TFS Reviews

We use TFS for bug detection and incident management. 

TFS' most valuable feature is the triage process. It is a robust solution that is easy to use. 

The tool needs improvement in stability. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

I rate the tool's stability a seven out of ten. 

TFS' scalability is quite good. My company has 25 users. 

TFS' deployment is simple. You need about five to seven resources to handle the deployment and maintenance. 

We have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

The tool's licensing costs are yearly. 

I rate TFS an eight out of ten. 

We use TFS for volume control, source checking, and source control.

The most valuable feature of TFS is that it keeps the code secure while working collaboratively in a team of four or five individuals.

We have different teams working on different solutions using different technology sets. At the backend, it has good source control. We work with Microsoft technology stack, open source stack, as well as IBM stack. We have different teams working on the backend with TFS as our source control.

I would like to see TFS improve its web interface as there are some limitations with IDs and the integration behind it and with open-source tools like VS Code.

As a version control, we have found some inconsistencies related to updates from previous versions. If you set up the Git repository, and you want to change it back to TFS, it is a bit confusing now in the latest update. We were hung up when two repositories were intermingled together. We were confused about why the Git project was not converting to TFS. I believe Microsoft is supporting the Git repositories. 

The TFS TFVC is not user-friendly because, for Git repositories that you have already created to use the TFS repositories, you need to go back into the ID to Video Studio when the TFS repository comes up by default.

Using the web interface, by default you get the Git repository. For a team that is not familiar with this and is not using the ID as a video studio or VS, code management gets difficult. Even with VS Code as an open source ID, TFS at the backend as a repository is difficult and integration is complex.

I have been using TFS on a daily basis for five years.

So far, I have found TFS to be stable.

The solution is scalable, however, we do not need to scale because we do not have many people on each team. The administration part requires three or four people, and for development teams, we have about 15 team members who actively use VS Code.

The initial setup of TFS is really just a click. It is basic and not complex.

We deployed the solution in-house.

Our organization has an enterprise license with TFS.

We explored other sources before. We also used some open-source tools.

We are considering trying another solution as we don't find TFS assistance or community help when compared to Git.

TFS is a good solution once you get comfortable using it. If you are coming from TFS 2013 or TFS 2015, you are going to find the 2019 version different. I understand that TFS is moving towards the cloud, so all the features are designed with this in mind. In the 2019 version, you will see more DevOps-related tools and automated app tools.

The solution is easy and complex at the same time. If you are familiar with pipelines, you will find it interesting. You need a technical team to provide help and assistance to get the whole value from 2000 DevOps TFVC. If you are not actually fully exploring the feature set or using them, it is just another source control like any other open-source control.

If you gain experience with the iron value sets with TFVC DevOps, the whole project management will be smooth and stable. Releases will come out but all the hiccups between the teams, such as the development teams, QA teams, and deployment teams will smooth out. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten overall.

TFS needs to be stable.

I have been using the solution for six months. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

My company has more than 50 users. 

The tool's installation is straightforward. 

I have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

TFS is expensive, and the licensing costs are yearly. I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

TFS is useful for managing the code, such as code versioning, and managing where we store our soft-coding repository, which is where we can manage the versioning with the owner. The main purpose of using TFS is for managing our soft-coding, branching, and tracking of our different branches.

The most valuable feature of TFS is the central repository, and you can see what changes other developers did from which branch.

I have been using TFS for approximately seven years.

The solution is stable but could improve.

I rate the stability of TFS an eight out of ten.

We have approximately 10 people using the solution in my department. We might increase our usage of the solution. However, it is depending on if we add more users and if we receive authorization. We are focusing on accessing Azure Development, such as the task catalog that we have. There are developers who have full access to create and manage them.

I have not contacted the support from TFS. We have our own internal support.

The initial setup of TFS is straightforward. However, one should understand the concept of all the types of version control.

We used one person for the deployment of the solution.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing TFS.

I recommend TFS to others.

I rate TFS a nine out of ten.

We use TFS for all of our source code. We develop a software suite with about eight different applications that work together, and then we also do firmware development. We use it for our firmware development source code repository.

It is deployed on a private server. We've gone all the way from version 2012 up to 2017, and we will be doing the 2019 upgrade very soon.

An example would be that now we have scheduled releases. We have scheduled builds that happen every Thursday that get rolled out to our development testers. In the past, before TFS, the developers themselves used to initiate that, and it was done randomly. So, being on a schedule is much better. 

It basically enforces our rules. Because everything is more controlled, source code cannot be checked in unless it builds correctly. It basically forces the developers to adapt to the agile methodology that we use, which is small chunks of work at a time. 

The most valuable features are related to source code management. Using TFS for source code management and being able to branch and have multiple developers work on the same projects is valuable. We can also branch and merge code back together. 

Another valuable feature is our continuous integration because we do continuous builds. So, continuous building with the build server is also very important.

They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers.

When you restructure your source code, the historical information doesn't directly come across. It doesn't link when you move those source folders around. I would like to see that ability. The whole source code control system should show you the history of all the changes you made to a bunch of files. If we take a folder with a bunch of files and move it from one place to another, the history is gone. It just doesn't bring over the history of everything that was moved. That has prevented us from restructuring some of our source code to suit the larger number of developers that we have. I haven't called Microsoft to see if there is help that they can give me on this because on the web and on their sites, I can clearly see that that is just the way it is, and we're not doing something wrong. So, that is something for which I would really like to have the ability.

I can't recall the versions, but when I upgraded from one version to another, it didn't retain history as well because they made some fundamental changes. It might have been from 2012 to 2015. I upgraded and moved it to a new server, and it lost the historical information. We needed the old stuff running so that we could access the historical data. So, the upgrade path wasn't that easy. I don't know if that's the case anymore. When we go to 2019, we'll be finding that out.

We've been using TFS for 10 years.

It has been extremely stable. We don't have any issues with it. It works. Performance is good. All the features that we turned on are working exactly as we expected.

So far, so good. We've had one external developer consultant that had to come in and access it as well, and that went well. I don't have any gauge about how it would be for a team of 50 developers. The hardware we're running on it right now probably wouldn't be enough, but I don't feel that it wouldn't be able to scale to a larger number of developers. From a security model perspective and from a functionality perspective, it seems to have all the features to be scalable. I just don't know about the performance. That's all.

Currently, there are five of us who work with this solution. We have one project manager and four developers. We have one firmware developer who does not work in the Visual Studio environment. This firmware developer works in a microchip MPLAB X environment. All other developers work in the Visual Studio development world. So, it's more integrated, but both roles work. The same people also take care of its maintenance.

From a source code management perspective, it is being used very extensively. From a build server perspective, it is used extensively. We don't do release management with it, and we don't have integrated automated testing turned on in it as well. Those are two fairly large areas of functionality that we don't use currently. We may in the future, but we're not using them right now. We're using about 60% of the functionality.

From a technical support perspective, we've used the Microsoft website to get answers to our questions. It has been very good that way. I would rate it a five out of five in that aspect.

We haven't had to call a person or open up a case. We've been able to do our own self-support through the knowledge base that they supply. There are a lot of users of this product. So, a lot of the typical problems that people experience are out there, and it's easy to find them.

Positive

In different roles that I've had with different companies, I've used CVS, which is a different source code system. It's on the Linux system. It's not on Microsoft Windows. I've also used TortoiseSVN. I find TFS much easier because it's fully integrated into our solution.

In the previous world, I wasn't the decision-maker about which one to use. I came into projects that already had those in place, and they were not developing on the Microsoft platform. I understand why they didn't use the Microsoft platform in that case. In our world, we're developing software that runs mostly on the Microsoft platform, so it made sense to do that. Originally, when I used other packages, I was working as a consultant. I was working at different places, and I was using whatever the decision-makers used at those places as their source code control systems. When we started this company and I was the decision-maker, I used the Microsoft TFS platform.

It's relatively straightforward for a developer. On the initial setup, I'd probably rate it a four out of five. 

It took us about three days to get everything set up correctly, but we complicated our environment as time went on. We started off with one developer, then up to two, then to three, and then to four. So, as we increased our number of developers on the team, we changed the complexity of how it was deployed. It wasn't all done in one shot. It was done over a period of time. If we had to set it up from scratch today, it would probably take us about three or four days to map it out and do it correctly.

The more developers you have, the more complicated the setup has to be because you need to set up permissions and you need to set up roles and responsibilities. If it was just one team doing the same thing, it would be no different for one developer or five developers, but because we have different areas of expertise that we work in, we were trying to protect certain code bases from one developer from another. So, it just becomes more complicated. It's really just a security permissions thing that makes it complicated.

