Overview of the Best Practices Analyzer Tool

The Best Practices Analyzer tool for Team Foundation Server uses configuration files to determine what information to gather from the Team Foundation deployment. The tool compares the data that it gathers to a set of predefined rules for Team Foundation settings and configurations. The tool then reports the issues and information that it collected and analyzed.

You can use the Best Practices Analyzer tool for Team Foundation Server to accomplish these objectives:

  • Verify whether the deployment of Team Foundation Server is configured according to recommended best practices and system requirements.

  • Review the full configuration of a deployment of Team Foundation Server in one easily viewed, drill-down tree report.

  • Identify and help resolve problem areas that might interfere with typical functions or cause poor performance in a deployment of Team Foundation Server.

To help you accomplish these tasks, the Best Practices Analyzer tool for Team Foundation Server supports these functions:

  • Scan computers to help maintain or restore correct operation (Health check).

  • View reports that the tool generates after it scans the computers that you specify.

  • Get more information about a reported issue. For each error and warning that the tool finds, it provides the following information:

    • The title of the issue.

    • A brief description of the issue.

    • A link to a topic that contains more details about the issue and how to resolve it.

    • An option to hide all instances of the issue so that they do not appear in the reports for the most recent scan.

  • Schedule a scan to occur at a time and frequency that you specify (using the command line utility).

  • Open a previously executed scan, and view its reports.

  • View, print, sort, and export reports or the run-time log that the tool generates from a scan.

  • Search the contents of a report or log file to locate a text string that you specify.

We welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback on the Best Practices Analyzer tool for Team Foundation Server. To send us feedback, open the tool, and click the Send feedback and suggestions about this tool to Microsoft link. If your computer has Internet access, this link opens to the MSDN forums for Visual Studio Team System.

See Also

Reference

Command-Line Tool for the Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Concepts

Prerequisites for Using the Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Rule Checking Performed by the Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Reports and Messages that the Best Practices Analyzer Tool Generates

Other Resources

Getting Started with the Best Practices Analyzer Tool