Troubleshooting team project creation error

To create a new team project in TFS is a complex process. Many community members reported issues when create a new team project. We already solved most of them in the forums. In this blog, I’m trying to organize some commonly seen errors. Hope it can help if you encounter issues when create a team project.

What does the Team Explorer do when creating a new team project

Based on configurations in the selected process template, when create a team project, Team Explorer will usually

1. Create team project level groups and set the initial Access Control List (ACL).
2. Import work item types and queries.
3. Create initial work items.
4. Create a team portal in the SharePoint and upload default documents and process guidance.
5. Create a folder with the team project name in the Reporting Service and upload default reports.

How to find more information

Getting more information is useful to narrow down the cause. Here are 3 steps to find more information.

1. Find the exception messages in the project creation log. At the end of the new team project wizard, there’s a link to the log file. Typically, the log locates in %TEMP% folder in the client computer. It is named in the form of VSTS_TeamProjectCreation_<Time>. The exception messages should point us a general direction.
2. Run a  healthy check with Best Practice Analyzer (BPA) from TFS Power Tool. in the October release of this power tool, we added rules simulating project process. You need to install BPA on the TFS machine. Fore more information about required permission in Reporting Service and SharePoint, please refer to How to: Set Team Foundation Server Administrator Permissions.
3. Check the Windows event log in TFS application tier. When the exceptions are thrown by TFS web services, they are usually get logged.

Some error messages you might see

1. TF30207: Initialization for plugin "Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.WorkItemTracking" failed

   Exception Message	Remedy
   TF201072: A user or group could not be found. Verify that the users and groups used in your work item type definition have been added to Team Foundation Server.	KB 958433
   TF30045: The instance information has not been configured or is not available for this Team Foundation Server.  Please contact your Team Foundation Server administrator.	This is a general message. It often indicates the work item subsystem is not working. Please check the Windows Event Log on TFS application tier to find more information.
   TF26173: Team Foundation could not connect to the application tier. Check that you have a network connection and that the Team Foundation Server is available. If the problem persists, contact your Team Foundation Server administrator.	Replies in this thread.

2. TF30207: Initialization for plugin "Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Reporting" failed

   Exception Message	Remedy
   TF30224: Failed to retrieve projects from the report server. Please check that the SQL Server Reporting Services Web and Windows services are running and you have sufficient privileges for creating a project.	There might be 3 causes: Team Explorer uses your current Windows account to connect to Reporting Service. Try using IE to open the web service url http://ReportingService/ReportServer and report manager url http://ReportingService/Reports. The expected behavior is that you can open those web sites without manually specify any credentials. If the data tier is using SQL Server 2008, then you need to install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 on the client machine. The SP1 contains updates for Team Explorer. Insufficient permissions in Reporting Service. Please check How to: Set Team Foundation Server Administrator Permissions.
   TfsReportDS not defined to the SQL Server Reporting Services Server. Team Foundation needs to be repaired or reinstalled.	KB 957202.

3. TF30207: Initialization for plugin "Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Portal" failed

   Exception Message	Remedy
   TF30262: Error occurred while creating document library : Security retrying ... Unable to connect to the remote server	When this error occurs, the SharePont site collection for the team project portal should have already been created. But Team Explorer can’t connect to the portal to upload documents. The portal is hosted in a SharePoint web application. So make sure the firewall doesn’t block the port of the web application.
   TF30162: Task "SharePointPortal" from Group "Portal" failed The language id specified in the process template does not exist on the WSS server.	Check Brian Harry’s blog TF30162: Task "SharePointPortal" from Group "Portal" failed.
   Windows SharePoint Services version 2 templates are not supported in this version of the product.	A process template references a SharePoint site template. After the process template is downloaded, you can find a <site> element in WSSTasks.xml which points a site template title. This issue happens when the site template is for WSS 2.0 and you TFS is using WSS 3.0. You can use stsadm –o deletetemplate to delete the old template and upload the 3.0 version with the same tile by stsadm –o addtemplate. The 3.0 version of templates are located in Toos\Templates in TFS installation folder with a ‘30’ suffix.

If this blog doesn’t help in your scenario, you can contact Team Foundation Server – Administration forum for further troubleshooting.