Visual Studio 2008 Shell and TFS integration

Hello friend, In this simple post I am going to share information about how we can connect to a Team foundation server (TFS) from Visual Studio 2008 Shell (BIDS) i.e. Business Intelligence Development Studio.

In my last project I was working on cubes and for that we had installed visual studio 2008 shell as our sql server version was 2008 R2. In all other project we were using Visual studio 2012 and SQL Server 2012 so when my lead asked me to keep cube related project (Analysis Services Project) in TFS that time I came to know that there is no option in visual studio 2008 shell to connect our latest TFS.

So after some search I found solution on this which is like following.

To have Connect to TFS option in VS 2008 Shell you need to follow below steps

1) First close all instances of visual studio.
2) Then download and install "Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Explorer" from microsoft site here.
3) Once you installed above then download and install "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1" from here.
4) And at last download and install "Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010"  from Microsoft site here.

Once you followed all above post you will be able to see the following window in your Visual studio 2008 shell afer clicking on Tools >> Connect to Team Foundation Server

Then click on "Server" which will open window like following, Click on "Add" button to add TFS server

Afer clicking on "Add" it will open a window like below where you need to provide your TFS details.

Just copy paste URL of TFS e.g "http://mytfsserver:8080/tfs" in Team Foundation Server name textbox and click ok, if URL is correct your server will get added in list.

Now close that window and you will be able to see TFS server in dropdown and all projects in Team Project, select project you want to connect and continue.

Hope you have benefited from this simple post. Do share it if you find it useful. Thanks.