TFS 2005 to 2010 - Custom Work Items

Question

just a quick question.

If we migrate from TFS 2005 to TFS 2010, what happens to any customized work item we developed on 2005? Do we have to recustomize, or can they be imported/carried over into 2010?

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

By default, nothing will change for existing Team Projects, which means you won't benefit of the improvements made in TFS 2010 (e.g. versionned typed links).

If you want to benefit of these new features you'll have to introduce them manually by editing the definition of your Work Item types.

There are no real tool or process to migrate existing Team Projects created with TFS2005/2008 to TFS 2010, mainly because each case is different in the way you want to handle it.

My advice is to create a sandbox team project using the WIT definition of your customized Work Items, then make some tests of improvements with TFS 2010. When everything is ok and stable then apply the new definition on the existing Team Projects you want.

Of course new Team Project created with the new Process Template will be the way you expect.

Answer 2

You can find the steps to enable the new features at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/allclark/archive/2009/10/13/enabling-new-application-lifecycle-management-features-for-visual-studio-2010-beta-2-in-upgraded-team-projects.aspx

For TFS2012 we have added a wizard that configures the new features in your team project automatically, but that only works if the TFS2010 features are correctly configured.