Adding Active Directory users to Team Foundation Server

Question

How can I add AD users to TFS users from a computer that can't connect to AD/domain? Structure is like this:

TFS Server, in AD/domain

My computer, wtih VS.NET, can't join to AD/domain

Only way to ad AD users to TFS users list I could find is in VS.NET->Team->Team Foundation Server Settings->Security->Add users or groups->Windows user or group. Since my computer can't join to AD I can't see the AD in Locations list. Is there a way to do this without installing VS.NET to the server?

Answer 1

I have this very same problem. The only way I have found to solve this is to have a computer that I can RDP to within the domain and add the user from there.

Its not pretty, but it works....

p.s. As long as you have permission on the domain, you could write a tool to do this.

Answer 2

If you do decide you are ok with doing this from the TFS server, you don't need to install the whole Visual Studio 2008 client. Instead, just install the team explorer client. It will install the Visual Studio shell, along with the TFS tools, but no development language pieces.

Answer 3

You can do this at the command line (Visual Studio Command line is easiest):

tfssecurity /g+ <tfsgroupidentifier> <user or group identifier> /collection:http://server:8080/tfs/collectionname

example:

tfssecurity /g+ "Scrum Project\Readers" "Contoso\CEO" /collection:http://contoso:8080/tfs/Default

Answer 4

WORKAROUND:

Here is a solution for adding users to TFS 2010 when your development machine doesn't have access to the remote domain.

Create the user on the server if you haven't already done so and Add the user to the ProjectTeam group.

Then on your local machine that isn't tied to the domain, simply create a user with the same username.

Right-Click on your project in Team Explorer and choose "Team Project Settings" --> "Group Membership..."

Click on the group you want to add the user to, and press the "Properties" button.

Select "Windows User or Group" and click "Add"...then just type in the username (you shouldn't need to specify the domain) - even if it initially identifies your current computer/domain...it should automatically change it to the remote domain.

Then you can delete that username from your local computer.

I spent about 4 hours trying to add a user for a remote domain before getting this to work.

Microsoft really should have thought about this scenario for remote developers, TFS running on remotely hosted servers and so on.

I hope that helps.