TFS 2008 License Changes

Brian Harry recently posted details regarding a change to the newly released TFS 2008 licensing model.  In short, the new license structure will allow anyone in your company to perform the following actions against a TFS server (Standard Edition only - does not apply to the Workgroup Edition) within your organization without the need for a CAL: Create work items Query work items they've created View work items they've created Update work items they've created I suspect this type of activity has probably been going on quite a bit in the past with TFS 2005 - it's just that it…
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TFS Book Wish List

Have you ever found yourself saying something along the lines of "If only I had more time, I'd write a book about such-and-such"?  Well, I've found myself saying that several times over the past year or so about Team Foundation Server.  Now, don't get me wrong, there are several good books currently available for TFS but none of them quite match what I'm looking for. I'd like a TFS Automation for Developers book that covers the details for: Programmatically creating new work items. Programmatically querying work items and modifying them. Creating custom check-in policies. Creating custom build tasks. Programmatically accessing…
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TFS 2008 System Recommendations Released

In case you haven't seen it, Brian Harry posted the TFS 2008 System Recommendations a few days ago.  There is some great information in there if you are planning on upgrading existing TFS 2005 installations or if you're planning on installing TFS 2008 on a new system.  Based on the test results it looks like some pretty good performance improvements have been achieved.  You can read more here.
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What’s New in TFS 2008

I just completed my presentation on the new features of TFS 2008 at this year's Tulsa TechFest.  It was a relatively small session held in one of the classrooms here at the OSU campus which allowed me to more easily address questions during the presentation.  The topic I presented on is called What's New in TFS 2008.  Although the presentations run roughly 75 minutes, I had to skip over a couple of my demos because there are so many new features in TFS 2008.  It was easy to tell that I'm not the only one excited about some of the…
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TFS 2008 Features in TFS 2005

There are a lot of new features in TFS 2008.  So many in fact, it's difficult to list them all at once.  I will, however, do my best to cover as many new features as I can during this year's Tulsa TechFest when I present on What's New in TFS 2008.  There are a lot of new features that have been integrated into TFS 2008 that can also be had today in TFS 2005.  Some of these are listed below... Continuous Integration - there are several 3rd party solutions for implementing continuous integration in TFS 2005.  These include: A Microsoft…
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TFS (2005) Power Tools Final Release

The latest and final release of the Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools have been released.  This release includes two new additions to the existing Power Tool set: TFS Work Item Templates - work item templates allow you to define templates for existing work item types with specific fields already filled in.  The work item templates are accessible via a Visual Studio add-in allowing easy access to your templates.  This can be a great time saver if you fill out lots of work items - especially if they have a lot of fields that tend to use the same default…
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Tulsa TechFest 2007

The second annual Tulsa TechFest is coming up next month on October 19th and 20th.  There are currently over 50 speakers geared up to present at this years conference with around 15 tracks.  Some of the current speakers include: Jason Zander - General Manager for the .NET Framework Sean Alexander - Director of Silverlight Michael Scherotter - Microsoft Developer Evangelist, San Francisco Wally McClure host of the ASP.NET Podcast Bill Vaughn - Awesome INETA Speaker RETURNSAnd, let's not forget myself :-)  I'll be presenting on What's New with Team Foundation Server 2008 on Friday at 1:00.  This will be my…
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Team Foundation Server 2008 Feature List

Brian Harry has posted what he's calling the (most likely) final feature list post for TFS 2008. It is an impressive list with a few new features listed that won't show up until RTM (i.e. they're not in beta 2). He also re-iterates the compatabilities between VSTS 2005 and VSTS 2008.You can read the full list here. I've included the new (RTM) items below as well just to show what's coming.Enable support for Reporting Services on any server and any portSupport for SQL 2008 (aka Katmai)TFSDeleteProject now permanently deletes (destroys) version control contentNew role for many operations activities - You…
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Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 – Released

As of a short while ago, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 was released.  This also includes the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2.  Silverlight 1.0 RC is expected to be released within the next couple of days. Also, these releases (Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2, as well as Silverlight 1.0 RC) come with a "go live" license that allows you to start development now and not have to worry about a supported upgrade path when the final versions ship later this year. Here's a list of the installation disc images that can be downloaded: Visual Studio…
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TFSInfo Updated

Just a quick post to let everyone know that the TFSInfo utility has been updated to also report the version number of the Team Foundation Server's data tier schema (per this post).  TFSInfo now reports the TFS version based on the Application Tier as well as the Data Tier. You can read more about it here.
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