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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17 Jul 2007

Refreshing TFS Version Control Status Icons

Visual Studio
I've seen a some posts lately related to the version control status icons that are displayed in the Solution Explorer within Visual Studio 2005 Team System.  The problem with these status icons is that they do not automatically update to reflect the current status when a file is checked out or back in.  Even refreshing the Solution Explorer does not refresh the status icons.  To see this in action, open a solution in Visual Studio and have someone else check one of the solution files out.  Refresh your Solution Explorer by right-clicking on a project and selecting Refresh. There is…
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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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11 Jul 2007

Microsoft’s Largest Launch – Ever!

Orcas, Visual Studio
Microsoft announces today (July 10th) that Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (formerly code-named "Orcas") will be officially launched together on February 27th, 2008.  Although it appears that Visual Studio 2008 is still set for release later this year, I have to say I'm a little surprised (although not too much) by the release date.  I had the impression these tools would be available a little sooner than this since the 2007 PDC in Los Angeles was canceled with this message: We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the…
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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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21 Jun 2007

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Includes "Go-Live" License

Orcas, Visual Studio
I noticed in a blog post by Scott Guthrie that Visual Studio 2008 (formerly known as "Orcas") will include a "go-live" license allowing it to be put into production use with a supported upgrade path to subsequent releases. VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2 will ship later this summer, and the Beta 2 release will support a go-live license for those who want to put applications into production using the new features immediately. Also, just in case you missed it, "Orcas" is now officially known as Visual Studio 2008 and the related .NET Framework is known as .NET Framework 3.5. …
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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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