatically create the team project and put the security correct.

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