• Team Foundation Server object model.
• Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIP) components.
• Microsoft Office integration.
• Command-line tools.
• Check-in policy framework.

• Version Control Web service.
• Work Item Tracking Web service.
• Team Foundation Build Web service.

• Registration Web service.
• Security Web service.
• Linking Web service.
• Eventing Web service.
• Classification Web service.

• Work item tracking.
• Version control.
• Team Foundation Build
• Reporting warehouse.

Install and configure Team Foundation Server

By restoring the databases that TFS uses, you have already restored the data tier of the original deployment. Now you must complete the restoration process by installing the application tier (the application and services that compose Team Foundation Server) by using the Application-Tier Only wizard. You must also install the extensions used by TFS and SharePoint Foundation by running the Extensions for SharePoint Products wizard, if your original deployment was configured with SharePoint Foundation.

To install the application tier and the extensions:

1. Open the administration console and start the configuration process.If you don’t see the administration console for TFS, you haven’t installed the TFS software on the server. To learn how, go to Install Team Foundation Server.
2. Launch the application-tier only wizard.
3. Specify the name of the SQL Server where you just restored the databases and choose List Available Databases to populate the list. Choose the configuration database.
4. Provide the same service account information as used in the prior deployment, if possible.
5. Complete the wizard.
6. In the Configuration Center, choose Configure Extensions for SharePoint Products and complete that wizard to install the extensions.
7. Open the administration console, and in the Application Tier pane, update or refresh the URLs to reflect the new URLs for the restored server. Even if you have not changed the name or ports used for the restored server, you should reapply this information.
8. After finishing the update, verify that the URLS appear correctly.
9. Reapply the service account for TFS.

Configure SharePoint Products

After you install the application tier and the extensions, you must reconfigure the settings for the SharePoint web applications that your deployment uses.

To configure the settings for SharePoint web applications:

1. Open the administration console for Team Foundation.
2. In the navigation bar, choose SharePoint Web Applications.
3. In the SharePoint Web Applications list, highlight the web application used by the original deployment, and then choose Change.
   

   Tip: By default, the web application should appear automatically in the listf web applications. If it does not, choose Add, and then add it manually.

4. The SharePoint Web Application Settings window opens. In Web Application URL and Central Administration URL, review the settings, and if necessary, specify or change the values to reflect the URLs on the new server.
5. When you are satisfied with the settings, choose OK.For more information about how to configure SharePoint web applications as part of your deployment, see Add SharePoint products to your deployment.

Configure reporting and Analysis Services

After you have configured SharePoint Foundation, you must redirect Team Foundation Server to the location of the report server, restart the warehouse, and manually rebuild the database for Analysis Services, if your deployment used reporting.

Note: You must complete this procedure even if you restored the TFS_Warehouse and TFS_Analysis databases, as the previous section describes.

To reconfigure reporting and Analysis Services:

1. In the navigation bar for the administration console, choose Reporting.
2. On the Reporting page, choose Edit.
3. In the Take Offline dialog box, choose OK.The Reporting dialog box opens.
4. Select the Use Reporting check box.
5. On the Warehouse tab, in Server, specify the name of the report server, and in Database, type the name of the warehouse database. Optionally choose Test Connection to verify that the database is valid.
6. On the Analysis Services tab, in the Server list, specify the name of the server that is running SQL Server Analysis Services. In Database, specify the name of the analysis services database, and in Account for accessing data sources, specify the username and password of the data sources account.
7. On the Reports tab, in the Server list, specify the name of the report server, and then choose Populate URLs. In Username and Password, specify the account name and password (if any) for the data sources account. In Default Path, specify the relative path for the location where reports are stored, and then choose OK.
8. In the administration console, choose Start Jobs to restart reporting.
9. Open a Command Prompt window, and then change directories to %ProgramFiles%\\TFS 12.0\\Tools.
10. Enter the following command to rebuild the database for Analysis Services:TFSConfig RebuildWarehouse /AnalysisServices /ReportingDataSourcePassword: PasswordPassword is the password for the data sources account for Reporting Services.
11. Wait until the command is successfully completed.

