Q&A: Project Management Best Practices in Centerprise

Q: Does source control work with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 (TFS2013)?

A: Yes, we have added connectivity to TFS2013 and it is available in Centerprise 6.0.

Q: Do I have to use TFS for source control?

A: No, you do not have to use TFS for source control. Centerprise comes with built-in connectivity to TFS, but you can use any source control you wish, however, you’ll have to do it outside Centerprise. The benefit of using TFS is that you have all the commands and integration of the products from inside Centerprise, versus having to work outside Centerprise if you use a different source control tool.

Q: Can I have stuff shared across projects?

A: We recommend that you create independent projects where there is no dependency among different projects. In some cases, however, you will want to share some of your stuff across projects and will therefore have some dependencies. For example, say you have created a subflow and you want to use it across multiple projects. The way we recommend that you design the solution in that scenario is to create shared folders, enabling you to share the same folder across multiple projects. Create a structure where all your shared folders are in the same location, create multiple projects, and inside those projects you can add shared folders for all those projects. In that way those folders will be shared by all the projects where you will want to use them.

 Q: If I move from development to production do I have to change this in each flow or is there a global setting somewhere?

A: There are two ways to do this. If you are moving the project from one place to another place, you can open the project in the new location and click  the button that says Replace Parameter Infos.

This shows you a list of distinct connections from the project. You can change it in once place and effectively make the changes in all the places where it is being used inside the project.

However, we recommend that you set up your overall structure to have shared database connections. In that way, you will need to make changes to the shared database connections only when you move from one environment to other.

Q: Can you show how you use folders across projects.

A: If I want to share a folder between the Customer Updates and Order Processing projects, I’ll add a shared folder at the folder level where the project files are stored.

The project files have to be at this level, so I need to move both my project files one level up. Now the scope of both projects includes the shared folder.

Now the shared folder can be added to any of the projects whose scope includes the shared folder.