Team Explorer Profile Manager

What is the Team Explorer Profile Manager?

Team Explorer Profile Manager, or TEPM, is a simple system tray utility that provides the ability to launch Visual Studio 2010 and select the active Team Foundation Server and Team Project Collection (TPC) in a single mouse click.

If you use Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio on a regular basis and you work with multiple TPCs then you're no doubt familiar with the following routine:

1. Fire up Visual Studio 2010
2. Click on the Team Explorer tab only to realize that the project you need is in another TPC
3. Click on the “Connect to Team Project” icon and switch TPCs and select the desired Team Projects
4. Click the confirmation dialog warning you that connecting to another TPC will close all queries, etc.
5. While working, you decide to open another instance of Visual Studio to take a look at a different project
6. You click on the Team Explorer tab only to realize, that once again, you’re connected to the wrong TPC so you repeat steps 2 – 4
7. And so on…

Now, in the above scenario, when you get to step #5 you simply right-click the TEPM icon in the system tray and select the profile you want to launch.  For example, in the following screenshot, there are six saved profiles to choose from.  Selecting one of the profiles will launch Visual Studio 2010 and connect to the desired TPC.

So, what are profiles and how do you set them up?  A profile is simply a snapshot of the Team Explorer settings taken at a given time.  Here’s how it works:

1. Fire up Visual Studio 2010.
2. Connect to the desired TPC and select the active Team Projects you wish to work with.
3. Right-click on the TEPM icon to get the above menu and select “Manage Profiles”.  This will display the following dialog allowing you to name the profile for the current Team Explorer settings:
   
   
4. Once you’ve entered a profile name (using only valid filename characters) click on the Copy button to create the profile.
5. Repeat the above steps for the various TPCs and Team Projects you regularly work with.

Now, when you right-click the TEPM icon and select the Launch Saved Profile menu item you will see a list of saved profiles to choose from.

Baseline Profile

When you run TEPM for the very first time a "Baseline" profile will be created.  This is simply a copy of your existing Visual Studio 2010 Team Explorer settings.  You can revert back to these settings at any time by selecting Launch Baseline Profile.  You can also reset the Baseline profile by selecting a profile in the Team Explorer Profile Manager dialog (see screenshot above) and clicking the Create Baseline button.

Other Options

There are a couple of user settings you can set to make working with TEPM a little easier.  To view the settings, right-click the TEPM icon and select Settings.

Check the "Load Team Explorer Profile Manager on startup" checkbox if you'd like TEPM to automatically start when you logon.

You can also set the default action of double-clicking the TEPM icon:

• Default Profile - will launch Visual Studio 2010 using whichever profile has been selected as the default
• Current Profile - will launch Visual Studio 2010 using the current settings (i.e. the most recent settings configured in Visual Studio 2010)

Miscellaneous

Although this tool has been in use for a while now there may still be a few quirks lurking around.  If you come across any issues, please let me know about them.  Also, if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know about them as well.