TFS 2013 Administration Tool and SharePoint 2013 Permissions

Team Foundation Server 2013 Administration Tool and SharePoint 2013 Permissions

I was following all of the instructions throughout the internet about the best way to manage users in TFS.  I landed on using AD groups and managing the roles those groups played using the TFS Administration Tool.

This is a matrix describing each role to assign in the tool.

Software	Readers	Contributors	Project Leads
Team Foundation Server	Readers	Contributors	Project Administrators
SharePoint Foundation or SharePoint Server	Visitors	Members	Owners
SQL Server Reporting Services	Browser	Browser	Team Foundation Content Manager

I setup all of our teams and the corresponding AD group and assigned these roles.  Everything worked fine except the SharePoint permissions.  No one was able to view the sites I had created except for me.  I could not figure out why because when I looked in SharePoint they were assigned.  The odd thing was when I did a Check Permissions on the user in SharePoint Site Settings -> Site Permissions the user showed as having no permissions.

When I added the user in SharePoint I then had two users and really started scratching my head (I am not a SharePoint administrator so not that familiar with it besides the out of the box settings).

Luckily I was not the only person having this issue.  Vote this up as it will make our (TFS Admins) lives easier.  It turns out there are multiple authentication methods you can use with SharePoint 2013.  The default happens to be Claims Based Authentication.  Most likely the TFS Administration Tool only works with Windows Authentication.  So for now I will have to use SharePoint to assign user permissions for TFS and not the tool.

Any other SharePoint kinks I need to be aware of?  Let me know.  Otherwise I will post them as I come upon them.

Image courtesy of  Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net