Create a Detailed Report using Report Designer

  • Article

You can track your team's progress more easily by creating reports that contain detailed information from Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) (TFS). For example, you can create a report that includes details such as titles of work items. To create this type of report, you can use SQL Server's Report Designer and the relational database of the TFS data warehouse.

After you create your first report, you might change it by experimenting with different data and layouts. For example, you could group the table by the Assigned To field.

If you have not created reports for TFS before, see Create, customize, and manage reports for Visual Studio ALM. For more information about how to use Report Designer, see the Microsoft Web site: Designing and Implementing Reports Using Report Designer. To create reports that primarily show aggregate information, see Create an aggregate report using Report Designer and the Analysis Services Cube.

Requirements

  • You must have Visual Studio and SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio installed on the same computer.

    To install Business Intelligence Development Studio, run the Setup program for SQL Server, and select the Client Components check box when you specify the components to install. To install the most recent service pack for SQL Server, see the following page on the Microsoft Web site: How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2008.

  • You must be a member of the TfsWarehouseDataReaders security role in the Analysis Services database on the data-tier server of Team Foundation Server. For more information, see Grant permissions to view or create reports in TFS.

  • You must be a member of the Team Foundation Content Manager role in SQL Server Reporting Services. For more information, see Set administrator permissions for Team Foundation Server. 

To create a report

  1. In Visual Studio, create or open a Report Server project. For more information, see Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM.

  2. On the Project menu, choose Add New Item.

    The Add New Item dialog box appears.

  3. Choose Report Wizard, and then choose Add.

    The Report Wizard opens to the Select Data Source page.

  4. Choose the TFS2010ReportDS shared data source, and then choose Next.

    Even though you might have installed or upgraded to TFS 2013, these names, which were assigned to the data sources for TFS 2010, are in use.

    The wizard advances to the Design the Query page.

    Note

    The data source that you specify connects to the relational database from the TFS data warehouse. For more information, see Choose the source of data and authoring tool. If your project does not have this data source, create it. For more information, see Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM.

  5. Choose Query Builder.

    The Query Build dialog box appears.

To create the query that will retrieve the data for the report

  1. Choose Generic Query Designer on the query builder toolbar to enable the query designer.

  2. Choose Add Table on the query builder toolbar.

    The Add Table dialog box appears.

  3. Choose the Current Work Item table, and then choose Add.

  4. Choose the Work Item table, and then choose Add.

    This table contains the Work Item dimension.

  5. Choose the Person table, choose Add, and then click Close.

    This table contains the Person dimension. The fact table for current work items has foreign keys to this table for the Assigned To, Changed By, and Created By fields.

  6. In the Work Item table, select the check boxes for System_Title and System_State.

  7. In the Person table, select the check box for Person.

  8. In the query pane, delete the clauses that use Changed By and Created By so that you now have the following query.

    SELECT Person.Person, [Work Item].System_State
FROM   [Current Work Item] INNER JOIN
       [Work Item] ON [Current Work Item].[Work Item] =
       [Work Item].__ID INNER JOIN
       Person ON [Current Work Item].[Assigned To] = Person.__ID

  9. Choose Run on the query builder toolbar to verify that the query works, and then choose OK.

    The Query Builder is closed, and the Design the Query page of the Report Wizard reappears.

To design the report layout

  1. Choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Report Type page.

  2. Choose Tabular, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Design the Table page.

  3. Choose System_Title, and then choose Details.

  4. Choose Person, and then choose Details.

  5. Choose System_State, choose Group, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Choose the Table Layout page.

  6. Choose the layout options that you prefer, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Choose the Table Style page.

  7. Choose any style, and then choose Next.

    The wizard advances to the Completing the Report page.

  8. Type a name for the report, choose Preview Report, and then choose Finish to create the report.

    The wizard closes, and the report document window appears with the Preview tab active.

To deploy the report

  1. In Solution Explorer, choose the report.

  2. On the Build menu, choose Deploy ReportName.

    To successfully deploy the report, your project settings must be set to appropriate values. For more information, see Create a Report Server Project for Visual Studio ALM.

See Also

Concepts

Table reference for the relational warehouse database for Visual Studio ALM