Enabling Email Functionality in the Team System Web Access (TSWA)
By default, the email functionality in Team System Web Access (TSWA) is disabled and users will receive the following message when trying to use it:
“Sending email is not enabled. Please contact your administrator.”
To enable you to need to change TSWA’s web.config file, which can be found following path: \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008 Team System Web Access\Web.
- Change the setting “sendingEmailEnabled” to true.
- And specify your SMTP server name under “host”.
<emailSettingssendingEmailEnabled=”true”enableSsl=”false” />
Optionally you can specify which account to use when authenticating with the SMTP server and if SSL should be enabled as well as the default email address for the sender.
Where can you use the email functionality?
- single work items (from the work item form)
- multiple work items, i.e. the result of a work item query
The email function can be found in the “Tools” menu.
The “Send Email” window allows you to specify the sender’s (“From”) and receiver’s (“To”) email address, as well as subject and message.
After hitting send a message box confirms that the mail was successfully routed to the email server.

You can configure Team Foundation Server to use an existing SMTP server to send e-mail alerts. Users can configure alerts for various projects, work item, and build event notifications. Although you can specify the SMTP server during Team Foundation Server installation, you might want to change the STMP server later. Similarly, if you to change the application pool service account by using the TFSAdminUtil ChangeAccount command, you must manually change the sender account e-mail address to the new service account’s e-mail address.
Note
The content of Team Foundation Server alert e-mails is not customizable. The content of the e-mails is automatically generated from the TeamFoundation.xsl file. Modifying this file is not recommended. If you do modify the contents of this file, be sure to thoroughly test your modifications. Incorrect modifications of this file can result in the failure of Team Foundation Server e-mail alerts and the inability to view Team Foundation work items, changesets, or files in a Web browser.
To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the Team Foundation application-tier server. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.
Don’t use the ASP.Net tab of the IIS Manager (inetmgr) to edit a configuration file. If you use this tab, an attribute is added to the configuration element of the configuration file. This attribute interferes with normal functioning
- On the application-tier server for Team Foundation, locate the installation directory for the application tier.
- Open the Web Services directory, and then open the Services subdirectory.
- In a text or XML editor, open the Web.Config file, and locate the element.
- Update the element by typing the fully qualified domain name of the SMTP server. For example, type the following string:
- Save and close the Web.Config file.
To designate or change the sender e-mail address for e-mail alerts
- On the application-tier server for Team Foundation, locate the installation directory for the application tier.
- Open the Web Services directory, and then open the Services subdirectory.
- In a text or XML editor, open the Web.Config file, and locate the element.
- Update the element by typing the e-mail address that is associated with the service account (for example,Domain/TFSService). That is used for the application pool identity for Team Foundation. For example, type the following string:
- Save and close the file.
You must close and restart the Web services application for Team Foundation before your changes will take effect.