Friday, 16 December 2011

TFS 2010 - How do I create email alerts when anything is checked into TFS, Build's Fail/Succeed or Work Items are Assigned/Changed?

This is quite simple to do with the right tools installed on your development machine:

1) Ensure that you have an SMTP Server Configured for your TFS box - as described on MSDN at "How to: Configure SMTP Server and E-mail Notification Settings in the Services Web.Config File" 
2) Install the Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Power Tools from MSDN
3) Open up the Alert Explorer which installs a set of alert actions. The alert explorer is accessible from several different menus within Visual Studio 2010. See screenshots below:

From the Team Menu:

On TFS Work Items:


From the top level TFS Server Node:



On Branches or Folders within the TFS Source Control Explorer windows:



There are several predefined alerts that come with the Visual Studio TFS Power Tools. These are shown below:



The alert filters are quite flexible. You can modify and change these Alerts in the alter definition editor as shown below:


DDK

1 comment:

Kris said...

Is there any way to make these alerts global so that other users can see and possibly edit them?

From what I understand alerts are meant for users.

Any idea how I could set up an alert that others can see and change?