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The download is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=00803636-1d16-4df1-8a3d-ef1ad4f4bbab&displaylang=en.
Brian recently wrote a post about the new features: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/07/08/july-08-tfs-power-tool-preview.aspx.
This release also includes some bug fixes to the build notification app.
Enjoy!
Hakan has announced the availability of the new TSWA community technology preview (CTP) in his post, What's New in TSWA 2008 SP1. Personally, I would say this release is beta quality or better, so don't let the CTP designation scare you too much.
Also released is the first CTP release of what we are calling Work Item Web Access (WIWA). You may recall that we published a spec for it recently, referring to it as a "bug submission portal." WIWA provides you with the ability to have folks create work items and view work items they have created without needing a client access license (CAL) for 2008. This was a new condition that was added to the TFS 2008 license agreement. Hakan has more details in his post on WIWA.
Both the CTP of TSWA and the CTP of WIWA have the same requirements as the previous release of TSWA 2008 (e.g., you must have Team Explorer 2008 installed as a prerequisite).
This release of TSWA has some really great new features.
I want to call out two features in particular that I really like.
Support for specifying field values in the URL for creating new work items (works in both TSWA and WIWA)
How often have you wanted users or testers to file bugs and needed to have them fill in certain fields with particular values so that the work item shows up in the correct area? We now support providing field values in the new work item URL. Here's the example that Hakan provided.
http://<server>/wi.aspx?pname=MyProject&wit=Bug&[Title]=Bug Bash&[AssignedTo]=Hakan Eskici&[Iteration Path]=MyProject\Iteration2&[FoundIn]=9.0.30304
This will open a new work item editor window with the following initial values:
Now you can start sending your users and testers a link with all of this already filled in!
Improved search support
Have you ever wanted to search for bugs assigned to someone in particular or in a particular area without writing a query? In the past, you could only search the Title and Description fields in a work item, which I described here. Now you can enter the following into the search box in TSWA to find any bug assigned to me that also has the word "exception" in the Title or Description.
exception a="Buck Hodges"
The core fields have shortcuts. Any field can be used by specifying the reference name for the field. Here's the equivalent without using the shortcut.
exception System.AssignedTo="Buck Hodges"
Here are the shortcuts for the core fields.
You can use TFS macros, such as @me, in search. For example, find all work items containing "watson" in the Title or Description that are assigned to me that are in the Resolved state and are work items of type Bug.
watson a=@me s=Resolved t=Bug
Now, if you really want to do something cool, there are the "contains" and "not" operations. The "=" operator matches exact phrases, whereas the ":" operator is used for "contains" clauses. The following search looks for bugs assigned to Active (i.e., not assigned to any particular person yet) where the word "repro" is contained in the History field.
a=Active History:repro
This example illustrates the difference between the two operators. The first example finds all work items where the Title is exactly "Bug Bash" with no other words or characters in it. The second example, which uses the contains operator (colon) rather than the exact match operator (equals), finds all bugs where the Title contains the phrase "Bug Bash" along with any other words or characters.
Personally, I find myself almost always using the contains operator.
Finally, you need to be able to exclude certain things from your search. For that, there is the not operator, which is represented by the hyphen ("-"). The following example finds all work items with "watson" in the Title or Description fields that are not assigned to me and that are not closed.
watson –a=@me –s=closed
The not operator only works with field references, so you can’t use the following to find all work items containing "watson" but not containing "repro" in the Title and Description fields.
watson –repro
However, you can accomplish this by specifying the Title field explicitly with the not operator.
watson –Title:repro
Please send us your feedback on both the new features and Work Item Web Access!
Hakan Eskici, program manager for Team System Web Access, has posted the spec for a new power tool that's based on TSWA that is designed to help customers comply with the new licensing changes in TFS 2008 while getting the most out of the product. Please read this, as well as the other Rosario specs, and give us your feedback.
Spec available for "Codename TFS Bug Submission Portal"
We've published the spec for the "Codename TFS bug submission portal" power tool on Rosario Specs website (1).
Note (1): Although it appears on Rosario specs website, this is a power tool for TFS 2008 (Orcas).
Here's some background:
Team Foundation Server 2008 Standard Edition allows using some of the work item tracking features even without a Client Access License (CAL).