We did it all ourselves. We haven't outsourced. We have a company that we deal with that maintains our servers for us, but they don't have any TFS experience. We coordinated these changes through them, but we dictated the changes. So, they didn't provide us with any expertise.

We develop software for the oil and gas world. Our software runs right on drilling rigs and downhole and also on tools that we put downhole. When there are problems, we need to fix things quickly. It is critical. We're tens of thousands of dollars an hour at a rig, so we do need to make a quick fix. We now have release management and the ability to do small, hotfixes, and things like that to help customers. Definitely, time is money. It allows us to go back in time very easily to a known configuration in our worlds. We can go back with our source and pull out the code and compare and diagnose any problems that are occurring. It helps to rule out and diagnose problems quickly and way more efficiently in real-time. We remove the uncertainties of what software is and where and what has changed. It really helps us there. It helps us respond to our customers' needs in a much faster fashion and saves our customers' money in a way.

I believe we pay on a yearly basis. I don't know the current costs of them. We outsource all that to a third party. Each of the developers gets a Microsoft Visual Studio Azure DevOps license, which gives them access to the TFS server as well. We probably pay on average about 1,800 Canadian Dollars a year for every developer, but that covers a lot more than just TFS.

The cost isn't prohibitive. We use a lot of different software in our company. We use a lot of engineering software. If I compare the cost of our developer team software to some of our other solutions, such as our CAD package SolidWorks or our PCB design software Altium, we pay orders of magnitude less for TFS than we do for those other packages. Microsoft's licensing terms are also much better. They're good. I would rate them a four out of five in terms of pricing.

The only additional cost that you have is that you need to run it on a server, and you need a Windows Server software license. If you didn't have that to start with, you'd have to purchase it, but we already had that for other services within the company, such as file services, print services, etc. Other than that, there are not really any costs.

I'm always evaluating different things. The original Microsoft product, which was Visual SourceSafe, was something with which we had done some work in the past. TFS was the next release of that. I thought Visual SourceSafe had some shortcomings. I evaluated the difference between TFS and Visual SourceSafe and decided it was the right way to go. 

I've used Git as well, which is now becoming fully integrated with TFS. So, I evaluated that. I like a lot of the features of Git because of the user community that uses it. The open-source community highly integrates with it. TFS is now integrated with that as well, so I've had no reason to switch entirely off the TFS system.

Git is really a source code control system. The pro is that there is a very large component of open-source software that is supplied through the Git interface. A lot of developers of open-source applications expose access to their source code through Git, whereas Microsoft TFS is not like that. They don't do that. Microsoft TFS is more for internal. Microsoft TFS now supports Git, and it will use Git even as its underlying source code control system. So, TFS does integrate with Git directly now, and all the benefits of Git are now in TFS.

The only advice I would give is to design the security model and the developer model assuming that you have a larger team of developers than what you have when you start. You should set it up originally for multiple users to be working on the projects rather than having to change your methodology partway through.

We made some decisions on how we structured our source code and how we structured our team projects, and I would not have done that if I had known that the developers would be working on it in the fashion that we do now. Your configuration for ten developers would work with one developer too, but the configuration for one developer doesn't always work for ten developers. So, set it up for ten assuming that you're going to be doing that.

I would rate it a seven out of ten because of the issues with the upgrade path, restructuring folders, and things like that. If you don't configure it right to start with, it's a little bit difficult to change. That's the only reason that I'm not giving it a nine. If I have to make the same decision again, I absolutely would buy it again. It does what it was advertised to do, and it's not causing us any harm. It's doing its job, and it does it well. There are just a few things around the upgrade and around the restructuring of source code that could be improved. That's all.

With respect to all the Microsoft Stack development, we use TFS as a repository and source version control system.

TFS is very user-friendly. It is easy to use and has a smaller learning curve.

TFS should allow more integration with different platforms.

I have been using TFS for the past four to five years.

TFS is a stable and robust solution.

TFS is a scalable solution.

I have never used Microsoft’s technical support.

We used SSMS and Visual Studio before, but then we switched to TFS because it is a native product of Microsoft.

The setup was straightforward. It took only five to ten minutes to deploy.

We did it in-house. TFS is user-friendly. So we do not require much help to deploy. An administrator can implement it.

