Migrating TFS 2010 to Visual Studio Online

Question

I've installed the OpsHub VSO Migration Utilty and I'm trying to migrate one of our smallest projects as a test.

Having created a new matching project in VSO the migration validation fails on the template mis-match.

The existing TFS 2010 project is based on the MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0 template and the new VSO project is MSF for Agile Software Development 2013.3

As far as I'm aware, neither of these templates have been customised.

For each work item types the mismatched fields are:

• RelatedLinkCount
• AreaID
• AttachedFileCount
• HyperLinkCount
• ExternalLinkCount
• IterationID

Installed version of the utility is v1.1.0.005

Any help would be gratefully received.

Answer 1

OpsHub unfortunately need to fix this, or you can use a different tool.

When you try to do a migration the OpsHub tool compares your Process Template between the two projects and throws its toys out of the pram if they are not the same. In your case your 2010 server once was either 2005 or 2008. In TFS versions prior to 2010 the fields that are conflicting did not have spaces, from 2010 on they do... Hence the mismatch.

There are other, less nanny state, ways to migrate but they are much more complex.

1. TFS Integration Tools - this tool is free, supported by Microsoft, but is increadably complex. It was built for consultants working with enterprises to move TFS data around. Not fun, but can be made to work.
2. Excel migration - you can just use excel to move the tip of work items and move the tip of TFVC source. Or move to Git in VSO and use Git-TFS to move with history for source.
3. Hire someone (admission / ALM Consultant talking) - Most of the ALM MVP's are consultants and have tools to move your stuff.

I would suggest that #1 and #3 are of similar cost at the end of the day, and #2 tends to be unpopular.

Check out the migration guidance from the ALM Rangers.

Answer 2

Between TFS 2005/2008 to TFS 2010, the process templates were updated to add an additional space in the display name of each of the fields you mentioned. Since that's the case, you can take some easy steps for a workaround and then re-run the OpsHub Visual Studio Online Migration Utility.

You'll want to use the witadmin.exe tool and specifically the changefield option. Here are the steps you'll want to take to change the display names of each of the fields to include the spaces:

witadmin.exe changefield /collection:http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /n:System.RelatedLinkCount /name:"Related Link Count"
witadmin.exe changefield /collection:http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /n:System.AreaId /name:"Area ID"
witadmin.exe changefield /collection:http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /n:System.AttachedFileCount /name:"Attached File Count"
witadmin.exe changefield /collection:http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /n:System.HyperLinkCount /name:"Hyperlink Count"
witadmin.exe changefield /collection:http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /n:System.ExternalLinkCount /name:"External Link Count"
witadmin.exe changefield /collection:http://tfs.contoso.local:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /n:System.IterationId /name:"Iteration ID"

Give those a try and I hope it works out for you as a workaround!

Answer 3

Because that is exactly our scenario (TFS2008 > TFS2010 > VSO) and we also got the error during migration of work items with OVSMU from TFS2010 to VSO I was willing to give the workaround described by Ed a try. To have it more convenient I tried not from command line but with Visual Studio 2012 from the menu Tools: Process Editor: Work Item Types: Open WIT from Server. First try was work item type Task. After change of all relevant names I was asked if I wanted to save changes to the item. After pressing Yes I have got the message window:

"Microsoft Visual Studio: Work Item Type: Task TF26177: The field System.IterationId cannot be renamed from 'IterationID' to 'Iteration ID'. There were validation errors. Continuing to save may cause the file to become unloadable, do you want to continue?"

Do you have some additional advice for me to bring it all to the point where I can migrate the work items?