14 Sep 2012

Get TeamCompanion for Free (if you act fast)!

Utilities, Visual Studio
With the launch of Visual Studio 2012, Ekobit sim-ships TeamCompanion 4.7.  If you are not familiar with TeamCompanion, it integrates many of the Team Foundation client features within Microsoft Outlook.  For example, with TeamCompanion, you can easily create Work Items with an e-mail (or vice- versa).  You can also create new Outlook Tasks from Work Items.  There are many other features, such as scheduled Work Item queries, available within TeamCompanion that can simply make life easier for those of us who spend their days working with TFS (click here for further details). If you act fast – i.e. between now…
Read More
28 Feb 2012

Useful Tools from MVP2MVP Day

Conferences, Utilities
Although the 2012 MVP Global Summit officially kicks off tomorrow, there were still plenty of Microsoft MVPs around today for various pre-sessions.  In my case, I joined the other Visual Studio ALM MVPs present for this year’s MVP2MVP day – a day where Visual Studio ALM MVPs are given 20 minutes to get up and present on various tips, tricks, neat projects, etc. to the rest of the group with the goal of sharing knowledge and learning new things.  There was a lot of useful information at this year’s MVP2MVP day so I thought I’d share a few of the tools…
Read More
25 Aug 2011

Team Explorer Profile Manager–Take 1

Utilities, Visual Studio
If there is one thing I can generally count on doing at least once a day it’s firing up Visual Studio 2010.  Along with Visual Studio 2010 I am also a heavy user of Team Foundation Server 2010.  I use it at my “day job” as well as at home on “side” projects.  At work, I switch among multiple Team Project Collections and Team Projects relatively frequently.  At home, more so because I tend to work with several CodePlex projects as well as local TPCs and Team Projects on my development laptop. [UPDATE: A new release is available – see…
Read More
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…
Read More
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,…
Read More
18 Jun 2010

WCF Load Test (Beta) for Visual Studio 2010

ALM Rangers, Utilities, Visual Studio
The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have released an update to the WCF Load Test Tool.  Apart from some bug fixes, the main difference is that this version integrates with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition.  After this release, the Rangers plan to convert the code to the .NET Framework 4.0, so future releases will only work with Visual Studio 2010 or later. If you’re not familiar with the WCF Load Test Tool, here’s a quick description: This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the…
Read More
18 May 2010

TFS Administration Tool v2.0 Released

TFS, Utilities
With each release of Team Foundation Server, administration gets a little easier.  The release of TFS 2010 introduces the Team Foundation Administration Console (TFS Admin Console) providing a much simpler approach to administering Team Foundation Server.  However, even the TFS Admin Console does not provide any support for managing permissions between Team Projects, SharePoint, and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). That’s where the Team Foundation Server Administration Tool comes in… Here’s the official description from the TFS Admin Tool site: The TFS Administration Tool allows Team Foundation Server administrators to manage user permissions on all three platforms utilized by Team…
Read More
24 Apr 2010

TFS 2010 Power Tools Released

TFS, Utilities
The first official (RTM) release of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools for Team Foundation Server 2010 have been released.  There are three separate downloads available: TFS Power Tools April 2010 release – This is the main set of TFS Power Tools and contains the following high-level features: Alerts Explorer Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) Custom Check-in Policy Pack Process Editor Team Explorer Enhancements Team Foundation Power Tool (TFPT.exe) Team Members Windows PowerShell CmdLets Windows Shell Extensions Work Item Templates TFS MSSCCI Provider 2010 release - The Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that…
Read More
21 Apr 2010

Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 Utility Roundup

TFS, Utilities, Visual Studio 2010
Well, Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 have been “in the wild” for a little over a week now.  Now that the RTM versions have had a few days to settle in, I decided to do a quick survey of some of my favorite utilities to see if they have been updated to support the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010.  Here is the list: GhostDoc (v2.5.09166) – this is a great add-in for Visual Studio to help with the mundane task of providing XML documentation for your code.  After using this utility for even…
Read More
05 Jan 2010

Team Foundation Sidekicks for TFS 2010

Add-ins & Extensions, TFS, Utilities, Visual Studio 2010
Attrice has released version 3.0 of their (most useful) Team Foundation Server Sidekicks for Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2.  This set of utilities has been sorely missed since TFS 2010 was first made available for testing.  This release has pretty much the same functionality as version 2.4 (for TFS 2005/2008) with the following exceptions: Permissions Sidekick: this sidekick is not available in this release (to be added back in 2010 RTM timeframe) Build Type editing (VS integration only): this feature is not available in this release Dynamic History support (VS integration only): the History toolwindow is updated only when…
Read More