I came across these errors when configuring TFS 2010 Beta 2.

TF250025: The following URL does not point to a valid SharePoint site: <URL to your Project Portal> Verify that you have the correct URL and that it points to a SharePoint site.

or

TF262600: This SharePoint site was created using a site definition that requires data from Team Foundation Server. However, the site is not currently associated with data for a team project. To ensure that this site functions correctly, you must configure a team project to refer data for that project to this site.

or

This site doesn’t have a default Team Foundation Server instance. You can explicitly select a Team Foundation Server.

If you receive these errors, then you are most likely trying to access the project portal via a URL that is not recognised by SharePoint. Each URL that you use to access the site must be registered with SharePoint – even if your IIS Web Site is set to accept all host headers on a specified port.

For example, your may have configured your project site’s URL to be http://tfsserver but when you try to access it via http://tfsserver.companydomain.com your get the above errors.

To resolve this issue, you will need to register a new internal URL for the SharePoint site using Alternate Access Mappings. Please follow these steps:

1. Log into the SharePoint Central Administration site (a link can be found under Control Panel > Administrative Tools)
2. Click on the “Operations” tab at the top
3. Under “Global Configuration”, choose “Alternate Access Mappings”
4. On the menu bar, select “Add Internal URLs”
5. Choose the web application that hosts your Project Portals (usually Default Web Site)
6. In the “URL protocol, host and port” text box, enter the alternate URL that can be used to access the Project Portals (must include http:// or https://). Using the example above, this would be “http://tfsserver.companydomain.com”
7. Click Save

Perhaps a good practice would be to use FQNs when referencing servers during TFS configuration.

Hope this helps.

This week at PDC, Microsoft SharePoint Online was talked about in the Keynote. To find out more, have a look a the official Microsoft site. Unfortunately trials are only available for people in the U.S – cannot wait for it to get to Australia!

http://www.microsoft.com/online/sharepoint-online.mspx

The SharePoint team have also written a blog about it discussing the direction for developers leveraging SharePoint Online in "the cloud".

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/10/27/pdc-2008-announcing-azure-services-platform-and-microsoft-sharepoint-services.aspx

Personally, I think this product is going to fantastic for small businesses who wish to use the power of SharePoint however don’t have the capital or infrastructure to host their own dedicated system. Of course, enterprises will also see the 99.9% uptime SLA, integration with their in-house Active Directory and the maintenance plans as attractive offers as well.

The details for the Developer’s experience have not been fully announced. At PDC they did demonstrate developing against the Online Services, which is great for integration with other systems. However it will be interesting to see the possibilities/limitations around other custom development, i.e. web parts.

These are exciting times!