Why you should upgrade TFS V1 to WSS 3.0
An update of this blog is available. In the new blog I refuted all point which has been carried by Jason Barile. This blog describes of full Guide which every TFS administrator can follow to upgrade to WSS v3.
Before you read this post I must warn you, this solution is as is. I'm trained professional so don't do this at work. ;-)
According to Jason Barile, you will not be able to create project portals for TFS projects if you upgrade Windows SharePoint Services v2 to v3.
Via Jason: If you happen to upgrade your WSS2.0 to WSS3.0, you can expect the following behavior:
- The Team Explorer's 'Documents' node will have a red x on it and will not expand.
- Team Project Creation Wizard will fail with the standard templates, only templates with all WSS functionality removed will work.
- You will not be able to browse to the site by right-clicking on the project and selecting 'Open Project Portal'.
Although I believe him, I would like to test it myself. The first two bullets are really necessary to use it in your Team Project environment. The last bullet is not a show stopper, but as a developer it can be very handy for going to the portal or create document libraries, folders and documents from the Team Explorer.
Introduction
Why should you want to upgrade to WSS 3.0?
For Example:
- Customize your sites quickly
- Better control with master pages
- Send e-mail to a SharePoint site
- Get mobile access to a SharePoint list
- Poll people more effectively with improved surveys
- Receive updates about lists and libraries with RSS Feeds
- Track your work with improved calendars
- Copy documents easily to another location
- Better management of versions
- Better document recovery
Should I go on or should I show you how to upgrade.
How to install
When you try to install one of the default upgrades it can give you several errors and unfortunately this isn't the correct way for upgrading right now.
Upgrade WSS 2.0 -> 3.0
As you can see in the picture above the default instance of WSS 2.0 is created by the TFSSERVICE account. It isn't even possible to install and configure a WSS 2.0 site yourself (e.g. Create permissions, set databases). The configuration is done by the TFSSERVICE account, so that's maybe an issue why you can't upgrade. Mine TFSSERVICE account only has "Log on as a Service" policy enabled as mentioned in Rob Caron's installation guide. So select 'No, do not upgrade at this time'.
How to configure
After installing WSS 3.0 you can't extend your WSS 2.0 site, but you can create a new Web Application which is using the same site location (e.g C:\inetpub\wwwroot) and same content database (STS_Content_TFS) as your WSS 2.0 site uses. Before you create your new Web Application you first have to prescan the site with prescan.exe. Just use the /all attribute and the site is ready to upgrade. Use all values (as given) to overwrite your previous site, use port 80 to open it for TFS and name the site (e.g. SharePoint - 80). After the Application is created you need to reset IIS by using iisreset /noforce. This way the site will be reloaded and uses all his new configuration settings including those of SharePoint.
Upgrade your Team Project server
Check the result
Jason expected the following result "The Team Explorer's 'Documents' node will have a red x on it and will not expand." but it's working perfectly. You not only upgraded one Team Project site, but you upgraded all subsites of http://server/sites. Besides showing the documents in Team Explorer, you also use all the features in it (e.g Show Project Portal..., New Document Library..., Upload Document... and New Folder).
Bullet 1 is off the list
Still one red x to go. Check your Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to see there are two sites configured at port 80. The 'Default Web Site' and the new configured site 'SharePoint - 80'. The report server doesn't work anymore cause you created a new Web Application. We have to reconfigure SSRS. You may delete your 'Default Web Site' because you just created a new one.
Reconfigure SSRS
Back in the old days ;-) configuring SSRS was quite a job. Luckily we now have the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. With this manager it's easy to create the two Virtual Directories with the correct setting and permissions needed. The only thing left is to change the Application Pool for both directories. You can do this in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager by selecting 'ReportServer' in the properties dialog of one of the directories. When you finished with this option you can click Refresh in the Reporting Services Configuration Manager and the Web Service Identity will be mark as correct. After doing this you can refresh your Team Explorer and look at the result. As you can see in the image everything works perfectly.
Complete the upgrade
How about new Team Projects
Having upgraded your old WSS 2.0 sites to WSS 3.0 sites you can ask yourself the question "Can I still create new Team Projects?". Jason expected the following "Team Project Creation Wizard will fail with the standard templates, only templates with all WSS functionality removed will work.". It's even worse because you can't use any template at all. I've tried to create a Site Template "VSTS_MSFAgile" (This name can be found in WssTasks.XML which is part of the Process Guidance) based on a previous project. As you can see in the next image it's not working.
Create a new Project
Finally I ended by downloading my default Process Guidance and cleared the WssTasks.XML. After customizing the Process Template I uploaded it to TFS. As you can see it's almost empty. I only added the portal tags, so the plugin won't fail.
Content of WssTasks.XML
By doing this you are able to create a new Team Project without having any errors. You now have to create a site using SharePoint Central Administration. It's up to you what site template you want to use because you could even use a Team Site template. The only important part is, is to create at the http://server/sites location and give it exactly the same name as your Team Project. You now have created a new site using WSS 3.0 which can be used in a TFS V1 environment. It's a good idea to create a default site definition which already has all the TFS documents for your process in it. Or you can just copy all files using the Web Client service by connecting to one of the created document libraries (e.g. http://server/sites/teamproject/process guidance). It's not perfect but it works, so bullet two is gone as well.
Newly created Team Project
Summary
I hope you're as excited as I'm and will soon upgrade you TFS environment to WSS 3.0. Ok, there are some disadvantages, but compare to the advantages of WSS 3.0, at least give it a shot. Of course this is as is, so Microsoft will not support this upgrade. As Jason mentioned in his blog "the upcoming service pack for TFS will not add support for WSS 3.0. We are investigating options for supporting WSS3.0 and beyond in future releases of TFS." Why is Microsoft trying so hard to not use this feature in a service pack update. Why is the team trying so hard to push us in the direction of 'Orcas'. 'Orcas' is great update (Read Brian Harry post about the TFS roadmap, he doesn't even mention WSS 3.0) and I will certainly advise everybody to upgrade, but WSS 3.0 has nothing to do with 'Orcas'. It's just laziness of the team or orders from the management above. After upgrading to WSS 3.0, you can even install SP1 for TFS and uninstall WSS 2.0, without harming the system. If you've upgraded to SP1 and you uses Office 2007 this system really rocks. You get even more advantages, because Office 2007 integrates seamlessly with TFS and WSS 3.0.
Office 2007 using TFS
Please TFS Team help us
- Jason bullet 1; Just make sure the WSS 2.0 databases are ready to update. So all people don't have to follow my workaround.
- Jason bullet 2; Just update the plugin for SharePoint (Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Portal). How hard can it be to use the services of WSS 3.0.
- Jason bullet 3; No issue, just reboot your system after all these changes.
How hard can it be? Lots of people invested in a marvelous SDLC tool, why can't they upgrade easily to WSS 3.0. It's free, it's full off nice features and they are ready for future.