“You do not need a CAL to access work item tracking functionality to create new work items, or view and update work items you opened”
Even thought the EULA enables these scenarios, there's no out-of-box UI that will help customers to make sure they're in compliance with the license terms. Therefore, we have built a power tool based on TSWA that will enable these 3 core scenarios:
As a user without a CAL, I can:
create new work items
edit the work items I’ve created
see the list of work items I’ve created
The codename for this power tool is "TFS Bug Submission Portal" for now, and the official name will probably be different.
To learn more about the details, please take a look at the spec. Your feedback is very important for us, so please make sure you express your thoughts on the spec discussion forum, we're looking forward to hearing from you!
Hakan also posted Wednesday about the Anniversary of the devBiz acquisition. It's amazing how quickly a year goes by, and how much can be accomplished.
Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Team Foundation Server, Team Suite, Architecture Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, and Test Edition. In addition, discuss what's new for these editions for Visual Studio 2008.
April 9, 2008
10:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Additional Time Zones
Martin Woodward write that Teamprise 3.0 has now been released! If you want the equivalent of Team Explorer integrated into Eclipse on any platform or need a client from Linux or Mac, you'll definitely want to check out Teamprise.
Here's a quick bullet list of features that I lifted from his post. I'm particularly happy to see the new integration with Team Foundation Build. It opens up the TFS build feature to teams that need to build on other platforms, in addition to the integration with Eclipse.
Martin says they have also improved the pricing structure for customers who only need a small number of licenses.
Check out the full post for all of the details, including screenshots: Teamprise 3.0 Ships!
Congratulations to Martin and everyone else at Teamprise!
Earlier today, we released the first version of the TFS Power Tools for TFS 2008!
I want to highlight the build notification application. This tool alerts you when a build is started or completed. If the build breaks, you'll know immediately.
I posted a preview of the build notification app back in September. Based on feedback, we have fixed bugs (e.g., it now properly handles the user logging out or shutting down on Vista) and made improvements (e.g., you can now disable servers in the options dialog that you don't want). See the preview post for more screenshots and details on how it works.
See Brian's post for the full details on all of the featues on this release, which include support for destroying work items and work item type definitions.
Enjoy!
This question came up on an internal discussion, and I thought the answer would be useful to post.
Question
How we can find the list of projects created with the a particular VSTF template in Orcas (TFS 2008)? In VS 2005 TFS we can find out programmatically as well with the query but in the new version we are not able to do so.
Answer
Sam Heald, a developer on the work item tracking server team, responded with the following answer.
This information is no longer stored automatically in TFS 2008.
In TFS 2005, a templateId was returned as an out parameter of the GetProjectProperties method on the ICommonStructureService interface.
However, this templateId might not point to the same template used during project creation for that project (deleted/overwritten templates are purged, ids are re-used). Additionally, most project attributes initialized by the project creation wizard (aka PCW) can be customized or changed after the fact.
In TFS 2008, the templateId parameter always returns -1.
If you wish to simulate the old functionality, you can modify your process templates to put the template name in the generic project properties property bag. In the properties element in the classification.xml, you can define name-value pairs to be created at project creation time, e.g.:
<property name="TemplateName" value="MSF Agile v4.0" />
Team System Web Access for TFS 2008 Power Tool CTP is now available!
For TFS 2008, TSWA will continue to be a power tool through the TFS 2008 release. For the release after that, it will be a part of the regular product. The final release of the TSWA for TFS 2008 power tool will happen near the time TFS 2008 ships, which we've stated is by the end of this year.
The big news with this release is the support for custom controls in work item forms. When you install TSWA, you will find a subdirectory in the installation directory that contains the SDK documentation, which describes the interface, JavaScript functions, etc. There are also several examples provided, including a checkbox, a work item picker, and a multi-value selector. You will not be able to use existing custom controls as they are, because those are WinForms based and TSWA requires web-based controls. However, the same basic concepts apply. Please try this and let us know what you think!
We've also fixed a number of bugs and added support for some of the new Team Build functionality in TFS 2008 (queuing builds and viewing the build queue). This should be a solid release.
