03 Jan 2016

Calling VSTS APIs with C#

API, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Online
In the last API-related article, Personal Access Tokens and VSTS APIs, we looked at how we can use Fiddler, along with a Personal Access Token (PAT), to query the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) REST APIs. In this post, we’ll take a look at how we can use a 3rd party Fiddler extension, Request to Code, along with the “Paste JSON as Classes” Visual Studio feature to jump start the process of calling VSTS APIs with C#. Pre-Requisites – Install the Extension Before we get started we must make sure we’ve installed the Fiddler extension Request to Code. On the…
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01 Jan 2016

Personal Access Tokens and VSTS APIs

API, TFS, Visual Studio Online
One of the great features of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) is its extensibility model. I am specifically referring to the REST APIs that Microsoft has started making available for their platform. Until recently, you had two options for authenticating with the REST APIs:Basic Authentication – requires that you enable alternate credentials on your VSTS/TFS account, Base64-encode them and send them “over the wire” along with your REST API call. This approach is simple though not very secure since your credentials are not encrypted “at rest” (though they are encrypted when used since the APIs…
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30 Dec 2015

VSTS/TFS Feature Index

TFS, Visual Studio Online
While the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)/Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2015 Feature Index has been out for a little while now, I’m not sure how many people actually know about it. If you’re somewhat familiar with VSTS/TFS then you are aware that you can use the VSTS/TFS platform to manage your source code, track work items and even run automated builds and deployments. But are you aware of everything else that can be accomplished with VSTS/TFS? You might be surprised!I am not going to detail everything the index covers because there is simply too much. However, here’s a high-level list…
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29 Dec 2015

Personal Access Tokens & VSTS

Visual Studio Online
If you happen to be using Git-based projects in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS – formerly known as Visual Studio Online) then you might have already encountered Personal Access Tokens – or, PAT, for short. If you are not familiar with PATs in VSTS then read on… :-)As you are already aware, you can sign into VSTS using a Microsoft Account or, if your VSTS account is tied to Azure, an Azure Active Directory account. This approach works great when using the web-based interface for VSTS or when using Microsoft tools such as Visual Studio, both of which provide inherent…
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16 Oct 2015

Custom Build Task Permissions in VSO

Team Foundation Build, Visual Studio Online
Following up on my Custom Build Tasks in VSO post I wanted to quickly show how you grant a VSO user permissions to upload build tasks into your VSO account. On Microsoft’s Build Tasks web page, it states that you need to be in the top level Agent Pool Administrators group to manipulate tasks. To view the Agent Pool Administrators: Sign in to your VSO account. Click on the Settings (gear) icon on the upper-right side of the page: Click on Agent pools and then Roles: Notice the Agent Pool Administrators group under Roles. This is NOT the group you…
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24 Jul 2015

Enabling Verbose Output in Team Foundation Build Logs

Team Build, TFS, Visual Studio Online
There are a lot of great new features available in the new Team Foundation Build (formerly knows as Build v.Next) such as version history, web-based build definitions, open source build tasks, and much, much more. However, sometimes you simply want to accomplish something that you’re currently doing with your “old” XAML builds such as setting the logging verbosity to diagnostic. In TFS this was a simple property you could set when queuing a build. However, that property is nowhere to be found in the new Team Foundation Build system. There is, however, a way you can set logging verbosity to…
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23 Jul 2015

Updating Your Team Foundation Build Agents

Team Foundation Build, Visual Studio Online
One of the many improvements with the new version of Team Foundation Build is the ability for the build agents to self-update. This is a HUGE time saver for anyone that has lots of build agents spread across multiple build servers! There are a couple of ways to trigger an update to your build agent(s): The build agent gets updated automatically when a build task demanding a newer version of a build agent is executed. For example, if a task demands the build agent be from sprint 84 or higher (more on that in a moment) and your build agent…
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19 Jul 2015

Team Foundation Build References

TFS 2015, Visual Studio Online
As I’ve been working with the new “vNext” version of Microsoft’s build technology, I’ve collected a few links along the way to some useful resources. You can probably find everyone of these links using your favorite search engine but sometimes it’s nice to be able to see them all in one place. That said, here’s a few links you might find useful… Read All About It If you’re looking to read about the new build system, check out these links: Team Foundation Build (on MSDN) – from here, you can get to information on deploying build agents (on Windows and/or…
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17 Jul 2015

Understanding Pools and Queues in VSO

Visual Studio Online
If you have just started making use of the new builds in Visual Studio Online (VSO), or even if you’ve been using them for a while, you might find the new concept of pools and queues a bit confusing – especially if you are used to the relationship between build controllers and agents in Team Foundation Server 2013 (and earlier) and the limitations that come along with them. It is exactly these limitations (e.g. allowing only a single build controller per project collection) that the pools and queues aim to eliminate. Not only does the new architecture resolve these issues…
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11 Jul 2015

Configuring Card Colors in Visual Studio Online

Visual Studio Online
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the ability to customize the background colors of your kanban cards in Visual Studio Online (VSO). Not only does this give you the ability to simply add some color to an otherwise not-so-colorful board, it also allows you to make the board easier to understand at a glance. For example, you can color the background of the cards representing bugs red or you can highlight cards that are blocked in, say, yellow. We will walk through each of these scenarios below. In the board shown above, although you can’t immediately tell, the card labeled “1”…
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