Details of What’s New in TFS 2018

Work Item Tracking

Project Creation Wizard on the web

We have improved the experience for creating a Team Project from web access. It now includes most of the features available when you create a Team Project in the Visual Studio client. The benefit of using the web interface is that you do not need a matching Visual Studio version. The difference of using Visual Studio or the web version is that the web version does not provision your reports in SSRS. If you used the web version of the Team Project creation, you can run the tfsconfig command on the Application Tier to provision or update the SSRS reports.

Process Template Manager on the web

With TFS 2018, you can use web access to upload your process templates. The web interface is a much easier experience because you do not have to install the correct version of Visual Studio to interact with your process templates. Visual Studio 2017 Update 4 and earlier will still show the Process Template Manager dialog, although we recommend using the web interface. Visual Studio 2017 Update 5 and later will redirect you to the web automatically.

Customize the work item form header

You can now customize the work item form header area by replacing the existing controls, or hiding controls, that are not relevant to your process. This will enable replacing Area path with a custom Team field, hiding Iteration if your teams are more Kanban focused, and replacing Reason with a custom field. The State field cannot be hidden or replaced.

Mobile work item form

We have a full end-to-end experience that includes an optimized look and feel for work items (Figure 1). It provides an easy way to interact with items that are assigned to you, are following, have visited, or edited recently from your phone.

Along with the good looks, this experience supports optimized controls for all field types (Figure 2).

With the new mobile navigation (Figure 3), users can reach any other mobile-ready parts of TFS and get back to the full desktop site in case they need to interact with other hubs.

Filtering on backlogs, Kanban boards, sprints, and queries

All of our work item tracking grid experiences (queries, backlogs, Kanban boards, sprints backlogs, and test case management) now make use of our common, consistent filtering component (Figure 4). Beyond applying a keyword filter across displayed columns and selecting tags, you can also filter on work item types, states, and assigned to, in order to quickly get to the work items you are looking for.

Expand to show empty fields on a Kanban card

Today, you have the option to add additional fields to a card and then hide empty fields (Figure 5) in board settings to remove unnecessary clutter from the board. The drawback to this feature was that once an empty field was hidden, the only way to update the field was to open the work item form. With the newly available expand option on Kanban cards, you can now benefit from hiding empty fields across the board, but still have single click access to update a particular field on a card. Simply hover over the card and look for the down chevron at the bottom of the card to update the hidden field.

Click the down chevron at the bottom of the card to update the field (Figure 6).

Extensions block work item save

Work item form custom controls, groups, and pages can now block work item save to validate data and ensure the user fills out any required information before saving the work item form.

Inline add on Delivery Plans

New feature ideas can arrive at any moment, so we have made it easier to add new features directly to your Delivery Plans (Figure 7). Simply click the New item button available on hover, enter a name, and hit enter. A new feature is created with the area path and iteration path you would expect.

Version Control

Forks

TFS 2018 adds support for Git forks (Figure 8). A fork is a server-side copy of a repository. Using forks, you can allow a broad range of people to contribute to your repository without giving them direct commit access. Instead, they commit their work to their own fork of the repository. This gives you the opportunity to review their changes in a pull request before accepting those changes into the central repository.

GVFS

Git Virtual File System (GVFS) is now supported. GVFS allows Git repositories to scale to millions of files by virtualizing and optimizing how Git operates on the filesystem.

Create a folder in a repository using web

You can now create folders through the web in your Git and TFVC repositories (Figure 9). This replaces the Folder Management extension, which will now undergo the process of deprecation.

To create a folder, click New > Folder in either the command bar or context menu:

For TFVC, you will specify a folder name and then check it in. For Git, because empty folders are not permitted, you will also have to specify a file name, optionally edit the file, then commit it.

Additionally, for Git, The New file dialog (Figure 10) has been enhanced to accept slashes to create subfolders.

File minimap

You can now view a minimap of a file as you view or edit to give you a quick overview of the code (Figure 11). To turn on the minimap, open the Command Palette (F1 or right-click) and select Toggle Minimap.

