19 Jul 2007

Vista Sidebar Gadget for Team Builds

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio
Jim Lamb has released a Windows Sidebar Gadget that allows you to view completed and failed team builds.  The current version is compatible with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 (i.e. "Orcas") and should also be compatible with beta 2 once it's released. You can read more about it and/or download the gadget here.  Jim also provides a short video demonstration of the gadget on his blog page as well.
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13 Jul 2007

Exposing TFS with the Hamachi VPN

Team System, TFS
I am currently working on a project that has developers distributes across two sites.  We wanted to make use of Team Foundation Server but didn't want to expose the server to the "world".  There are a couple of options available to us and we chose to go down the VPN route for two main reasons: Cost - by utilizing the LogMeIn Hamachi VPN (more on that in a minute) we had to spend only $39 rather than the hundreds of dollars an SSL certificate would have cost us. Ease - setting up the VPN was very simple - both on…
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08 Jul 2007

How to Determine what Version of TFS is Installed

Team System, TFS
There have been several posts out there to help out with determining what version of TFS is currently installed and when it was installed (e.g. here, here, and here). These suggestions require you to check out various file versions, poke around the registry, and/or query the data tier. To ease the process, I have put together a simple console-based utility, TFSInfo, that will give you some basic information (e.g. AT server name, DT server name, version - AT & DT, edition, reporting server URL, the TFS installation date, and product ID) for your TFS installation. Here is an example screen…
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07 Jul 2007

Installing Service Pack 1 for TFS and VSTS

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio
Although Service Pack 1 for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2005 has been out for a while now, the installation process is not necessarily obvious.  Depending upon your configuration, there may be one or more files you need to install - and the order can matter. Team Foundation Server: If you're running Windows Server 2003, there may be issues when attempting to install large MSI files (the Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 is over 400MB).  See knowledge base article KB925336 for more information as well as a downloadable update to resolve this issue.  Install this update first if…
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28 Jun 2007

Gearing Up for HDC 2007

Conferences, Orcas, Team System, TFS
It's that time of year again here in the heartland - preparation for the fourth consecutive Heartland Developers Conference.  Last year's conference went very well (Philip and Joe did a great job putting it all together) with a lot of great presentations and this year is looking to be even better.  A new track, “Manage It”, has been added this year which will focus on providing cutting edge content on topics like virtualization, technology driven project management, strategic process management, empowerment tools, and other topics that will help you to manage the development and implementation of your development projects. Although the speaker…
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20 Jun 2007

A Quick eScrum Review

Orcas, Team System, TFS
As many of you have probably noticed, Microsoft has released a new product called eScrum.  This product adds a scrum-based process template to your Team Foundation Server along with related functionality (e.g. product management, backlog items, tasks, sprint management, and reports) allowing you to manage various parts of the agile software development process. eScrum is a Web-based, end-to-end project management tool for Scrum built on the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server platform. It provides multiple ways to interact with your Scrum project: eScrum Web-based UI, Team Explorer, and Excel or Project, via Team Foundation Office Integration. In addition, it provides a…
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02 May 2007

Programmatically Download Attachments from TFS

Code Snippet, TFS
I created this short snippet of code the other day in reference to a forum question on how to retrieve the linked items for a given work item.  The code below uses the TFS Object Model to retrieve a specific work item (in this case, item #16) and save all attachments to the local file system. Code Snippetusing Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server;using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client;using System;using System.IO;namespace DTTFSLib{public class WorkItemTest {public WorkItemTest(string serverName) {// Connect to the desired Team Foundation Server TeamFoundationServer tfsServer = new TeamFoundationServer(serverName);// Authenticate with the Team Foundation Server tfsServer.Authenticate();// Get a reference to a Work Item Store WorkItemStore workItemStore =…
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27 Apr 2007

Answering: "When will bug ‘xyz’ be ready for testing?"

Team System, TFS
Have you ever been asked any of the following questions regarding work items: Is bug #123 ready for testing yet?, or When will I be able to test bug #456?, or What bugs are in the pipeline that will be ready for testing next? If you're like me, you've probably answered the above questions at some point in the past something like: "Sure, it's been ready for testing for two days.", or "Bug #456 will be ready for testing after the next nightly build.", or "I don't know what bugs will be coming next, let me run some queries and…
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17 Apr 2007

71-510: TS: Visual Studio 2005 TFS Beta Exam Results Are In

Certification, TFS
As you may have noticed in other posts, the results for the 71-510 beta exam are starting to show up on participant transcripts (on the MCP member site).  If you took the test a couple of months back then you may be able see your results by now.  I checked mine today to find out that I passed the exam. Now that the beta results are starting to appear, the "live" exam will probably be available soon.  If you're planning on taking the exam, here are a couple of links to help get you started: http://devmatter.blogspot.com/2007/02/beta-exam-71-510-study-links.html http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1302626&SiteID=1
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