I got an email last night from a user of Dubbelbock who’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) is running in “workgroup” authentication mode. Workgroup mode means that you’ve installed TFS on a server that not part of an Active Directory domain. Since it isn’t part of an Active Directory domain, all the user accounts are defined in Windows on that server. It isn’t a terrible way to run TFS but it does mean that your users will have to type in their login credentials almost every time that they (or the program they are running) accesses TFS. Typing your username and password for TFS three thousand times a day — well, it gets old.
There is a way around this. Windows (XP/Vista/2003) has a feature that allows you to store a “network credential” in the OS for servers you access. You type in the server name, your username, and your password and then you never have to type it in again.
Here are a couple of walk-throughs on how to set up the stored password so that you can stop typing your username and password in again and again and again. This will take care of the password problem when you access TFS from Team Explorer/Visual Studio, tf.exe, tfpt.exe, and also from Dubbelbock.
- Configure Vista to Log in to Team Foundation Server Automatically
- Configure XP to Log in to Team Foundation Server Automatically
-Ben
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