TFS 2015 Configuration & Administration

This newly expanded 4-day course is designed for team members who are responsible for the installation, configuration and administration of Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2015. This course teaches not only the technical know-how to successfully run your TFS infrastructure but also best practises based on industry experience.

This course combines both technical presentations as well as hands-on lab exercises designed to ensure attendees gain a solid, practical understanding of how to administer TFS 2015 in modern work environments.

Key topics covered in this course include product installation, configuring security & permissions, reporting, customisation and build automation. We cover both the new Team Build as well as using legacy XAML build infrastructure.

Course Objectives:

At the completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• Plan a TFS deployment and install TFS 2015 in a variety of topologies
• Determine appropriate service accounts
• Plan a migration and/or upgrade to TFS 2015
• Understand the value of quarterly updates and how to install them
• Configure SMTP support and customize email alerts
• Keep TFS data safe using backup and restore 
• Monitor the health and performance of a TFS instance 
• Plan project hierarchies using Team Projects and Team Project Collections
• Create, modify, rename, and delete Team Projects and Team Project Collections
• Configure standard role-based security for team projects
• Use advanced security to manage fine-grained security
• Configure version control settings including backward compatibility
• Customize the process template to better suit the team’s requirements
• Understand the reporting infrastructure and create custom Excel reports
• Configure Data warehouse and OLAP cube refresh and rebuilds
• Plan, install, and manage the new build environments introduced in 2015
• Optimize build infrastructure to provide fast feedback to teams
• Install and configure build infrastructure for legacy XAML builds (pre-2015 builds) 

Audience: 

• This course is designed for administrators and software development professionals responsible for the day-to-day administration and operation of a Team Foundation Server. Every organization using TFS should have at least one or two “TFS champions” who are skilled in the topics and areas covered in this course.
• This course is also ideal preparation of Microsoft’s 70-496 exam, which is part of the MCSD: Application Lifecycle Management certification.

Pre-requisites: Attendees should have some familiarity with installations of server products such as operating systems, SQL server, etc. Some experience using Visual Studio would also be beneficial.

Modules:

Module 1: Introducing the Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 family

• What’s new in Visual Studio 2015
• Overview of the Visual Studio 2015 family
• Overview of product features
• A lap around Visual Studio Team Services
• Project workflow across the Visual Studio 2015 suite of products

Module 2: Planning a TFS 2015 deployment

• Overview of TFS architecture
• Planning a TFS Deployment
• An overview of product licensing

Module 3: Installing TFS

• Installing and configuring TFS prerequisites
• TFS 2015 Installation
• Integration with SharePoint

Module 4: Upgrading to TFS 2015

• Overview of upgrade options
• In-place vs migration based upgrades
• Performing your upgrade
• Migration options from other version control providers

Module 5: Managing TFS instances

• Using the TFS Administration Console
• Configuring SMTP support for TFS
• Customising email alerts
• TFS Server health monitoring
• Changing service accounts
• Viewing installed updates

Module 6: TFS Backup and Restore

• TFS Backup and Restore strategies
• Understanding the TFS databases
• Creating a backup schedule
• The restore process
• Refreshing the client data cache

Module 7: Creating and managing Team Projects

• Creating Team Projects
• Understanding Team Project Collections
• Creating Project Welcome pages
• Renaming and deleting Team Projects

Module 8: Configuring Team Project level Security

• Overview of TFS security
• Configuring security using standard groups
• Understanding and configuring Teams

Module 9: Advanced Security and Permissions

• Fine-grain security options
• TFS Server level permissions
• Setting permissions at the Team Project Collection level
• Setting Web Access permissions
• Restricting access in TFS
• Using command line tools for managing security

Module 10: Source Control Configuration

• Setting project wide source control settings
• Understanding workspaces
• Using the TF command line utility
• Using the TFS Rollback command
• Using the TFS Proxy to improve performance
• Backward compatibility using the MSSCCI provider

Module 11: Work Items

• Overview of Work Items
• Traceability between work items
• Creating custom queries
• Work item charting and pinning charts
• Work item tagging
• Configuring project alerts and notifications

Module 12: Managing Process Templates

• Understanding process templates
• Basics of template customisation
• Adding new fields to Work Item Types
• Adding new Work Item Types
• Adding new queries and reports
• Updating an upgraded Team Project

Module 13: Reporting

• Understanding the Reporting Architecture
• Adding new reports
• Creating ad-hoc reports using Excel
• TFS Warehouse and OLAP Cube overview
• Changing the Data Warehouse and Analysis Services Cube processing frequency
• Rebuild the Data Warehouse and Analysis Services Cube

Module 14: Build Automation

• Overview of build infrastructure
• Installing and configuring Build Agents
• Scaling your build infrastructure
• Overview of hosted build services
• Overview of non-Windows Build Agents

Module 15: Supporting legacy XAML builds

• Overview of legacy build infrastructure
• Installing and configuring the Build Agents and Controllers
• How to scale your legacy build infrastructure