Develop TFS (2017) plugin from with configuration from TFS UI?

Question

I need to develop a plugin for TFS 2017 which has to intercept all the builds that are initiated within TFS projects, collect that information and send it to a remote system for analytics.

As far from TFS documentation there is a possibility to develop the plugin: using C# class library wich uses the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Server ISubscriber interface and puting the compiled dll into the Application Tier/Web Services/bin/Plugins folder. In this way the plugin's ProcessEvent will be invoked for any build initiated in TFS and the plugins code will run as part of the TFS service.

Is it possible to create a configuration inside TFS web UI for this plugin eg when developing a plugin for Jenkins there is option of adding a configuration page wich will contain configurations such as :

1. URL of the service that will be processing the data
2. Credentials that will be used for connected to the service

Also will it be possible to publish the plugin in the visual studio market place so that TFS users will be able to download the plugin from the TFS extentions page?

Answer 1

Basically, no on all counts.

• Server-side plugins don't have any capability to expose a UI anywhere.
• The marketplace is for extensions, not server-side plugins. Extensions are written in JavaScript and have a totally separate API.

Your best bet for what you want to do is to create a service hook that fires when builds complete, and write a service that collects that data.