08 Mar 2011

Visual Studio/TFS 2010 SP1 Released

TFS, Visual Studio
Service Pack 1 has been officially released for Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010.  The download is immediately available on the MSDN Subscribers Site.  The service pack will be publicly available on the Microsoft Downloads site on March 10th, 2011. There are several new features included with this service pack, including (but not limited to): Visual Studio Updated local help viewer Silverlight 4 tools now included Unit tests now supported in Visual Studio 2010 projects targeting the .NET Framework 3.5 IntelliTrace for 64-bit and SharePoint Ability to profile Silverlight code Support for IIS Express Lots of bug fixes…
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05 Mar 2011

March 2011 Team Foundation Server Power Tools

ALM, TFS, Utilities
The latest version (March 2011) of the Team Foundation Server 2010 Power Tools are now available and can be downloaded via the following links: Main Power Tools Build Extensions MSSCCI plugin (unchanged from previous release) The primary enhancements in this release include: Addressed reported issues in the Backup/Restore Power Tool (yeah!). After the initial release of the Backup/Restore Power Tool, there were several issues that made the tool questionable to use in some cases.  These issues have now been resolved (over 40 bugs fixed!). Fleshed out the Windows Shell Extension for version control (double-yeah!)  The Windows shell extension for TFS…
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08 Dec 2010

Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 SP1 Beta

TFS, Visual Studio
The Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 SP1 Beta has been released to MSDN Subscribers.  The SP1 Beta will be released to the general public this Thursday.  The SP1 Beta does come with a “Go Live” license which basically means it can be installed in a production environment and an upgrade path to the final release version will be supported. There are several new features included in this service pack beta (some of which were previously available as a separate download) as well as quite a few bug fixes.  Some of the new features include: Local Help Viewer Silverlight 4 Tools Unit…
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14 Sep 2010

Visual Studio 2010 Testing Tools Round Up

Testing, TFS, Visual Studio
Yesterday, I co-presented a session covering some of the testing tools available in Visual Studio 2010.  Overall, the talk seemed to go very well.  In fact, the majority of the feedback responses were highly positive.  However, there was one negative comment – “This talk really was about Team Foundation Server.  Without this expensive application, the information provided is useless.” This comment was, no doubt, formulated based on a statement I had made near the start of my talk.  I pointed out that Microsoft Test Manager relied on Team Foundation Server (TFS) and that it could not be utilized without it. …
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09 Sep 2010

TFS Power Tools–September 2010 Release

TFS, Utilities
The latest release of the Team Foundation Server 2010 Power Tools are now available for download: TFS Power Tools Cross Platform Build Extensions MSSCCI Provider (no updates this release) There are several new features in this release of the tools, including: Admin Console Backup/Restore Wizard – you can now quickly and easily setup a backup schedule from within the Team Foundation Server Administration Console. View With – this feature adds a new context menu item, View With…, to the Source Control Explorer (SCE) window in Visual Studio 2010 giving you the ability to view a file, directly from the SCE,…
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20 Aug 2010

Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management – Released!

TFS, Visual Studio
The final update for Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management has been released (click here for the download).  This update contains fixes and updates to the Lab Management functionality to improve performance, stability, usability and diagnostic information. Here’s a list of major fixes for Lab Management included in this update: Improves performance for Lab Management Workflow Wizard. Improves performance for running automated test cases on Network Isolated Lab environments. Fixes an issue in which a Test Controller service account that is the same as a Lab Service account causes issues with environment capabilities. There is a new Expression Encoder 4.0 based…
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19 Aug 2010

TFS 2010 Backup Power Tool – Coming Soon

TFS
As with any software system that stores its data within a database, you need to have a sound backup/restore process to protect your data.  Team Foundation Server is no different.  Considering the number and types of artifacts stored within TFS, every TFS installation should have a sound backup strategy.  This sounds easy enough, but if you’ve ever read the MSDN documentation, “Backing Up and Restoring Your Deployment”, then you know there are numerous steps involved with creating a backup strategy for your TFS installation.  If you’re in a small shop, then you may not have dedicated database administrators who are…
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05 Aug 2010

Lab Management to RTM – and other News

TFS, Visual Studio
If you’ve been following VSLive this week, there were some exciting announcements regarding Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management yesterday.  Including: RTW: Lab Management is now scheduled to RTW by the end of August.  This is great news if you have been waiting for the final release version before implementing Lab Management. Updates: In relation to the above, a set of updates will be released that will update your TFS 2010 server, Test Professional client, and your build/lab agents.  This set of updates not only include the Lab Management updates but all TFS improvements that have been made since its release several…
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29 Jun 2010

Visual Studio 2010 VM and Hands-on-Labs

TFS, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
Brian Keller recently posted the availability of the new Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs. This virtual machine (VM) includes Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, and a sample application along with sample data which supports 9 hands-on-labs. This VM includes everything you need to learn and/or deliver demonstrations of many of my favorite application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). This is a great download for anyone…
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15 Jun 2010

Removing “Stuck” TFS 2008 Build Controllers

How To:, TFS
When migrating from Team Foundation Server 2008 to Team Foundation Server 2010 the TFS 2008 build controllers are included.  Even if you’ve setup and configured new build controllers for TFS 2010, you will still see the old (TFS 2008) build controllers in the Manage Build Controllers dialog (note: to display the Manage Build Controllers dialog, expand a team project’s node in Team Explorer, right-click on the Builds node, and select Manage Build Controllers). In the screen shot below, you can see the Default Build Controller for TFS 2010 at the top along with ten build agents below (spread across five…
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