Command-Line Authentication for Team Explorer Everywhere not working with TF_AUTO_SAVE_CREDENTIALS

Question

I installed TEE-CLC-11.0.0.1306 onto my Windows Server 2003 R2. I am able to perform TF commands in the command line successfully. But when I set the TF_AUTO_SAVE_CREDENTIALS environment variable, I get this error:

A client error occurred: The credentials cannot be saved to the active credential manager (Null Credentials Manager). You must manually configure stored credentials for this mechanism or specify credentials a different way.

I opened the "Stored User Names and Passwords" tool by running: control keymgr.dll and I can't seem to manually create the credentials. On my Window 7 machine, the TEE credentials are stored properly and working, so I went to: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Credential Manager to look at the entry for TEE as an example, but it didn't exist.

1. Why can't the credentials be stored by the 'tf' command after setting the environment variable? Is the issue related to the OS (Windows Server 2003 R2)?
2. Where are the credentials stored when this is properly enabled? (I can't find them on my Win 7 machine.)
3. Is there a way to manually create the credentials on the Window Server 2003 R2 machine, as the error message suggests?

Answer 1

The Team Explorer Everywhere command-line client cannot save credentials on Windows. Team Explorer Everywhere, like Visual Studio, uses the Windows credential manager to persist credentials. Credentials stored in Credential Manager will override your domain credentials if you are domain-joined or a shadow account.

Simply open the Credential Manager and add credentials for the TFS server.

(Technically Windows is not a supported platform at all, we would recommend you use the actual TFS command-line client, part of the Team Explorer installation. The above steps work for it, too.)