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TFS Release Notes

TFS Release Notes automatically generates release notes for a project hosted on Team Foundation Server using Excel. The release notes contain all PBIs in a given iteration plus any bugs in that iteration with specific tags. They also contain the test cases for those work items.

Prerequisites

  • TFS Release Notes generates MS Excel documents using EPPlus. The library supports the Office Interops, but they are not exposed to the web application (write your own wrapper for these).
  • The Windows user running the ReleaseNotesWeb application must have read access to the team project specified.
  • The Windows user NETWORK SERVICE must be able to modify the contents of the folder: C:\Users\CurrentUser\AppDataFolder\Roaming\ReleaseNotes (or at least the AppDataFolder).
    • Make sure the folder is not read-only.
    • The folder will at most contain two files, the ACAS logo (ACAS.jpg) and the presets database (presets.sqlite).
  • The ReleaseNotes library project must be built before ReleaseNotesWeb (using the 'Release' configuration. 'Debug' will not build the library out to the correct path).

Usage

The ReleaseNotesWeb folder contains an ASP.NET Web application that you can run on IIS to generate release notes. If you have Visual Studio, open the ReleaseNotes.sln file, and browse to ReleaseNotesWeb in the Solution Explorer. Right click on the ReleaseNotesWeb project and click 'Set As Startup Project', then click on the play button at the top of Visual Studio to run in your browser of choice. The web application has been tested on Google Chrome.

If the build fails, you will need to build the ReleaseNotes project in the solution file. Change the build configuration to 'Release' (this is very important) and click the Play button at the top of the screen. Then, build ReleaseNotesWeb. You must build ReleaseNotes.csproj with the 'Release' configuration selected because the project file ReleaseNotesWeb points to the ReleaseNotesLibrary assembly in the solution's ReleaseNotes project folder: ...SolutionDir\ReleaseNotes\bin\Release\ReleaseNotesLibrary.dll

The default AppData folder for this application is C:\Users\CurrentUser\AppDataFolder\Roaming\ReleaseNotes, which is required for both saving resource images and application persistence files. The program will attempt to create the directory, though with IIS Express that may be impossible given permissions issues. To resolve, simply give the local machine's 'NETWORK SERVICE' account access to the folder. You may need to create this folder by hand (though the application will attempt this for you, and will not error out if it succeeds).

Input Parameters

The web form takes 8 parameters:

  • TFS Project Collection Path (eg. https://mytfsserver.com/tfs/MyProjectCollection)
  • TFS Project Name (eg. MyProject)
  • Iteration (The full name of the sprint/iteration for which to generate release notes, eg. Release 0.00)
  • TFS Project Subpath (any path between MyProjectCollection and Release 0.00. This is optional for projects that don't have extra breakdowns)
  • Database Server (arbitrary string - the name of the database server)
  • Web Server (arbitrary string - the name of the web server)
  • Database (arbitrary string - the name of the database)
  • Web Location (arbitrary string - the location of the published application)
  • Generator Type (either excel or html).

Presets

Since the information required to generate release notes requires a lot of typing, presets save time by allowing the input parameters of the application to be saved. ReleaseNotesWeb uses a SQLite database to store these presets, and the file (C:\Users\CurrentUser\AppDataFolder\Roaming\ReleaseNotes\presets.sqlite) is easily transferable from one PC to the next.

  • To create a preset, type in the 'Preset name' next to the 'Save' button in the 'Presets' section of ReleaseNotesWeb.
  • To overwrite an existing preset, select the preset from the 'Recall Presets' dropdown menu, then change any field and click 'Save'.
  • To delete a preset, select any preset from the 'Recall Presets' dropdown menu and click 'Delete'. The delete does not warn, so always have a backup of 'presets.sqlite' handy.
  • To share presets, simply copy 'presets.sqlite' from the folder C:\Users\SourceUser\AppDataFolder\Roaming\ReleaseNotes\ to the same folder on the target user's machine: C:\Users\TargetUser\AppDataFolder\Roaming\ReleaseNotes. Easy as that.