TFS 2010 Migration to New Domain - Changing Display Name in TFS Work Items

Question

We recently migrated TFS 2010 to a new domain, following the environment move instructions from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404883.aspx These instructions include a step for migrating users from OLD_DOMAIN\username to NEW_DOMAIN\username.

After the migration, existing users are displaying in TFS work items as NEW_DOMAIN\username instead of just username. (On the old domain, the users were just displayed with username.) New users added to TFS after the migration are just displaying username and not NEW_DOMAIN\username.

Our users do not like having the NEW_DOMAIN\ prefix on their names and want this changed. Does anyone have any instructions for how to accomplish this?

The following tools don't appear to be available for TFS 2010:

• tfswitdisplaynames (replaced by TFS Users tool in TFS Power Tools for TFS 2008)
• TFS Users (does not appear available in TFS Power Tools for TFS 2010, does not appear to be part of standard TFS tools)

We are also aware of the Constants table in TFS, and in particular the DisplayPart column:

• DisplayPart is apparently used for displaying in Work Items, for example Assigned To drop down list for Tasks.
• Queries that remove NEW_DOMAIN\ from DisplayPart:
  • Positive: Causes the user to display with just username
  • Negative: TFS queries that use the @ME variable are broken
  • Warning: Ran into repeated articles that cautioned against updating the database directly (instead of using TFS tools)

We are not in favor of removing and adding back the users, as there are thousands of work items (tasks, etc.) that would have to be re-assigned.

We also need to fix the @Me TFS query variable at the same time, so the TFS queries will continue to work after the display name is fixed.

Answer 1

We upgraded from TFS 2010 to TFS 2015 Update 1, performing a hardware migration upgrade. We had to do this anyway because we needed to move from a 32-bit to a 64-bit environment.

When we migrated, we switched to using a network ID that had access to Active Directory. TFS 2015 Update 1 in that environment synchronized successfully with Active Directory, and now our users are displayed by name rather than login account.

Long story short, when configuring TFS, use an ID that has access to Active Directory.

Answer 2

Have you tried "TFSSyncIdentities"? That and a couple of other possibilities are described here: http://msmvps.com/blogs/vstsblog/archive/2011/02/17/force-tfs-to-sync-with-active-directory.aspx