Using the "TFSUrlPublic" value

When we first setup our TFS instance, for some reason we didn't change the "TFSNameUrl" value to be our DNS name (e.g. tfs.mycompany.com) or uncomment and change the "TFSUrlPublic" value. Not sure why as we did do all the other things you need to do, which are spelled out in a number of blogs. Here is a pretty good one from Etienne.

Anyway, everything worked fine except the alerts were including the local app tier server name (TFSAppTier1) instead of the friendly DNS name. To fix this we simply uncommented the "TFSUrlPublic" value and changed it to match our DNS name (e.g. tfs.mycompany.com).

We also found out, if you don't uncomment "TFSUrlPublic" then "TFSNameUrl" is used as the default. But once you uncomment "TFSUrlPublic" then it overrides the "TFSNameUrl" value for alerts. At least that is the behavior we found.

http://geekswithblogs.net/etiennetremblay/archive/2006/07/28/86542.aspx