Doodle Graphics

We're in the process of moving to Team Foundation Server 2010, and as part of the process, we're updating the process template we're using, creating branded versions of the default documents, etc. Also, with new projects kicking off we're able to really sort out which process template we're using.

However, while we're ironing these changes out, we obviously need to actually do some work - so to that end we'd tweaked a template, created our project using that, and in the background we can work on the template for other projects.

This has left us with two things:

1. A number of projects in our test Project Collection with portals in the wrong place in SharePoint.
2. A number of projects using out of date portals.

At the moment, we've not made any changes to the contents in SharePoint (beyond access rights), we're mostly just using the dashboards and reports, so the cost of recreating these templates isn't that high however I was having a lot of difficulty working out how to move existing portals, or how to rebuild a portal after creating the project - the New Team Project wizard includes the option "Do not configure a SharePoint site at this time", with no real guidance on how to create one later.

As this is currently looking at WSS, and these aren't publishing sites, I can't move them easily in SharePoint. We tried exporting them, and importing them into the new location, but that also didn't work - errors about a template missing from the _forms folder (I guess the default template for the excel reports document library).

I tried creating a new site in SharePoint using the TFS templates supplied, but that didn't pick up my changes to the template, nor set up/create the shared documents, or the project dashboard. I also tried creating a dummy project with a portal in the right place, disconnecting the portal in TFS, then pointing the right project at the portal and finally deleting the dummy project, which worked, but was going to be a lot of work for all the other projects.

Finally, I took a look at the actions included in the tfpt command line tool from the Team Foundation Server Power Tools and noticed:

addprojectportal Add or move portal for an existing team project

Pass this the path to TFS, the project and process template you want to move, and optionally the details for the SharePoint instance you want to use and away it goes, creating a new Project Portal for you with all the modifications you've made.
I would point out the following issue I've had with this tool, but it may be due to my usage of it: when I pointed this at a project that already had a portal, I expected the tool to move the portal for me, however (probably because the project was built using a different Process Template) I now have two portals for this project, the old one, and the new one, not a big deal, I can easily delete the old portal - TFS seems to be happily pointing at the new one.
Running it without the /verbose option seemed to fail - and the logs weren't very helpful. Running the same command with /verbose resulted in a successful run. I may have just been unlucky.
Morals of this post:

	

		Always check the power tools first.
	

		MS have a habit of not finishing things, and releasing the bits you actually need as power tools.
	

		Mario Rodriguez rocks.


    

        Filed under: SharePoint, TFS