Team Foundation Server 2018 Release Notes

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In this article, you will find information regarding Team Foundation Server 2018. Click the button to download.

To learn more about Team Foundation Server 2018, see the Team Foundation Server Requirements and Compatibility page. Visit the visualstudio.com/downloads page to download other TFS 2018 products.

Please see the TFS Install page for more information.

Release Date: November 15, 2017

Summary of What's New in TFS 2018

We have added a lot of new value to Team Foundation Server 2018. Some of the highlights include:

• We have improved the Project Creation Wizard and Process Template Manager on the web.
• You can now customize the work item form header.
• We optimized the mobile work item form.
• We added support for Git forks.
• You can manage massive Git repositories with GVFS.
• You can view, filter, delete, and set the security of Git tags.
• We added file minimap, bracket matching, and toggle white space to web code editing.
• We made many improvements to pull requests.
• You have a new improved Wiki experience.
• We have added support for Maven packages.
• You can import and export, and pause build definitions.
• The new Release Definition Editor has opt-in by default.
• You can deploy with virtual machine deployments.
• We improved exploratory testing traceability.
• We added test batching.
• You can now view a chart widget for test plans and test suites.

What's New in TFS 2018 video

XAML Build

We had originally listed XAML build as removed from TFS 2018 RTW and Update 1. However, that resulted in too many customers being unable to upgrade or having to contact support to re-enable it after the upgrade completed. In TFS 2018 Update 2, XAML build is enabled but has been deprecated. This means there is no further investment in XAML Build, and Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) no longer supports using XAML builds. We highly recommend converting to one of the newer build definition formats. You may continue to connect your XAML controllers and run XAML builds with TFS 2018 Update 2. More info

Features Removed in TFS 2018 RTW

• Support for Lab Center and automated testing flows in Microsoft Test Manager has been removed.
• We discontinued TFS Extension for SharePoint.
• We removed the Team Room feature.

Details of What's New in TFS 2018

Work Item Tracking

Project Creation Wizard on the web

We have improved the experience for creating a Team Project from web access. It now includes most of the features available when you create a Team Project in the Visual Studio client. The benefit of using the web interface is that you do not need a matching Visual Studio version. The difference of using Visual Studio or the web version is that the web version does not provision your reports in SSRS. If you used the web version of the Team Project creation, you can run the tfsconfig command on the Application Tier to provision or update the SSRS reports.

Process Template Manager on the web

With TFS 2018, you can use web access to upload your process templates. The web interface is a much easier experience because you do not have to install the correct version of Visual Studio to interact with your process templates. Visual Studio 2017 Update 4 and earlier will still show the Process Template Manager dialog, although we recommend using the web interface. Visual Studio 2017 Update 5 and later will redirect you to the web automatically.

Customize the work item form header

You can now customize the work item form header area by replacing the existing controls, or hiding controls, that are not relevant to your process. This will enable replacing Area path with a custom Team field, hiding Iteration if your teams are more Kanban focused, and replacing Reason with a custom field. The State field cannot be hidden or replaced.

Mobile work item form

We have a full end-to-end experience that includes an optimized look and feel for work items (Figure 1). It provides an easy way to interact with items that are assigned to you, are following, have visited, or edited recently from your phone.

Along with the good looks, this experience supports optimized controls for all field types (Figure 2).

With the new mobile navigation (Figure 3), users can reach any other mobile-ready parts of TFS and get back to the full desktop site in case they need to interact with other hubs.

Filtering on backlogs, Kanban boards, sprints, and queries

All of our work item tracking grid experiences (queries, backlogs, Kanban boards, sprints backlogs, and test case management) now make use of our common, consistent filtering component (Figure 4). Beyond applying a keyword filter across displayed columns and selecting tags, you can also filter on work item types, states, and assigned to, in order to quickly get to the work items you are looking for.

Expand to show empty fields on a Kanban card

Today, you have the option to add additional fields to a card and then hide empty fields (Figure 5) in board settings to remove unnecessary clutter from the board. The drawback to this feature was that once an empty field was hidden, the only way to update the field was to open the work item form. With the newly available expand option on Kanban cards, you can now benefit from hiding empty fields across the board, but still have single click access to update a particular field on a card. Simply hover over the card and look for the down chevron at the bottom of the card to update the hidden field.

Click the down chevron at the bottom of the card to update the field (Figure 6).

Extensions block work item save

Work item form custom controls, groups, and pages can now block work item save to validate data and ensure the user fills out any required information before saving the work item form.

Inline add on Delivery Plans

New feature ideas can arrive at any moment, so we have made it easier to add new features directly to your Delivery Plans (Figure 7). Simply click the New item button available on hover, enter a name, and hit enter. A new feature is created with the area path and iteration path you would expect.

Version Control

Forks

TFS 2018 adds support for Git forks (Figure 8). A fork is a server-side copy of a repository. Using forks, you can allow a broad range of people to contribute to your repository without giving them direct commit access. Instead, they commit their work to their own fork of the repository. This gives you the opportunity to review their changes in a pull request before accepting those changes into the central repository.

GVFS

Git Virtual File System (GVFS) is now supported. GVFS allows Git repositories to scale to millions of files by virtualizing and optimizing how Git operates on the filesystem.

Create a folder in a repository using web

You can now create folders through the web in your Git and TFVC repositories (Figure 9). This replaces the Folder Management extension, which will now undergo the process of deprecation.

To create a folder, click New > Folder in either the command bar or context menu:

For TFVC, you will specify a folder name and then check it in. For Git, because empty folders are not permitted, you will also have to specify a file name, optionally edit the file, then commit it.

Additionally, for Git, The New file dialog (Figure 10) has been enhanced to accept slashes to create subfolders.

File minimap

You can now view a minimap of a file as you view or edit to give you a quick overview of the code (Figure 11). To turn on the minimap, open the Command Palette (F1 or right-click) and select Toggle Minimap.

Bracket matching

When editing or viewing a file, there are now guidelines on the left side to make it easy to match your brackets (Figure 12).

Toggle white space

You can now toggle white space on and off when viewing or editing a file. We are still developing a feature that will allow you to toggle white space when diff'ing. To view white space (Figure 13), open the Command Palette (F1 or right-click) and select Toggle White Space, which allows you to differentiate between spaces and tabs.

Setting to turn off web editing for TFVC repos

Teams that use TFVC often use check-in policies in Visual Studio to ensure code quality. However, because check-in policies are enforced on the client, code that is edited on the web is not subjected to the same policies.

Several people have asked for a way to disable web-editing to protect against changes that bypass check-in policies. We have enabled a way for you to turn off web-editing (adding, deleting, renaming, and editing) for TFVC on a project/repository basis.

To disallow web-editing from the Files page, go to Settings then Version Control (Figure 14). Click on the TFVC repo in the tree, navigate to the Options pivot, and uncheck Enable web-editing for this TFVC repository. By default, web-editing is enabled.