One question I get quite often is how you can control access to the Team System Web Access client.

TSWA will use the permissions setup for a user in TFS. So if you're allowed to view reports or manage documents in Sharepoint then these features will be available to you in TSWA as well.

Now, in TSWA 2008 there is also a way to control which tabs a user is allowed to use. To setup access permissions, chose "Settings, Team Project, Access Restrictions" in the web client. A dialog like the one below is shown where you can configure permissions in TSWA similar to the rest of TFS.

When Nicole in the case above logs in to TSWA the UI will not allow her to work with the reports, source control or build tabs. Not bad but in my opinion it would have been even better if the tabs wasn't shown at all.

Conchango recently released v.2.1 of the popular Scrum process template. Mainly bugfixes in this release and it's possible to upgrade existing projects using an included utility. The process is straightforward for the latest releases, but when upgrading from 2.0 Beta 1 I've had to handle it manually (which is the way to do it). Below is some short notes of the installation procedure.

Upgrade 2.0 Beta 2 & RTM => 2.1

• Uninstall Scrum for Team System 2.0.
• Install Scrum for Team System 2.1.
• Upgrade existing projects to 2.1 using the ProjectUpgrade.exe as described here.

Upgrade 2.0 Beta 1 => 2.1

• Uninstall 2.0 and install 2.1.
• Upgrading projects using ProjectUpgrade.exe will not work, instead
  • Extract the work item type definitions from the process template.
  • Import the work items types (existing will be updated, bug will be added).
  • The "Sprint Retrospective" work item type has been renamed so the old one called "Sprint Retrospective Item" should be removed.
    • Use the Team Foundation Power tool tfpt.exe /DeleteWIT to remove the unwanted work item type.
  • Remove all template work item queries and add the ones from the new process template.
  • Remove all template reports and add the ones from the new process template.

Otherwise a great release of a great process template. Probably the best mapping of Scrum to Team System around.