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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06 Apr 2007

Updated Team Foundation Server Roadmap for "Orcas"

Orcas, TFS, Visual Studio
Brian Harry has just published a new post detailing the future "Orcas" release of Team Foundation Server. The post is fairly detailed and he attempts to point out what features are new as well as what will be in the Beta 1 release vs. the Beta 2 release.The features marked as new include:TFS Best Practices Analyzer - A tool that can be run against your TFS server that will help diagnose configuration errors and tuning possibilities.VSTS Web Access - There's been much written about this already but the new Web Access product from devBiz will be released as a Power…
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27 Mar 2007

Microsoft Acquires TeamPlain!

Team System, TFS
The buzz of the day in the land of TFS has to be the story of Microsoft acquiring TeamPlain!  Brian Harry has posted the details but the two main points that stick out is that: TeamPlain will become Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access (sometime around the "Orcas" release). It is available immediately as a free download for anyone who owns Team Foundation Server.The focus of TeamPlain is on TFS work items, however, there is also some built-in version control capabilities, SharePoint integration, Reporting Services integration, and some build support (in a future release). If you currently have users using the…
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26 Mar 2007

VSTS Guidance Updated

Team System, TFS
The Patternes and Practices Visual Studio Team System Guidance site has been updated to include a few new items, including:Explained: Branching in Team Foundation ServerVideo: How To - Setup Your Source Tree in Team Foundation ServerVideo: How To - Structure Your ASP.NET Projects for TFS Here's a list of what else is also available at this site:Explained - Structuring Your Solutions and Projects in Source Control with Team Foundation Server How To: Perform a Baseless Merge in Team Foundation Server How To: Step Through Creating a Custom Check-in Policy for Team Foundation Server 2005 How To: Step Through Creating Your…
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07 Mar 2007

VS 2005 SP 1 Update for Windows Vista Released

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio
If you've been developing on Windows Vista using Visual Studio 2005 then you've no doubt become all too familiar with the warning dialog that pops up every time you start Visual Studio (assuming you haven't disabled it). This dialog lets you know that your version of Visual Studio may not work as excepted while developing on Vista and that you should install the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista.Since the release of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, this update was available only as a beta release. Microsoft has now released the non-beta version of this…
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03 Mar 2007

Outlook Add-In for Team Foundation Server

Team System, TFS
I came across a (free!) add-in a while back that provides integration of TFS Work Items with Microsoft Outlook 2003.  This add-in provides the following features: Create work items directly from e-mail messages. Submit and edit work items. Execute stored queries. Find work items by ID. Export stored query results. Send work item data and query results by e-mail. Does not require Team Explorer to be installed (although you still need to maintain the required end-user CALs). If you have business owners, testers, quality assurance users, etc. that would like to be able to create and/or manage work items within…
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02 Mar 2007

New Orcas Features

Orcas, Visual Studio
Eric Lee has a nice post on some of the new features found in the current Orcas release. There is some really nice stuff coming out with Orcas, especially in the area of Team Foundation Server. Some of these features include:Code Metrics - view various metrics about your source code.Annotation View for Files under Version Control - lets you see who changed what & when?Team Foundation Server Build Definition Editor - quit messing around in all that XML!Build Retention Policy - automatically remove build files from your drop location.Continuous Builds - finally! :-)Build Queues - lets you queue up builds.Folder…
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26 Feb 2007

Running FitNesse Tests from your Team Build Script

TFS
For anyone using FitNesse you may have the need (or just plain desire) to run your FitNesse tests from within your Team Build scripts.  This is a need that we have on a project I'm currently working on so I investigated the various options for implementing the tests within our automated build process. In the end, I ended up creating a custom build task that allows you to run FitNesse tests as part of your build.  The build task currently supports FitNesse but will also support tsqlunit tests (another testing framework we use) in the near future. I've placed the…
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