Bracket matching

When editing or viewing a file, there are now guidelines on the left side to make it easy to match your brackets (Figure 12).

Toggle white space

You can now toggle white space on and off when viewing or editing a file. We are still developing a feature that will allow you to toggle white space when diff’ing. To view white space (Figure 13), open the Command Palette (F1 or right-click) and select Toggle White Space, which allows you to differentiate between spaces and tabs.

Setting to turn off web editing for TFVC repos

Teams that use TFVC often use check-in policies in Visual Studio to ensure code quality. However, because check-in policies are enforced on the client, code that is edited on the web is not subjected to the same policies.

Several people have asked for a way to disable web-editing to protect against changes that bypass check-in policies. We have enabled a way for you to turn off web-editing (adding, deleting, renaming, and editing) for TFVC on a project/repository basis.

To disallow web-editing from the Files page, go to Settings then Version Control (Figure 14). Click on the TFVC repo in the tree, navigate to the Options pivot, and uncheck Enable web-editing for this TFVC repository. By default, web-editing is enabled.

If you attempt a web-edit in a project with web-editing disabled, you are notified that web-editing is not allowed (Figure 15).

Identify stale branches

Keeping your repository clean by deleting branches you no longer need enables teams to find branches they care about and set favorites at the right granularity. However, if you have lots of branches in your repo, it can be hard to figure out which are inactive and can be deleted. We have now made it easier to identify “stale” branches (branches that point to commits older than 3 months). To see your stale branches, go to the Stale pivot on the Branches page (Figure 16).

Search for a deleted branch and re-create it

When you accidentally delete a branch from the server, it can be difficult to figure out what happened to it. Now you can search for a deleted branch, see who deleted it and when, and re-create it if you wish.

To search for a deleted branch, enter the full branch name into the branch search box. It will return any existing branches that match that text. You will also see an option to search for an exact match in the list of deleted branches. Click the link to search deleted branches (Figure 17).

If a match is found, you will see who deleted it and when. You can also restore the branch (Figure 18).

Restoring the branch will re-create it at the commit to which is last pointed. However, it will not restore policies and permissions.

Search for a commit in branches starting with a prefix

If you have branch structure in a hierarchical format where all branches are prefixed with a text, then this feature will help you to find a commit in all the branches starting with that prefix text. For example, if you want to see whether a commit made its way to all branches that are prefixed with “dev” then simply type “dev” in the search box and select Search in branches starting with “dev” (Figure 19).

Richer pull request callout on commit details page

The pull request callout on the commit details page shows more relevant information to better diagnose (Figure 20). Now we also show the first pull request that introduced the commit to any branch and the pull request associated with the default branch in the callout.

Filter tree view in Code

Now you do not need to scroll through all the files that a commit may have modified to just get to your files. The tree view on commit details, pull requests, shelveset details, and changeset details page now supports file and folder filtering. This is a smart filter that shows child files of a folder when you filter by folder name and shows a collapsed tree view of a file to display the file hierarchy when you filter by file name.

Find a file or folder filter on commit tree (Figure 21) and (Figure 22):

Branch updates page is now Pushes

The Branch Updates page has tremendous value. However, it was hidden as a pivot under the History hub. Now the branch updates page are visible as a hub called Pushes (Figure 23) under Code, alongside Commits, Branches, Tags, and Pull Requests. The new URL for the pushes page is: \<tfsserverurl\>/\<projectname\>/_git/\<reponame\>/pushes. The old URLs will continue to function.

At the same time, the History hub is now renamed to Commits (Figure 24) since the hub only shows commits. We received feedback that people were finding it difficult to troubleshoot commit related issues because the commit list view only showed detailed time on-hover. Now the commit list view across your instance will show date and time in dd/mm/yy hh:mm format. The new URL for commits page is: \<tfsserverurl\>/\<projectname\>/_git/\<reponame\>/commits. The old URLs will continue to function.

