Walkthrough: Joining a Team Project

This walkthrough describes the steps that you as a team member must take to connect to your team project and begin working.

Tasks illustrated in this walkthrough include the following:

  • Adding a team project.

  • Viewing the project portal.

Prerequisites

To complete this walkthrough, you need:

  • Team Explorer installed on your computer.

  • The AdventureWorks team project. To create this team project, see Walkthrough: Creating a New Team Project.

  • Permissions to connect to the AdventureWorks team project as described in the following section.

Required Permissions

To join a team project you must be a member of both the Team Foundation Valid Users security group and the Readers security group for the team project. If the necessary security permissions are set explicitly, then you must have the View server-level information permission set to Allow and the View project-level information permission on the team project set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Adding a Team Project

Software projects in Team Explorer are called team projects. The team project is the central point for sharing all team activities for creating a specific software technology or product. When you join a team project, you get access to several areas that coordinate team efforts on that team project:

  • A team project Web site that contains document templates.

  • A team project reporting site that contains predefined reports.

  • A work item database for tracking all effort on the project.

  • Process guidance, iterations, starter tasks, and work items based on the process template that was used to create the team project.

  • A source code branch for source code control.

  • A build database for tracking build types and status.

Team projects are stored on a Team Foundation Server; therefore, you must connect to a Team Foundation Server. For more information, see How to: Connect to Team Foundation Server

First, add the AdventureWorks team project to Team Explorer.

To add a team project

  1. Open Visual Studio.

  2. On the View menu, click Team Explorer.

    Team Explorer appears.

  3. On the File menu, point to Open, and click Team Project.

  4. In the Connect to Team Foundation Server dialog box, under Team Projects, select the AdventureWorks check box.

  5. Click OK.

Viewing the Project Portal

The project portal provides a central location for the team to find, share, and connect to project documents, process guidance, and reports.

To view the project portal

  • In Team Explorer, right-click the AdventureWorks node, and select Show Project Portal.

Viewing your Work Items

The Work Items node contains various queries to locate and work with bugs, requirements, tasks, and other work item types. You can also use this node to add new work items or go to a work item if you know the ID.

To find all work items assigned to you

  1. In Team Explorer, expand the AdventureWorks node, expand the Work Items node, and then expand the Team Queries node.

  2. Right-click the My Work Items query, and select View Results.

    The work items assigned to you are displayed.

    Note

    The list may be empty if you did not create the AdventureWorks team project.

Next Steps

Now that you have joined a team project, you can begin to work in the team project. Consider following these additional steps:

See Also

Tasks

How to: Connect to Team Foundation Server