Change check-in email notification to TFS Web Access

There are some very useful articles to change TFS email notifications to link to Team System Web Access:

Changing TFS emails to link to Team System Web
Changing TFS emails to link to Team System Web Part 2

The configurable links include:
- Work Item notification mails
- Build notification mails
- Check-in notification mails
- Mails sent by Team Explorer

However, for check-in notification mails, if your TFS web access is not installed as the default website, and contains a virtual directory as part of the URL, the tfsadminutil tool cannot process the URL correctly, at least not until TFS 2008 SP1. For example, if your TFS web access URL is http://myTFSserver:8080/tswa, tfsadminutil tool will set up the links as http://myTFSserver:8080/ instead.

Here we provide a workaround until tfsadminutil tool has that improved. The workaround requires direct modification of the TFS database. Please note that it is NOT recommended by Microsoft.

Prerequisite: TFS 2008 + SP1 + TFS web access + Hotfix KB957196

Step 1. run the command on the TFS server:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Tools> tfsadminutil configureconnections /TSWAUri:http://myTFSserver:8080/tswa

Step 2. connect to TFS database through SQL Server Management Studio. Run the following query.
use TfsIntegration
go
select * from tbl_service_interface

output:
....
8 WorkItemEditor http://myTFSserver:8080/wi.aspx
8 ChangesetDetail http://myTFSserver:8080/cs.aspx
8 Difference http://myTFSserver:8080/diff.aspx
8 ViewItem http://myTFSserver:8080/view.aspx
....

Step 3. Modify the URLs in the table for the above items.
Update tbl_service_interface
Set url='http://myTFSserver:8080/tswa/wi.aspx'
Where name='WorkItemEditor'

Update tbl_service_interface
Set url='http://myTFSserver:8080/tswa/cs.aspx'
Where name='ChangesetDetail'

Update tbl_service_interface
Set url='http://myTFSserver:8080/tswa/diff.aspx'
Where name='Difference'

Update tbl_service_interface
Set url='http://myTFSserver:8080/tswa/view.aspx'
Where name='ViewItem'

Step 4. After the TFS process is recycled, your check-in email subscription will generate emails linking to TFS web access.

No Views Show up in ClearCase Explorer

One developer got problem accessing his view. ClearCase used to work fine on his desktop. Since two days ago, after refreshing the ClearCase Explorer view shortcuts, he found that there were no views showing up on the view panel. He had no problem using ClearCase Project Explorer, except for view related operations, such as list the view property.

When trying to start the view manually, it showed the following error.

H:\>cleartool startview patelsus_VER6.1.5_int
view_contact call failed: RPC: Unable to receive; errno = [WINSOCK] Connection reset by peer
cleartool: Error: Error trying to contact view_server for view Tot75xrdtw1027q:C:\CCShare\patelsus_VER6.1.5_int.vws: No such file or directory
cleartool: Error: Couldn't set view tag patelsus_VER6.1.5_int: No such file or directory


There were errors in the system's event log too, complaining view server died on start up, etc.

After rule out other causes, run winmsd from Start -> Run, under the network -> protocal, the first entry should be "MSAFD Tcpip [TCP/IP]" and the second should be "MSAFD Tcpip [UDP/IP]". However, the protocal showed: "SSH Capture over [MSAFD Tcpip [TCP/IP]]" and "SSH Capture over [MSAFD Tcpip [UDP/IP]]".


It turned out that the developer installed SSH Tectia, which conflicts with ClearCase client. After uninstallation, the problem is resolved.

Install SQL Server Bussiness Intellegent Development Studio

If you have SQL Server Management Studio Express, SQL Server Bussiness Intellegent Development Studio (BIDS) is not installed by default. But you can get BIDS as part of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit can be freely downloaded from Microsoft.

Problem:

When installing Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit, the installation failed with the following error message in the log file.

Machine : xxxxxx

Product : MSXML 6 Service Pack 2 (KB954459)

Product Version : 6.20.1099.0

Install : Failed Log File : c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Files\SQLSetup0005_TOT75XRDTW1027R_MSXML6_1.log

Error Number : 1603

The detailed error message in the log indicates

Action start 10:34:08: SkipInstallCA.

This package is not supported on this operating system.

Action ended 10:34:08: SkipInstallCA. Return value 3.

Solution.

First uninstall the existing version of msxml. If fail to uninstall, use Windows Installer CleanUp Utility to clean up msxml6.

After that, re-run SQLEXPR_TOOLKIT.EXE to install BDIS. Everything should be fine.