Syncup of project portal and TFS

Question

Hi,

 I have a project requirement where I need to integrate the TFS Team project portal (SharePoint site) and the Team Project in TFS. E.g- When a user creates a item in custom list in proj portal, it should create a corresponding work item in TFS with the task info mapped to certain work item fields. Similarly, when the workitem is modified and saved, the change should reflect back in task in Project portal.

 I came across the Migation Sync toolkit but I am not sure if it matches my reqmt (maybe I didn't fully understand it...). My approach is to write list item event recievers to create TFS workitem in flow 1 (Portal to TFS). I am not clear on how to execute custom logic on save of a workitem. I appreciate any thoughts on this

Thanks

Sandeep

Answer 1

 for flow 2 ( TFS work item to Task update in project portal), I came across this link which refrers to creating a custom web service and registering WorkItemChanging event for it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188695.aspx#S8


Any thoughts on this bidirectional approach?

Answer 2

I don't think there is clean solution available to help keep TFS work items in sync with SharePoint task list items.  One way to get the thin client reach of SharePoint to try to avoid the ongoing maintenance cost of any sync solution is to use the Visual Studion Team System Web Access web interface to provide users a view on work items stored in TFS.  If that doesn't work in your environment and you must sync with SharePoint task lists the TFS Integration Platform is probably your best starting point.  You get a TFS synchronization tooling platform and adapters that can move work item and version control content into any version of TFS.  You would have to write a SharePoint task list synchronization adapter.  The TFS Integration Platform is published an open source project with the technical documentation, samples and guidance needed to help create adapters that bridge to other work item tracking and version control systems.  It was built with the intent of making it simple to write a simple adapter - which a SharePoint task list sync adapter should be.  In fact, we plan to add a sample SharePoint adapter to sync work item tracking content to a task list and documents to version control to help round out the SDK.  I can't offer a timeline for that sample and you shouldn't count on it to solve your problem but I can say that we don't expect that task list sync adapter to be a ton of code.  If you decide to build an adapter and you have any trouble post the technical questions to this forum and we'll do our best to help.

Bill

Answer 3

Thanks for the response Bill...I have couple of queries on the TFS Integration platform before I dig into its documentation for creating SharePoint adapter:

1. Is this syncup adapter going to be real time such that as I create a task in sharepoint, it creates a corresponding work item with certain mapped fields?

2. Does it support bidirectional flow such that updating a workitem would update the task associated to it in sharepoint?

Answer 4

Sandeep,

Answer to 1: The Integration Platform can be configured to run in "Continuous Automatic" mode, where it keeps bouncing between two endpoint servers and syncing the changes. It does not use any event-driven mechanism. Hence, it does not work in "real time" mode. Instead, it syncs changes as fast as it can make each round trip between the servers.

Answer to 2: Yes, the Platform supports bidirectional synchronization and provides out-of-box content conflict detection and resolution features.

Cheers,
Terry