A question popped up this morning on a local mailing list asking if it is possible to migrate from the TFS Workgroup Edition back to the TFS Trial version. On the surface I thought this a strange request so I did a quick search on the MSDN Forums and came up with nothing. I shot an email off to the team to see if they had any ideas on the matter and we’ll see what message comes back.

The background to the question is this. Let’s say an organisation has been evaluating the TFS product for quite some time and are eager to move over to the final version as soon as it becomes available. On St Patricks day the MSDN Subscriber download site shows two downloads, the time-bombed trial and the 5–user limited workgroup edition. We are told that both versions can be upgraded easily in-place by going into maintenance mode and entering you product key once you buy the full version. Armed with this information, quite a few organisations appear to have gone with the workgroup version with just 5–users knowing they are ready and raring to go with their chequebook to buy the full version and get down to business.

Any then the problem emerges… Mitch Denny responded promptly to the mailing list question and shared the news that you should not expect to be able to purchase the full version for potentially two months! Now in the past week or so I know some organisations have installed the Workgroup version and started uploaded their custom process templates and team projects, others have done the in-place upgrade from the RC release.Quite a few of them are now expecting to be able to purchase the product to remove the 5 user limit VERY soon. Faced with the prospect of now having to wait a while to be able to purchase the full version, it makes perfect sense to want to be able to move back to the Trial version which removes the five user limit, and then upgrade to the full product as soon as you can (and before the time bomb expires).

I will post an update as soon as more information about this situation appears…