Work offline in Team Foundation Server

Question

Is there a way to set "work offline" in TFS without having to try opening a solution, waiting for it to time out, and then having Visual Studio work out that it has failed?

It seems a touch ridiculous that I can't just tick a box to tell it myself, seeing as I'm probably the one most qualified to know when I'm not in the office!

Answer 1

ozgrant.com seems to have a way to do this.

Answer 2

Team Foundation Server 2008 does support working offline.

This video demonstrates how to use this feature.

Answer 3

None of these answers really catches up with the question. Yes, you can let Visual Studio detect that it's offline, but what if you're not satisfied with this? What if you don't want it to try to connect to the TFS server 10 times before the solution finally is opened?

Please, if anyone knows a solution (hacking the registry is of course one thing...), share it.

Answer 4

Ben Ryan has the regkeys you seek on his blog:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/benryan/archive/2007/12/12/when-and-how-does-my-solution-go-offline.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/benryan/archive/2007/12/12/how-to-make-tfs-offline-strictly-solution-based.aspx

Most of these controls are also built into the latest Power Tools:

C:\Users\Richard> tfpt tweakui /?
tfpt tweakui - Enhance how client connects to Team Foundation Server

Allows configuration of how and when the client connects to a 
Team Foundation Server.  This includes client certificates, auto
reconnect, offline, compression, maximum connections, timeouts, 
and bypassing the proxy.

Answer 5

when I have to work offline I just unplug my ethernet cable and start TFS 2008. It starts me in offline mode. Then plug back in, right-click 'work online' in solution explorer, and TFS will ask you to check in your offline changes.