Retain filename when moving from Files to Commits

We heard feedback from people that when they filter the directory to a particular file in the Files pivot of the Code hub and later flip to the History pivot, the filename does not persist if the commit changed more than 1,000 files. This resulted in people needing to load more files and filter content to find the file, which impacted productivity. Developers normally work in the same directory and want to persist to the directories they work in as they trace changes. Now, we persist the filename as you move between Code hub pivots regardless of the number of files changed in a commit. This means that you do not have to click on Load More to find the file you want.

View Git tags

You can view all the tags in your repository on the Tags page (Figure 25). If you manage all your tags as releases, then a user can visit the tags page to get a bird’s-eye view of all the product releases.

You can easily differentiate between a lightweight and an annotated tag. Annotated tags show the tagger and the creation date alongside the associated commit, while lightweight tags only show the commit information.

Delete Git tags

There can be times when you want to delete a tag from your remote repo. It could be due to a typo in the tag name, or you might have tagged the wrong commit. You can easily delete tags from the web UI by clicking the context menu of a tag on the Tags page and selecting Delete tag (Figure 26).

Filtering Git tags

For old repositories, the number of tags can grow significantly with time; there can also be repositories that have tags created in hierarchies, which can make finding tags difficult.

If you are unable to find the tag that you were looking for on the Tags page, then you can simply search for the tag name using the filter on top of the Tags page (Figure 27).

Git tags security

Now you can grant granular permissions to users of the repo to manage tags. You can give users the permission to delete tags or manage tags from this interface (Figure 28).

Automatically complete work items when completing pull requests

If you are linking work items to your pull requests, keeping everything up to date just got simpler. Now, when you complete a PR, you will have the option to automatically complete the linked work items after the PR has been merged successfully (Figure 29). If you are using policies and set pull requests to auto-complete, you will see the same option. No more remembering to revisit work items to update the state once the pull request has completed. This is done for you automatically.

Reset votes on push/new iteration

Teams opting for a more strict approval workflow in PRs can now opt-in to reset votes when new changes are pushed (Figure 30). The new setting is an option under the policy to Require a minimum number of reviewers.

When set, this option will cause all votes from all reviewers to be reset any time the source branch of the PR is updated. The PR timeline will record an entry any time the votes are reset as a result of this option (Figure 31).

Filter pull request tree by file name

Finding a specific file in a pull request is easier than ever. The new filter box in the Files view lets users filter down the list of files in the tree view (Figure 32).

The filter matches any part of the path of the files in the pull request, so you can search by folder names, partial paths, file names, or extensions (Figure 33).

More pull request comments filtering options

Comments in both the pull request overview and the files view now have the same options (Figure 34). You can also filter to see only the discussions you participated in.

View original diff for code comments in pull request details

Sometimes, it is hard to make sense out of a PR comment after the code it is referencing has changed (many times, when a requested change has been made) (Figure 35).

When this happens, you will now see a badge with an update number that you can click to see what the code looked like at the time the comment was originally created (Figure 36).

Collapsible pull request comments

Reviewing code is a critical part of the pull request experience, so we have added new features to make it easier for reviewers to focus on the code. Code reviewers can easily hide comments to get them out of the way when reviewing new code for the first time (Figure 37).

Hiding comments (Figure 38) hides them from the tree view and collapses the comment threads in the file view:

When comments are collapsed, they can be expanded easily by clicking the icon in the margin, and then collapsed again with another click. Tooltips (Figure 39) make it easy to peek at a comment without seeing the entire thread.

Task lists in pull request descriptions and comments

When preparing a PR or commenting you sometimes have a short list of things that you want to track but then end up editing the text or adding multiple comments. Lightweight task lists are a great way to track progress on a list of to-dos as either a PR creator or reviewer in the description or a single, consolidated comment. Click on the Markdown toolbar to get started or apply the format to selected text (Figure 40).

Once you have added a task list (Figure 41), you can simply check the boxes to mark items as completed. These are expressed and stored within the comment as [ ] and [x] in Markdown. See Markdown guidance for more information.

Ability to “Like” comments in pull requests

Show your support for a PR comment with a single click on the like button (Figure 42). You can see the list of all people that liked the comment by hovering over the button.

