Auto login into Team system with your authorized credentials

If your local domain is different from the domain where Team Foundation Server (TFS) is hosted, it must be prompting you for credentials every time while accessing any resources of that TFS. Be it, accessing any project, source code, or anything in documents, reports and other folders.
This becomes annoying and time-consuming if you work with team system day in and day out.

This article is related to configure your Credentials (in your local machine) for auto login into Team Explorer. Means, once its been configured this way, you will not be prompted for Credentials (User name/ password) anymore while accessing any project or opening any document in team explorer. These settings are safe to do as they are user-specific, so it will not be automatically applied to other users on your local machine.

Step 1: Store your credentials in "Credentials Manager":

1. Open Control Panel >> User Accounts
2. Click "Manage Your Credentials". This will open up "Credentials Manager".
3. Here, you may see URL of your TFS in the list of Windows Credentials store. (This place gets updated whenever we click "Remember My Credentials" in windows login prompt)
>> If the entry for the site(s) already exist -
Click on the respective entry.
Click "Edit" link.
Enter your password of that TFS hosted domain's login.
Click "Save".
>> If entry does not exist for the site -
Click "Add a Windows Credential" link.
Enter URL of your TFS in the "Internet or network address" input box.
Enter your user name and password for TFS hosted domain.
Click "Save".
By "user of TFS hosted domain", I mean, the credentials you usually use to connect to your TFS.

Once the above settings are done, Team system will not prompt for Credentials while connecting to a project (in Visual Studio). However, if you try to open apart from anything under "Source control" (i.e. in Documents folder, etc), it will still prompt for the Credentials. Perform following changes to avoid this prompt.

Step 2: Add TFS site as a trusted site.

1. Launch Internet Explorer.
2. Go to Tools >> Internet Options >> Security Tab.
3. Select "Trusted Sites" as zone.
4. Click "Sites".
5. Add TFS URL (Complete URL)
6. Click "Close".
7. Click "Custom Level" to open "Security Settings" popup.
8. At the bottom of all options in list, there exists "User Authentication".
9. Select "Automatic logon with current user name and password".
10. Click OK, followed by Apply.

Now onwards, while opening any resource from Team Explorer, it should not prompt you for credentials.

This is not limited to TFS and Team system. You can also do the same for any of your intranet sites which is supporting Windows Authentication.

Also, take care to change your password in Credentials store, as and when you change/ reset password of your TFS hosted domain's login.

Hope this will save us a many keystrokes :)