For those of you who remember the need for the TSWA users group in the installation of the TSWA 2005 power tool, you'll be happy to know that is gone. That was something we had to add to satisfy security requirements, but we've since changed the code to handle the impersonation better such that impersonated user identities no longer need access to any of the local directories for cache files and user settings (i.e., the code reverts to the service account while it accesses those).
Note that you need to install Team Explorer 2008 on the computer before installing TSWA 2008. The previous release required Team Explorer 2005.
Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 Power Tool CTP
Overview
Team System Web Access is a free download that will be incorporated into a future release of Visual Studio Team System. You may install it with licensed installations of Team Foundation Server. You must be a licensed user of Team Foundation Server to access Team System Web Access.
Features
- NEW: Display custom controls on work item forms
- NEW: view queued builds new, queue new builds
- Add new work items or edit existing ones
- Work with any type of work item, including custom ones
- Add new work item queries or edit existing ones
- View, download, upload, check-in and check-out documents on SharePoint team portal
- View reports, export as PDF or Excel
- Browse source control repositories, download files, view changesets, diffs, histories, and annotated views
- View build results, start or stop builds
- Search for keywords in work items
Enjoy!
Neno Loje has written a blog post that shows you the steps to change the links in the TFS work item alert emails into links to work items in TSWA. The standard links point you to a read-only page, which is not nearly as useful.
Check it out!
Changing TFS email notifications to link to Team System Web Access
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, including Team Foundation Server 2008, is now available for download. As mentioned in Soma's post, Beta 2, unlike beta 1, includes the "go live" provision in the license, meaning that you can use it in production. We've been using TFS 2008 beta 2 on our main internal dogfood server now for the last two months (well, it's close to being the same as beta 2 -- it's actually an very early snapshot). You can check out the stats in Brian's post.
When Beta 1 was released, I put together a list of links about the Team Build features in Orcas. If you are looking for a list of links related to TFS 2005, you can find those here (and Jeff has posted links to the TechEd 2007 presentations).
Here's my updated list of links about Team Build features in TFS 2008 (check out Brian's post for a list of all TFS 2008 features). If you have questions or feedback about anything in beta 2, please let us know (either here or in the forum). We're anxious to hear what you think!
Overview of features in Build for TFS 2008
- Continuous Integration in Team Build for Orcas
- More on the Orcas features for Team Build
- You can schedule builds in Orcas
- Orcas Team Build Continuous Integration spec is now available
Demos
Vista Sidebar Gadgets to monitor builds (we're working on an equivlaent to CCTray)
Details on how things work, customizations, etc.
- Team Build and Web Deployment Projects
- TFS 2008: Build agent configuration options
- TFS 2008: Some properties that you can use to customize your build
- Orcas: Unattended installation of the build agent
- How to build projects in Team Build that only Visual Studio can build
- Orcas Team Build: WCF web services replace .NET remoting
- Building software against different versions of .NET with MSBuild in Orcas
- Stop piling on when the build breaks: Build checkin policy for Continuous Integration in Orcas
- Incremental gets with Team Build and the list of files that changed
- Orcas Changes
- Determining Whether Tests Passed in Team Build Orcas
- Getting the Modified Files for a Team Build Build in Orcas
- Team Build and Web Deployment Projects
- Team Build and 260+ Character Paths
- Preserving Output Directory Structures in Orcas Team Build
- TfsBuild.rsp and Logging Verbosity in Orcas
- Adding Build Steps to Team Build in Orcas
- Build Type BuildDirectoryPath => Build Agent Working Directory
- Getting the Builds Associated with a Changeset Number
Object Model API
- Orcas Object Model Documentation
- Team Build Object Model - Queueing a Build
- Using the new TFS Build object model in ORCAS
- Stop piling on when the build breaks: Build checkin policy for Continuous Integration in Orcas
- Adding Build Steps to Team Build in Orcas (shows the code used by the built-in task)
Using the API via PowerShell
The next MSDN chat is next Wednesday. I'm going to try to be on the first one.
Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers.
There will be two sessions:
Join the chat on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.
Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones
-or-
Join the chat on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time.
Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones
The first chat is at 1:00 PM Eastern time, so I'm planning to be in that one.
Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the upcoming Orcas CTP.