Improved workflow when approving with suggestions

Using the auto-complete option (Figure 43) with pull requests is a great way to improve your productivity, but it should not cut short any active discussions with code reviewers. To better facilitate those discussions, the Approve with suggestions vote will now prompt when a pull request is set to complete automatically. The user will have the option to cancel the auto-complete so that their feedback can be read, or keep the auto-complete set and allow the pull request to be completed automatically when all policies are fulfilled.

Path filtering support for Git notifications

Instead of getting notifications for all folders in a repo, you can now choose to get notified when team members create pull requests or push code in only the folders that you care about. When creating custom Git push or Git pull requests email notification subscriptions, you will see a new option to filter these notifications by folder path (Figure 44).

Updated email templates for pull request workflows

Pull request email alerts have been refreshed to make them clear, concise, and actionable (Figure 45). The subject line now begins with the PR title and secondary information, like the repo name, and ID is deferred to the end. The name of the author has been added to the subject to make it simpler to apply rules and filters based on the person that created the PR.

The body of the alert emails has a refreshed template that first summarizes why the alert was sent, followed by the critical metadata (title, branch names, and description), and a main call-to-action button. Additional details like the reviewers, files, and commits are included further down the email.

For most alerts, the call-to-action (Figure 46) is to view the pull request in the web. However, when you are notified about a specific comment, the call-to-action will link directly to that comment so you can easily find the code and prior conversation for context.

Updated email templates for push notifications

Push notifications have been updated to match the new email templates that are optimized to be clear, concise, and actionable (Figure 47). The subject line helps you clearly distinguish push emails, identify the branch, repo, and author, and summarize the number of commits included in the push. These changes also make it easier to create rules and filters to help manage these email notifications.

The email body is consistent with other emails, emphasizing why the email was sent, who initiated the action, and exactly what happened. Specific to push alerts, the details about the repo, branch, files, and commits are all included to help inform the recipients about the scope of the changes. The main call-to-action for push alerts is View Push, which will open the pushes view for the specific push that generated the alert.

Wiki

Each project now supports its own Wiki (Figure 48). Now you can conveniently write pages that help your team members understand, use, and contribute to your project.

Some of the key features of the new Wiki include:

• Simplified editing experience using markdown syntax.
• The new page allows you to specify a title and add content. (Figure 49)

• Support for HTML tags in markdown (Figure 50).

• Conveniently resize images in the markdown folder (Figure 51).

• Powerful page management pane that allows you to reorder, re-parent, and manage pages.
• Ability to filter pages by title for large Wikis (Figure 52).

• Offline updates of Wiki for power users.

As you use Wiki more, there is a chance you will save unintended changes. Now you can revert a revision to a Wiki page by going to the revision details and clicking on the Revert button (Figure 53).

Create a Wiki page from a broken link

We observed a pattern during Wiki creation where a table of contents on a Wiki page included non-existent links (Figure 54). Users would click on these links in an attempt to create an actual page. We previously handled this scenario by giving a warning suggesting that the link was broken, or that the page did not exist. Now, we are handling this as a mainstream scenario for Wiki, by allowing you to create pages instead.

Wiki page deep linking

Wiki now supports deep linking sections within a page and across pages, which is extremely useful for creating a table of contents. You can reference a heading in the same page or another page by using the following syntax:

• Same page: [text to display](#section-name)
• Another page: [text to display](/page-name#section-name)

The Wiki extension on the Marketplace is now deprecated. If you are an existing Wiki extension user, then you can migrate your Wiki pages to the new Wiki using this migration tool. Learn more about how to migrate your existing Wiki pages to the new Wiki.

Package Management

Package Management experience updates

Package URLs now work with the package name and version, rather than using GUIDs. This makes it easier to hand-craft package URLs (Figure 55). The format is: \<tfsserverurl\>/\<project|team\>/_packaging?feed=\<feed\>&package=\<package\>&version=\<version\>&protocolType=\<NuGet|Npm|Maven\>&_a=package.