Today there exists quite a many alternative scenarios that can be applied for TFS Bug Item Synchronizer for Quality Center.
These scenarios can be selected fully per TFS and Quality Center project and allows great flexibility for using it.
Firstly, you can enable the synchronization and once enabled define it to be one or two way synchronization where items are created on both systems or only updated in the other system.
All of the examples below require already working installation of TFS Bug Item Synchronizer and also at least TFS Bug Item Synchronizer version 1.2.
Enabling One Way Synchronization from Quality Center to the One Specified TFS Project for All Defects
Benefit for implementing this scenario is that tester does not need to know in which TFS project the developer is working.
This scenario also requires that there is one-to-one relationship between TFS project and Quality Center project.
To enable the one way synchronization from Quality Center to TFS which creates adds all new and changed defects into specified TFS Project, you will need to first create field mapping from Quality Center to TFS fields or reuse an existing field map.
All mandatory fields from TFS project need to be mapped with a Quality Center defect field.
When setting up Quality Center project you define Destination Project (= TFS Project where all new defects are to be created) and leave Error DB Field empty (important!), but select values for other mandatory fields.
Then when setting up TFS Project definition you simply select your TFS Project and QC to TFS Fields Name and leave Destination Project and QC to TFS Fields Names empty.
With these settings the synchronization tool is then using default destination TFS project for every defect created in Quality Center, forwarding all new defects into this one and only project.
Enabling One Way Synchronization from Quality Center to Multiple TFS Projects
This scenario is a bit more complex than the one above. It requires that tester knows into which TFS project to send the defect. On the other hand, it also gives great flexibility for testers to work within one Quality Center project and server multiple development groups which are working on different TFS projects.
Only real difference to the one above is that you define Error DB Field value for Quality Center project. This field is used to select the destination TFS project.
You have also choice of either have the default Destination Project or not. If default Destination Project is not selected for Quality Center project, only defects which have a valid TFS project name selected in Error DB Field are being sent out and those which have empty (or invalid value) are just skipped.
Either of these scenarios are enabling the creation of new defects from TFS work items. These will be described in next coming article.
But still, both of them are allowing you to define which fields to synchronize back from TFS project work item into Quality Center defect.