We will be holding two sessions:
Join the chat on Tuesday, July 3rd , 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones
-and-
Join the chat on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones
Matt Mitrik, program manager for TFS migration and synchronization toolkit, has announced the release of version 1.0. Note that it also includes the source code so that you can extend it as well.
Check it out!
Richard Berg updated the Outlook macros I posted nearly two years ago to work with Outlook 2007. These macros will convert the selected number into a hyperlink to that work item or changeset. I have them hooked up to Alt+W and Alt+C for work items and changesets, respectively.
Outlook macro for work item and changeset hyperlinks -- updated for 2007
When I upgraded to OL2007, Buck's great little macros stopped working. Today, I finally got the guts to ask the Outlook guys what they
brokeimproved. The answer was simple enough. I'll let the code do the talking:
Brian Keller points out that Doug Neumann's Guidance for Structuring Team Projects is now available on the Microsoft Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance CodePlex project.
Guidance for Structuring Team Projects
- Doug Neumann - Microsoft CorporationIntroduction
One of the most important considerations when looking to deploy Team Foundation Server within your organization is how you will employ the “Team Project” concept. It can be very tempting to jump in and immediately start creating Team Projects to satisfy every whim of the users in your organization. However, restructuring existing team projects is difficult to accomplish, so establishing a strategy for using team projects up front is very important. Careful forethought now can save you much pain down the road.
This whitepaper provides details on the components of a team project and discusses how those components may impact your decision about structuring your team projects. It also lays out a set of common strategies for employing team projects. Understanding this base of knowledge should empower you to make the best decision on how your organization will use team projects with Team Foundation Server (TFS).
Keep in mind that while the overall concepts will apply to both TFS 2005 and Orcas, some of the details on how to accomplish things will change in some areas, and Team Build in particular. For example, the part that talks about Team Build Types points to a blog post on how to force Team Build into building code that spans team projects. In Orcas, that workaround is not needed. You just create whatever workspace mappings you need for your build in the new build definition dialog.
tags: tfs, team foundation, team project, codeplex, branching
Kannan Sundararajan has written a couple of posts on how to use TFS as an ASP.NET data source. If you are interested in displaying TFS data in ASP.NET-driven web pages, you'll want to check it out.
First he shows you how to build the data source and gives you the code that you need to build the dll.
TFS Data Source ASP.NET Control
While learning ASP.NET for developing the RTE for MSDN Forums I had to interact with multiple teams and provide them with status reports on the work items. Some of them were not using TFS yet for that code base. So I wanted a way to easily write a TFS report, send the url to all these teams.
Given my earlier TFS background and the capabilities I learnt exist in ASP world thought why not leverage these two and thus began this exercise to write a TFS Data Source ASP.NET control which I can drop into any ASP.NET web page, bind it to any existing ASP.NET controls to create a simple TFS report.
Then he shows you what you can do with it and walks you through the steps of building a web page that uses the data source from the previous post.
TFS Reporting Simplified
In my last post we saw how to write a TFS Data Source Component. In this one I will explain how to use them to generate a TFS report like the one below leveraging existing ASP.NET controls.
Enjoy!
tags: tfs, team foundation, asp.net, work item tracking
Matt Mitrik, the program manager for the TFS migration tools, has announced the availability of the first pre-release version of the Team Foundation Server migration and synchronization toolkit. If you are looking into how to migrate away from a different bug tracking or version control system, this is where you'll want to start. Be sure to let Matt and company know what you need in order to be successful!
Migration and Synchronization Toolkit Prerelease Published on CodePlex
A prerelease of the Migration and Synchronization Toolkit has been released on CodePlex! If you are interested in seeing the progress that we have made to date, and are eager to try out the sample tools, please visit the project site on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/MigrationSyncToolkit
Brian Harry has also written a bit more about the future plans for the toolkit.
Migration and Synchronization Toolkit Prerelease
We plan to build or to work with 3rd parties to build integration between TFS and a variety of other systems. In the toolkit, you'll find initial samples for synchronizing TFS with Sharepoint (both documents and work items/lists). Ideas we are pursuing include:
- Sharepoint synchronization - Allows you to leverage TFS's branching, merging, unified backup, etc while exposing all of your data through Sharepoint in a clean way.