TFS is worth its money.

TFS is not cheap. We pay for monthly licensing at the enterprise level.

I use the 2022 version of TFS. Currently, we are integrating GitHub with Visual Studio. It is a better combination when compared to TFS. So our organization is leveraging it. I haven’t faced any issues with TFS’s performance. GitHub can be used on many different platforms. That is why we shifted from TFS to GitHub for version control.

For data integration projects, to deploy the integration solution, we need to prepare the files based on the specifications. Then it is deployed into the production or any other environment we want to deploy.

My organization has been using TFS for a long time now. From the time I joined the organization, I have been using TFS. Now we use GitHub because Microsoft has acquired GitHub. If required, we can also add more developers to TFS. I’m not a part of the purchasing department, so I do not know the exact price of TFS. I would rate TFS a nine out of ten.

TFS is used for version control. So, other software can integrate with TFS. The tool is also used for documentation and STLC.

Since it is a robust solution, I face no performance issues. Also, considering how well the implementation process of the solution was carried out, we never faced any issues while using the solution.

As an end-user, I expect the solution's performance to be faster while staying as stable as possible.

To be frank, we never considered the need for additional features in the solution. I don't have any specific suggestions for what could be added since the tool is already very streamlined. It is a stable tool without any issues; everybody in my company is happy with the solution. We follow a streamlined process at work with a specific set of steps from point A to point Z in a thorough manner. If there was something tedious, time-consuming, or repetitive in the solution, I could have spoken about what additional features I wanted to see.

I have been using TFS for a year. Also, I don't remember the version of the solution. I am just an end-user of the solution.

Since it is a very stable product, there is no chance of our company planning to replace it with some other product. The most that my company would do is they might consider shifting from TFS Version Control to Git TFS.

As I work in a bank, TFS ensures the solution is always available, making it a stable tool. I have never faced any stability issues while using the solution.

It is a scalable solution since TFS offers users a very good system, hardware, and efficient people to implement their tool. It is a very scalable software. Also, the scalability of software depends upon its hardware, and they provide very robust hardware.

The initial setup and implementation process of the solution was something that was done years ago in my company. Since I joined the company recently, I won't be in a position to comment on the implementation process.

We have an entire floor of people who provide technical support for deploying and maintaining the solution in our company.

I believe that my company has opted for volume licensing provided by TFS. So, it is not just one or two licenses my company has since my company trusts products from Microsoft. Though I am unsure, I think that if you purchase one of Microsoft's products, they offer you some of their other products for free. As per my knowledge, Microsoft products are cheaper than other products in the market. On a scale where ten is the highest and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's licensing cost at one on a scale of one to ten.

Since in our company, we are already trained to use the solution, and so we never face any issues or problems while using the solution. The pre-existing features in the solution are more than enough to meet our needs.

The solution has a user-friendly interface. The solution already allows for more integrations with other solutions. Also, there is a separate team that works on the solution. The solution protects the systems in my organization. When it comes to the products offered to customers by TFS, they are constantly evolving since it has been in the market for twenty years. Also, we keep getting updates for the solution every second or third day.

I have a laptop, and if I start the solution on that laptop after two weeks or three weeks, I won't be able to connect. I need to take it to my technical support team. They will install some updates, and then I will be able to use my laptop. So, from this, one can figure out how much the solution has invested in their system. So, it is very rare that the solution faces any issues, and if any issues crop up in the solution, they have a very robust system of dealing with such problems. They have a good IT team that quickly resolves any issues. So, people are working to improve the system day by day. Every day, there is an evolution in their products. Some teams are working on production issues because of the new features implemented in the tool. Also, they are monitoring it continuously.

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.

The interface is good with TFS.

I am looking for some pull request features, like Git.  I do not see a pull request option for branching and merging. I would also like a true command prompt like Git.

I have been using TFS for the past fourteen or fifteen years.

TFS is definitely stable.

TFS is scalable because it is managed by Microsoft internally. 

Technical support is good. We have optional support with Microsoft.

We previously used VSTS however TFS is a far better product.

The initial setup was very easy and straightforward.

The overall price of TFS is good.

I think most people are working with Git. We feel comfortable with TFS because we are already used to it. TFS is a good product and you can continue working with it.

I am overall happy with TFS and would rate it a nine on a scale of one to ten.