Set administrator permissions for team project collections

In TFS, each team project collection is its own grouping of projects that can share reports, work items, and other items, all stored in a single database. Project collection administrators maintain the collection and administer permissions and security for other roles at the collection level.

Add a collection administrator in Team Foundation Server

  1. Open Team Web Access and switch to administration mode by choosing the gear icon Settings icon.

  2. Navigate to security at the collection level, and add a member to Project Collection Administrators.

    Navigate by clicking or tabbing

Add a user as a site collection admin in SharePoint Foundation

If your deployment is integrated with SharePoint Products, add team project collection administrators to the site collection administrators group in SharePoint Products. Skip this procedure if your deployment does not integrate with SharePoint.

  1. Open SharePoint Central Administration.

  2. Grant permissions that are appropriate for this user at the farm or the Web application level, depending on your security needs.

    For optimum interoperability, consider adding users of the Project Collection Administrators group to the Site Collection Administrators group in SharePoint Products.

    Follow guidance for your version of SharePoint

Add users in Reporting Services

If your deployment is integrated with a report server, add team project collection administrators to the Team Foundation Content Manager group in SQL Server Reporting Services. Skip this procedure if your deployment does not integrate with a report server.

  1. Open Internet Explorer running as an administrator.

  2. In the Address bar, specify the following URL, where ReportServer is the name of the server that is running Reporting Services: http://ReportServer/Reports/Pages/Folder.aspx

    Important

    If you are using a named instance, you must include its name in the path of the reports. You use the following syntax, where ReportServer is the name of the report server for Team Foundation and InstanceName is the name of the instance of SQL Server: http://ReportServer/Reports_InstanceName/Pages/Folder.aspx

  3. On the Home page, choose Folder Settings, and add the user by granting them the Team Foundation Content Manager role as a new role assignment.

    Click and choose, or tab, spacebar, and enter

Q & A

Q: When do I need to add someone to the team project collection administrator role in TFS?

A: It varies. For most organizations that use TFS, project collection administrators manage the collections that members of the Team Foundation Administrators group create, but members of the Project Collection Administrators group do not create the collections themselves. Project collection administrators also perform any operations that are required to maintain the collection, such as creating team projects, adding users to groups, or modifying the settings for the collection.

Q: What are the optimal permissions needed to administer a team project collection across all its components and dependencies?

A: A team project collection administrator for TFS must be a member of the following groups or have the following permissions:

  • Team Foundation Server: Project Collection Administrators or the appropriate collection-level permissions set to Allow.

  • SharePoint Products: If the collection is configured with a site collection resource, Site Collection Administrators.

  • Reporting Services: If the collection is configured with reporting resources, Team Foundation Content Manager

Q: I'm an admin, but I don't seem to have all the permissions I need to add a team project collection administrator. What might I need?

A: These are the required permissions:

  • In TFS, you must belong to the Project Collection Administrators group, or your View Server-Level Information and Edit Server-Level Information permissions must be set to Allow.

  • To add permissions for SharePoint Products, you must be a member of the Site Collection Administrators group or the Farm Administrators group for SharePoint Products.

  • To add permissions for Reporting Services, you must be a member of the Content Managers group or the Team Foundation Content Managers group for Reporting Services.

Important

To perform administrative tasks such as creating team project collections, your user account requires administrative permissions, and the service account that the Team Foundation Background Job Agent uses also must have certain permissions granted to it. For more information, see Service accounts and dependencies in Team Foundation Server and Team Foundation Background Job Agent.

Q: Where can I find information about each individual permission?

A: You can find detailed information about individual permissions and their relationship to default groups in TFS in the Permission reference for Team Foundation Server.