Reconcile options in ORCAS B2, what do they actually mean?

*Moved to: http://fluentbytes.com/reconcile-options-in-orcas-b2-what-do-they-actually-mean/

During some work we did with B2 ORCAS last week we encountered some confusion with the new option called Folder Diff. This is one of the features from the TFS power tools that made it into the ORCAS product along with the annotate feature. While I was working on this feature to test the various options, I got quite confused with the reconcile dialog that was shown. The thing is we made a feature request to the team in the B1 timeframe to add the option to make a pending change when the local file has changed and the server item on the server did not change. I was verifying that the feature got into the B2 bits, but I did not find it. Based on that I submitted feedback to our TAP champ and he asked the team about it. The thing was that the feature got into the dialog, but I assumed the wrong dropdown based on the text in the dialog.

So from that I asked myself what do the various options in the reconcile dialog actually mean?

The first two options have to do with files that are only found on the server on in your workspace. I think those two are easy to grasp, but the second two options got me puzzled. So the group box states that these are the situations where files with the exact same file name are on both the server and on the client but one of them has changes. Now which option indicates a file that is changed only in your workspace but not on the server? I was assuming this was option one. "Files that have pending changes". Only this is not the case.

Therefore in my opinion the dialog should read for option one: "Server Files that have pending changes". since it needs to state that the server files are meant to have changed. 

Option two should read: "Local files differ from server and server has no pending changes".since it is used when:

1-      File Exist on both the client and the server

2-      The version on the client is different from the server

3-      There are no pending changes associated with them yet

 Now I know that is a mouth full, but I do think that changing those text lines will help allot of people from confusion.

So I made a connect feedback suggestion for this. If you feel this might help people from getting confused, vote here

and perhaps we might get it in there for RTM 🙂

b.t.w. option two did get the additional option to make a "pending change" as we asked for, since that is most of the time what you would like to do. In the Beta 1 you only had the option to do a Get on the file or ignore the changes.  So that is great to see. Feedback does help and MS is listening.

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