Customizing MSF Process Guidance, Part 6: Building HTML Content Pages with MSFWinBuild

Allison Bokone
Microsoft Corporation

June 2006

Applies to:
   MSF for Agile Software Development v4.0 Process Guidance
   MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v4.0 Process Guidance

Summary: This is the last of six companion articles about process guidance customization. In this article, we explain how to modify your customized process guidance source files, build new process guidance HTML files and incorporate them into new or existing projects.

Contents

Introduction
MSFWinBuild Command-Line Reference
MSFWinBuild Parameters File Elements
Updating Process Templates with New Content
Updating Existing Projects with New Content
Conclusion

Introduction

Process guidance is the content that documents your specific software development process. The process guidance complements the process template.

Visual Studio® Team System 2005 includes two process templates: MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. Each of these processes may be customized and used to develop software in projects. As process templates are customized, the corresponding process guidance should be updated to address any changes that were made.

MSFWinBuild Command-Line Reference

Use the MSFWinBuild command to build your process guidance content into html pages.

The MSFWinBuild command-line utility is located at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66888.

Syntax

MSFWinBuild {AgileParams.xml | CMMIParams.xml | YourProcessParams.xml }

Parameters

Examples

The following example shows how to perform a content build for MSF for Agile Software Development process guidance.

MSFWinBuild AgileParams.xml

The following example shows how to perform a content build for MSF for CMMI Process Improvement process guidance.

MSFWinBuild CMMIParams.xml

The following example shows how to perform a content build for your process guidance.

MSFWinBuild YourProcessParams.xml

MSFWinBuild Parameters File Elements

To run MSFWinBuild, you must specify which parameters file to use at the command line; AgileParams or CMMIParams. You can also create your own parameters file. These parameters files contain path information about where the process guidance source files MSFWinBuild requires are located and where MSFWinBuild should save the files it generates. If you move your process guidance files to a new location, update the corresponding parameters file to indicate the new path information.

Parameters

Updating Process Templates with New Content

As soon as you have built the new content and verified the new HTML pages in a browser, you can update your process templates with the new content. All projects created from the updated process template will have the new process guidance created at project creation time.

To update a process template, you must download the process template, make your changes, and then upload it back to your Team Foundation Server.

**Note   **To download or upload a process template, you must be a member of the Team Foundation Administrators group. You must also be either a local administrator on the computer that is running Windows SharePoint Services or a member of the SharePoint Administrators Group.

If the necessary security permissions are set explicitly, you must have the View server-level information permission set to Allow and the Manage process template permission on the team project set to Allow.

To download a process template

1. In Visual Studio 2005, on the Team menu, point to Team Foundation Server Settings, and then click Process Template Manager.

   The Process Template Manager lists each process template installed on the Team Foundation Server.

2. Select the process template to download.

3. Click the Download button.

4. In the Download Process Template dialog box, select a folder where the process template will be downloaded.

5. Click Save.

   The process template files are downloaded to the selected folder.

6. Click Close to close the Process Template Manager.

After downloading the process template, you can open the folder where it was downloaded to modify the source files for the process template.

To update a process template with new content

1. Click Start and then click My Computer.

2. Open the location you specified for MSFWinBuild to output the new process guidance HTML files.

3. Copy the Supporting Files folder.

4. Open the \Windows SharePoint Service\Process Guidance folder in the folder where you downloaded the process template.

5. Paste the Supporting Files folder into the Process Guidance folder.

6. Compare the existing WssTasks.xml file in the \Windows SharePoint Service directory with the newly generated WssTasks.xml file to make sure that the changes to the process guidance manifest reflect appropriate changes to the process template. If the changes reflect only process guidance changes or desired changes in the directory and work product structure, replace the existing WssTasks.xml file with the newly generated WssTasks.xml file.

   **Note   **The process template will not load if the WssTasks.xml file references a missing file. If you are not sure of the accuracy of this file, make sure that you change the name of the process template in ProcessTemplate.xml before uploading it so that it won't overwrite the original process template.

To create team projects that include the new process guidance, you must upload the template to your Team Foundation Server.

Considerations when uploading a process template

• Process templates must not contain .exe files in any folders or project creation will fail, even though the updated process template uploads successfully.

• The total size of a process template cannot exceed 2 GB or project creation will fail.

• The upload process performs a partial verification check to make sure that the XML is valid. If you receive any errors when you try to upload the process template, a change in the XML probably caused the error. Review the XML to determine the cause of the error. Note that duplicate tags in the XML can cause errors. If there is no error in the XML, check to make sure all the appropriate files are included in your process template in the correct folder locations.

• If you receive an error message that states you do not have access to the folder where your process template is located, make sure that the path name is typed correctly.

• Perspective names in WarehouseSchema.xml cannot contain the following characters:

  . , ; ' ` : / \ * | ? " & % $ ! + = ( ) [ ] { } < >

To upload a Process Template

1. On the Team menu, point to Team Foundation Server Settings, and then click Process Template Manager.

   The Process Template Manager lists each process template stored on the Team Foundation Server.

2. Click Upload.

3. In the Upload Process Template dialog box, select the folder that contains ProcessTemplate.xml.

4. Click Open.

   ProcessTemplate.xml and all its surrounding folders and files are uploaded. The uploaded process template appears in the list of available process templates.

5. Click Close to close the Process Template Manager.

Updating Existing Projects with New Content

If you want to update an existing project with new process guidance, you can replace the supporting files in the project source.

To update an existing project with new content

1. In Visual Studio 2005, in Team Explorer, right-click the team project and select Show Project Portal.

2. When the Windows SharePoint site for the project portal opens, click the Documents link in the Quick Launch area of the site. The Documents and Lists view will open.

3. In the Document Libraries area, open the Process Guidance folder by clicking the folder.

4. Expand the Supporting Files folder.

5. Check out each changed file and upload the new files to the SharePoint site. Check the files back in.

   The process guidance files must be checked out for any changes to be saved to the project portal.

Conclusion

In this final part of a six-part series, we have discussed how to build new process guidance HTML files from your customized process guidance source files and incorporate them into new or existing projects. See the following articles for more information about how to customize your MSF Process Guidance:

• Customizing MSF Process Guidance, Part 1: Overview
• Customizing MSF Process Guidance, Part 2: Activities, Workstreams, and WorkItemTypes
• Customizing MSF Process Guidance, Part 3: Roles, RoleGroups, HowTos, HowToProcedures, and WorkProducts
• Customizing MSF Process Guidance, Part 4: Reports, Queries, Views, and Overview Pages
• Customizing MSF Process Guidance, Part 5: Adding Cross Referencing and CMMI Adherence

© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.