- TFS <-> TFS migration/synchronization - Enables a variety of scenarios, including a poor man's project move, multi-master replication for distributed teams who want local copies of all of the data and more...
- Project Server synchronization - Making it easier to keep TFS and project plans in sync.
- ClearCase migration/synchronization - Enabling the two systems to coexist nicely when needed.
- And more...
A new high-level roadmap for Orcas, Rosario, and Power Tools is now available. The Visual Studio Team System Future Releases web page covers these topics at varying levels of detail, with the greatest amount detail being supplied for Orcas, of course. The Orcas TFS information is basically the same as what we've published before.
Here's what it says about Rosario.
Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario"
The next major release of Visual Studio Team System is code-named “Rosario” and will be released following the “Orcas” release. In this exciting release, we will be delivering new innovations to build on our award-winning Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution. Some of the major scenarios and features in Visual Studio Team System code-named “Rosario” will include:
- Joint prioritization and management of IT projects through integration with Microsoft Project Server
- Project management across multiple projects for proactively load balancing resources according to business priorities
- Full traceability (inc. hierarchical work items) to track project deliverables against business requirements and the ability to conduct rapid impact analysis of proposed changes
- Comprehensive metrics and dashboards for shared visibility into project status and progress against deliverables
- Powerful new features to enable developers and testers to quickly identify, communicate, prioritize, diagnose and resolve bugs
- Integrated test case management to create, organize and manage test cases across both the development and test teams
- Testing automation and guidance to help developers and testers focus on business-level testing rather than repetitive, manual tasks
- Quality metrics for a ‘go/no-go’ release decision on whether an application is ready for production and has been fully tested against business requirements
- Rapid integration of remote, distributed, disconnected and outsourced teams into the development process
- Easy customization of process and guidance from Microsoft and partners to match the way your team works
- Improvements to multi-server administration, build and source control
Only the last bullet mentions build specifically, but we have significant plans for Team Build in Rosario. It's also involved to various degrees in several other bullets.
We have never had a web interface for Team Foundation Server work item tracking, much to the astonishment of our customers. Well, there's a fix for that now. And you can download it today (see below for details).
Brian Harry wrote a post this morning about the acquisition of TeamPlain.
Today we are announcing that Microsoft has acquired DevBiz Business Solutions, the makers of the popular TeamPlain Web Access for Team System. TeamPlain is a web front end for VSTS that enables users to access the majority of TFS functionality from within a Web browser. The focus of TeamPlain is on work item tracking but it also includes some valuable version control capabilities (like viewing history/change sets, diffing files, browsing the source base, etc.), some SharePoint integration, Reporting services integration, and some upcoming build support. TeamPlain gives VSTS a new avenue to reach a broader array of people within the development team who don’t use Visual Studio today and don’t want to install Visual Studio clients on their machines. It also improves reach by enabling some access from non-Windows clients.
When will it be available to our customers? Here's the answer, quoted from the same post (emphasis is mine).
TeamPlain will become Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access. Effective today, TeamPlain is available, at no additional charge, to users who own a Team Foundation Server and can be downloaded from here. It will be accessible by any user properly licensed with a TFS CAL. Support will continue to be provided by the current staff via the DevBiz online forums.
Over the next few months, we will be rebranding TeamPlain as a Microsoft product and running it through our release process. When that is complete, we will be releasing it as a VSTS Power Tool, transitioning support to the Microsoft forums and beginning CSS (phone) support. In the Orcas timeframe, we will be releasing Team System Web Access as an official, documented, localized, and officially supported component of Team Foundation Server.
TeamPlain also provides some access to TFS version control over the web.
So, if you are a TFS customer, please download it, start using it, and let us know what you think of it. As with everything else, the sooner you send in your feedback, the more likely you'll see changes in upcoming releases.
As Jeff Beehler points out, we shipped TFS one year ago today. In the intervening time, we reorganized and completed the TFS development work on Orcas (minus a few design change requests (DCRs)), which you can try out in the March Orcas CTP (since it's based on TFS code from January, not everything is in there, such as build scheduling). If you want to see a demo of the Orcas Team Build features, check out this Channel 9 interview with Jim Lamb and me.
tags: tfs, team foundation, orcas
