Require Story/Issue Reference with TFS Commit Comment?

Question

I recently joined a project team that is using TFS (I have happily avoided TFS until now). I am trying to determine if there is a way to require a story/defect reference to be associated with every commit comment?

With Tortoise/SVN it was easy to add a requirement for a reference number to be required with each commit. Personally, I like to track every commit back to a user story or defect, so I am hoping there is a way make this mandatory in TFS as well? I searched SO and Google, and haven't found the magic "key words", so if someone can point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated.

Note: Stories and Issues are stored in other tools and not tied to TFS in any way.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Can it be done? Yes. Is it easy? Fairly easy. However, two caveats. Caveat number one: you're going to have to write code. Codeplex has some good examples here. Additional searches on codeplex and on the almighty Google will locate you more examples.

The big caveat here is that check-in policies are client-side. Once you develop the policy, it will need to be deployed to all developer workstations. If the policy isn't installed? It is ignored. While I'm a big fanboy of TFS, this is one oversight that I can't believe is still in place after three major version releases.

You could create a server-side check-in monitor that examines the check-in and determines if the story has been associated. However, it will not prevent the check-in, but you can use it to alert someone to resolve it after the fact.