Visual Studio Team System Widgets

VSTS is a large application and contains a number of interest areas for all users, some need to watch the check in rate or code churn (the count of code lines changes) and some just need to make sure that they have the latest version of their files when they check them out.

For those of your who know VSTS you will know that although you can get hold of the information you need or perform the necessary actions you do have to go through some hoops, the power tools power tools for VSTS help a lot but there is still some gaps.

Now as most of us are programmers we could use the VSTS SDK to write our own Visual Studio add-in. The SDK is very well documented and you can create great a very powerful tool to do any number of VSTS related functions, however if you are like me you most probably have a number of other project on the go and no time for anymore.

Never fear there is a website called Team System Widgets to help you find the widget you are after bringing together a list of developed widgets from commercial, community and Microsoft sources. The web site contains tools for build monitoring to VSTS event subscription.

Click here to find out more

Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

To use and make software correctly you need guidance, a manual for how the makers suggest you use it. I am very keen on getting hold of the guidance produced by Microsoft whenever it is available especially when it comes to Team System. The amount of work to get Team System correctly set up is quite a lot, although it’s a great product, it is very easy to get lost in its implementation.

To help bridge the knowledge gap the team responsible for the development of Team System have created a WIKI on Codeplex and also created an overall guidance document which has recently been put on MSDN.

Each document encompasses a lot of information for users and administrators of Team System, if you have not already looked at both of these sources I suggest you do so now to avoid misconceptions and incorrect implementations into your SDLC.

Team Foundation Server – Power Tools (September 2007)

Team System is something I use almost every day and it is a great product, however like most software there are a number of features that never made it into the final product which I actually need. Microsoft understands this which is why almost all developer software produced is accompanied by some Power Tools, and Team Foundation Server is no different.

The Power Tools, which have been updated and released this month, offer a number of invaluable features to anyone involved with TFS these include;

‘Best Practices Analyser’ for checking your server is set up correctly
Check-In Policy pack for new ways of stopping bad code making it to the final product
A Process Template Editor to make those company specific tweaks
Number of command line tools for managing your projects

You can find the full information and detail on how to download the tools here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem

.Net Developer Network : Team Foundation Server with Richard Fennell

Last night I attended a great presentation on Team Foundation Server, at my local user group '.NET Developer Network'.

Being a leader in this technology and responsible for its implementation and administration at my company, I have spent a lot of time watching sales videos on how this is ‘Complete Solution’ to my development project needs, yet the actual knowledge on the day-to-day use information is very thin. However Richard brought his own experiences to the presentation and gave a real insight in to the pains and joys of using Team Foundation Server 2005 and the Orcas verson.

Richard started from the begging of the implementation with how to setup your Team Foundation Server and the pitfalls associated with this, something I have first had knowledge of, then took us through how a developer would actually use the system. The later part of the presentation was give us an overview of the many Power Tools available which fill the gaps in Team Foundation Server.

It was a great presentation, with well thought out content, aimed squarely at the developer who needs an insight into this mammoth technology.

Richard has made his slides available and has included a number of speaker notes in the Power Point slides, which is a great help as it is the detail of what is said that you usually need when you look back at these things.

You can download the slides from www.dotnetdevnet.com


Richard is an active blogger and you can find his blog at http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell

If you think this presentation sounded interesting then the .NET Developer Network User Group hold free monthly meetings available to anyone, all you need to do is register at www.dotnetdevnet.com.

Team System Web Access Power Tool

Yesterday Microsoft released the updated version of their Team System Web Access Power Tool, this free tool allows you to control your Team System projects entirely through a web interface. This tool is the updated version of the DevBiz tool which Microsoft bought earlier this year.

The development team at Microsoft has put some time into improving the tool over the original, which was already quite feature rich, by putting it through their own release cycle which includes many rigorous checks. They have also spent some time putting increased support for AJAX to make the interface more response and have removed the need for keys to activate the product, it is now accessed using Windows Authentication.

This tool is available to download from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.
Remember you need to have Team System already installed for this to work.

To see a full list of changes read this blog http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/

Hotmail Case Study : Testing with VSTS

The team responsible for developing Hotmail have just released their case study of testing the Hotmail web site using Visual Studio Team System. For anyone (like me) who is using Team System, you will find it an interesting read to see what they found and how they used it in their environment.

It’s a 10 page word document so set yourself some time to read it.

To get the document go here http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies