This book is your guide to mastering the comprehensive reports that are part of Team Foundation Server and Microsoft's main Application Life Cycle Management (ALM) suite. TFS Reporting provides the ability to track different metrics of development projects throughout the Application Life Cycle; these include team progress, bugs, the current backlog, test progress, and so on, using well-integrated and familiar tools such as Excel and SQL Server Reporting Services. Team Web Access reports are also explained in this book, providing a quick progress status view via different charts, work item queries, as well as inbuilt reports. The book starts by giving you a walkthrough of TFS and the reporting architecture. Then it jumps into the basics of Excel reporting, describing each of the standard reports available. Finally, you will learn how to use the powerful tools available in SQL Server Reporting Services to create and customize robust reports and how to design and customize a dashboard featuring reports relevant to you.
Chapter 1, Team Foundation Server Primer, teaches the basics of the TFS architecture and reporting, and the importance of Application Life Cycle Management.
Chapter 2, Work Item Querying, explains the team project scenario in TFS walks through the types of work item query that results the required work items to know the status of work progress.
Chapter 3, Excel Reporting, explains the basics of integrating SharePoint 2013 with TFS 2013. This chapter also explores Excel report types and how to customize them as required need on different types of dashboards.
Chapter 4, SQL Server Reporting, walks through creating basic SQL reports using Report Builder and Report Designer.
Chapter 5, Team Web Access Reporting, explains Team Web Access levels and their various features (as required) and walks through a very light feature called work item charting. Also, it describes inbuilt standard reports.
In order to understand the reporting functionalities for TFS 2013, you should have the following set up on the server:
TFS 2013 to implement reports
The sample Team project in TFS to base reports on
SharePoint Server 2013, to integrate TFS with SharePoint for Excel reporting
SQL Database 2012 or 2014 to store TFS and SharePoint databases
Configuration of the Reporting and Analysis service in SQL Server for SQL reports
This book is intended for developers, testers, architects, project managers, and for people who want to explore and make use of the reporting facilities of Team Foundation Server 2013 (TFS 2013). The primary audience is anyone working with software development at various cycles using TFS 2013 to administer the project team, source code, builds, work items, and test process. Although no previous experience of reporting is required, a basic understanding of Team Foundation components and project templates will be a plus.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "At runtime, the .rdlc files are processed locally, while the .rdl files are processed remotely."
A block of code is set as follows:
SELECT DimPerson.Name, DimWorkItem.System_State, DimWorkItem.System_Title FROM FactCurrentWorkItem INNER JOIN
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."
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