Question

We currently have an existing issue tracker, which the service management team utilise for logging user reported issues.

What I would like to do is create a server based (probably web-ui) system that can query the issue tracker for bugs assigned to the dev team.
Then someone from the Dev team will come along and review these issues via a UI, assign and prioritise and file them as one or more work items per issue.

All the Dev team has suitable licences VIA MSDN to TFS, what I am not sure about is if the service management team needs access licences ?

Answer 1

See The VS 2010 / TFS 2010 Licensing White Paper. The key bit is this section:

Client Access Licenses

A CAL entitles one user or device to
access any number of licensed
instances of Team Foundation Server
running within an organization.

A CAL is required for users (or
devices) who:

• Directly write data to Team Foundation Server.
• Indirectly write data to Team Foundation Server through another
  software application or device (see
  Multiplexing below).

A CAL is not required for users who:

• Access Team Foundation Server only for purposes of entering new work
  items (see New Work Items below).
• Receive Team Foundation Server reports through e-mail and do not
  directly or indirectly access the
  server to refresh, create, or update
  data.
• View static data that has been manually distributed outside of Team
  Foundation Server.

In addition, a Team Foundation Server
CAL is not required for:

• Any device running a licensed copy of Team Foundation Server or an agent
  included with Team Foundation Server.
• Up to two devices or users that only access Team Foundation Server for
  purposes of system administration.
• Up to five designated users when Team Foundation Server is purchased
  through a retail channel (as described
  above under Obtaining Visual Studio
  Team Foundation Server 2010.)
• Interacting with a server running Team Foundation Server, but not
  interacting with Team Foundation Server itself or its data.

So, my interpretation (and I’m not a lawyer, nor a person qualified to speak about Microsoft licensing – just a guy on StackOverflow…) is:

If you are creating the web page over the data in your existing issue tracking system, and just enabling an easy way for developers (who are already licensed for access to TFS) to create work items from that data then I think you are fine. If you wanted the people in the service management team to be able to create/edit work items belonging to others then interact with that work item data later then I think you would need CAL’s.

Hope that makes sense. For the official word on licensing, always best to reach out to your local Microsoft representative. If you need help getting in contact with that person then let me know.