10 September 2015

The required category ‘Microsoft.TestCaseCategory’ does not exist in team project ‘[projectname]’

When connecting to our TFS 2015 project with Microsoft Test Manager two of our team members were unable to connect, instead receiving:

The required category ‘Microsoft.TestCaseCategory’ does not exist in team project ‘[projectname]’

Googling for solutions I came across http://www.almguide.com/2011/01/the-required-category-microsoft-testcasecategory-does-not-exist-in-team-project-projectname/. I checked on my machine what the state of the categories was using the following statement.

witadmin.exe exportcategories /collection:http://[yourtfsinstance:port]/tfs/[collectionname]

Turns out that they were there and it was a complete list. So far so good. However, running the statement on my colleagues machine (or using his credentials on my machine, which led to the same result): not a single category...only the category element root tag...

In effect this had to be the root cause for the exception message in Test Manager 2015. After connecting to the TFS database and starting a profile and rerunning the export statement, I saw no actual database activity, which led me to think that some caching mechanism was in place. Rebuilding the TFS cache can be done by using the following command:

witadmin rebuildcache /collection:http://[yourtfsinstance:port]/tfs/[collectionname]
The statement finished swiftly probably because our TFS instance is relatively young, you milage may vary as there is a warning upon execution that states:
To avoid server performance issues, you should not run this command during typical operating hours.
After rebuilding the cache everyone was able to connect to the team project as intended! 
Hope this helps someone.

20 August 2015

TF246019: Team Foundation Server trial period expired

After upgrading TFSRC2 to the RTM version I installed Release Management for Team Foundation Server 2015. 

Wanting to connect to the TFS I was presented with the TF246019 error message.



Context: the TFS instance was upgraded from a TFS2015 RC to the TFS2015 RC2 and finally to the TFS2015 RTM. Being the RTM version it has a proper license. 
The error message has also presented itself when it was still a TFS2015 RC2 instance.

Rebooting the server resolved the issue.

Hope this helps somebody.

29 July 2015

TFS2015 RC2 upgrade - Backlog Explorer empty - Backlog and Capacity empty

Microsoft released TFS 2015 RC2, read about it in Brian Harry's blog

Upon upgrading the bits on the existing TFS2015 RC, I noticed that the Backlog Explorer was empty when I was looking at the existing sprints.
However, using the Board option in the sprint pane did show the existing backlog items as well as show the navigation options in the Backlog Explorer.


Clicking on the Capacity gave similar results: no capacity planning screen and an empty Backlog Explorer.

What was the case? This particular instance is a TFS test machine that has been closed for the current team and did not have any team members at the time of the upgrade.

The solution? Adding one team member to the team project and refreshing the webpage. This restored the functionality as we all come to know it. Removing the team member also did not result in the functionality breaking again.


Conclusion: an upgrade glitch for projects without team members with an easy fix.

Hope this helps someone.