A Developer's Life » Software Development, 42, and everything in between

21 Nov 2006

Team System Basics Training (200 Level)

Team System, TFS

Microsoft has made available for download a Virtual PC (VPC) based set of training for Visual Studio Team System basics.? The modules within this training program include:Module 1 - Overview Module 2 - Team Foundation AdministrationModule 3 - ArchitectModule 4 - DeveloperModule 5 - TesterModule 6 - Project ManagerModule 7 - Team ExplorerThis is a relatively large download (5GB) and is comprised of eight separate files that must be downloaded and then extracted (a single download would have been nice :-).? The extracted files will take up about 15GB of space and can be ran using Virtual PC 2004 or…

09 Nov 2006

VS 2005 Add-In for Collapsing Solution Projects

Add-ins & Extensions, Visual Studio

Recently, I've started experimenting with the capabilities of add-ins for VS 2005 because I want to write some extensions for Team Foundation Server. However, before I could really get to work on the more complex add-ins I needed to start with something simple.For anyone who has ever worked with Visual Studio 2005 solutions that contains multiple projects, you've probably spent a fair amount of time collapsing the project items in the Solution Explorer. So, my first "useful" add-in simply allows you to collapse all solution project items with a single mouse click.After you install this add-in and run Visual Studio…

28 Oct 2006

HDC 2006 is "In the Books"

Conferences

The 2006 Heartland Developers Conference has officially come to a close. It was two days of a lot of technical sessions, food, prizes, games, socializing, and more. Although I don't know the official attendee count (yet) it was somewhere around 600 which is pretty good considering this was only the 3rd year for the conference. Philip and Joe did a great job putting this together (no surprise there :-). This was the first year I attended HDC and rumor has it that HDC '07 will be in Omaha as well so I look forward to attending again next year -…

18 Oct 2006

Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Pros

Team System, Visual Studio

Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Pros CTP6 is now available. Check out Cameron's post for the full details. Here is an excerpt of what's new since CTP5:Full SQL Server 2000 & 2005 object support Extended Properties Support Inline constraint support Pre and Post script deployment population during Import Script Team Build Support Import Schema Wizard ( also integrated with the New Project Wizard ) The ability to synchronize your project from a database ( selective import essentially, based on differences. We heard your feedback! ) Refactoring is allowed in files that are in a warning state Overall stability and…

18 Oct 2006

TFS FAQ

TFS

While bouncing 'round the 'Net this morning I came across the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server FAQ.I'm sure this page has been around for a while but I thought it was definitely worth reading so I thought I'd pass it along. It's definitely a good "first stop" when you have a question about TFS.

11 Oct 2006

Heartland Developers Conference

Conferences

It's official - I'll be presenting on Team Foundation Server's Team Build features at the up coming 2006 Heartland Developers Conference. This will be the first time I've attended the HDC (it's only in its 3rd year) and I'm looking forward to it. I'll post a link to the presentation materials as the event date approaches. If anyone out there is attending the HDC this year I'd be interested in hearing from you.

28 Sep 2006

SP1 Betas and SDK RTM

TFS

In case you haven't already noticed (I'm a little late on this posting due to being off the last week) Microsoft has released two Service Pack 1 betas - Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Beta and Team Foundation Server SP1 Beta.Brian Harry has posted details here and here about Team Foundation Server SP1 Beta. To summarize, SP1 includes a few new features as well as several bug fixes and performance improvements. Some of the new features include:Extranet SupportWIT Custom Control SupportSupport for Office 2007 (Project & Excel - no SharePoint 2007 yet)Detailed Merge HistoryAbility to Separate SQL Analysis Services ServerBrian has…

08 Sep 2006

New TFS Power Toys Available

TFS

Great news for users of Team Foundation Server - a new set of Power Toys has been made available. This includes updates to existing Power Toys as well as the addition of several new Power Toys.Some of the highlights include:The TFS MSSCCI Provider is now officially supported by Microsoft.Previous Power Toys have been pulled out of the SDK and made available in this separate download (so you don't have to download the entire SDK).Four new Power Toys have been included including tfpt bind, tfpt query/tfpt workitem, Annotate (very cool), and TreeDiff.Read the full post on Brian Harry's blog or click…

05 Sep 2006

Team System Videos and Webcasts

TFS

Lately I have been reviewing a lot of Visual Studio Team System videos and Webcasts. After several days of searching I had acquired several link so I thought I would make this list public. You can view the list of videos and Webcasts here. Please let me know if you've seen any VSTS-related video or Webcast that is not included in this list and I'll get it added.

30 Aug 2006

Team Build Sidekick Released

TFS

Those folks over from Attrice have done it again and released another useful utility in their line of Team Foundation Sidekicks - the Team Build Sidekick. This is an add-in for Visual Studio 2005 that adds a few new features to the context menu for Team Build Types.If you've worked with Team Build Types then you already know how inconvenient it is to make modifications to them. First, you have to go to version control and locate the correct TFSBuild.proj file and check it out. Then you have to open it for editing to modify the XML. Although this isn't…