The book Managing Software Development Projects using Visual Studio Team System/Application Lifecycle Management is now available. The book was written be a fellow Team System MVP in Brazil, Ramon Durães. The book is in Portuguese.

Table of contents:

1. Application Lifecycle Management
2. Team Foundation Server
3. Development Methodology
4. Work items
5. Team Foundation Server Version Control
6. Architecture
7. Development
8. Tests
9. Database
10. Visual Studio Team System Web Access
11. Reports
12. Team Foundation Build

Read more about the book here (in Portuguese) or here (English translation).

Nice job Ramon!

It’s released, but not yet available for MSDN subscribers. That said, you can download the Trial Edition and get your hands on it. My understanding is that you can product key activate it later, when it shows up on MSDN.

Click here For more information on Express Studio 3, including a top 10 list of features. I’m most excited about #7 …

Team Foundation Server Integration – share your Expression Studio project files with those of your colleagues by using check in and check out functionality with Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration.

Join us tomorrow (Tuesday, June 23rd) at 2pm MST for the following webcast:

First Look: Visual Studio Team System 2010

Microsoft has been working hard on their next generation of Visual Studio Team System. The 2010 version will deliver new capabilities for everyone on a project, including architects, developers, project managers and testers.

Since beta 1 released, the experts at Accentient have been hard at work, putting it to the test, and demonstrating it to our clients. We would like to share some of this insight with you.

Join us for a tour of the marquee features and improvements found in Visual Studio Team System 2010:

• Separate and improved install and configuration process
• Team project collections
• Architecture explorer
• UML support
• Hierarchical work items
• Improved test case management
• Source control branch visualization
• Workflow-based build
• Test and Lab Manager
• UI testing

Whether you’ve already adopted Team System, or have been waiting for the critical “third version” to be released before you commit to trying it, you should attend this webinar, see it firsthand, and get your questions answered.

There are a few seats left. Please be sure to register to attend.

Last week I gave a presentation on integration and migration options for IBM ClearCase and ClearQuest. Here are some bookmarks to some various tools and articles that came up:

• Blog post: Migrating ClearCase Branches to TFS
• ClearQuest Hooks and Scripts
• Forum post: ClearCase versions supported
• Forum post: How to manually sync TFS with CQ
• Forum post: Should CQ and TFS be integrated
• IBM Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest Sales Discussion Guide
• TFS 2005 vs. Clear Case
• Walkthrough: Migrating CQ Work Items to TFS

I hope this helps anyone who is looking into to this.

Finally, there’s something to do in Southern California besides surfing, celeb-watching, and working on your tan. Mike Vincent, a VSTS MVP, has taken the lead on setting up this new user group.

The kickoff meeting is this month, June 23rd and I’ll be presenting a grab-bag of topics on best practices. Time permitting, I’ll show a bit of VSTS 2010 beta 1.

So, if you are in the SoCal area, be sure to come to support this user group, and attend the first meeting.

http://www.socalteamsystem.org

As I was explaining how the Build > Deploy process is radically different this week, a question came up about licensing restrictions around the vsdbcmd.exe command-line utility that ships with the GDR. Here’s a quick history lesson:

The Pre-GDR Way

The Build process analyzes the target connection and then assembles all of the various .sql scripts into one large .sql script. The resulting script would contain CREATE or ALTER statements depending on what it found when it studied the target connection. The script also contains other custom scripts and variables you want to define. The problem is that this Build process requires access to that target environment. This was not always a possibility – either the developers didn’t have permissions, or ISVs didn’t have physical access to their customer’s datacenters. Finally, the Deploy process would then just execute the big .sql script against the target connection, which could be done using VS, SSMS, SQLCMD, etc.

The GDR Way

The Build process generates a .dbschema file which represents the current schema definitions of the database project in a single, easy-to-handoff XML document. This document has accompanying scripts and manifest files as well. The Deploy process then creates the .sql script and (optionally) executes it. The Deploy is now the only connected operation and it can be performed from Visual Studio or by using the new vsdbcmd.exe command-line utility. The major difference is that Build doesn’t need access to the target database, only Deploy does. This rocks, because now you can just give the .dbschema file to that department’s DBA or that customer’s datacenter admin, etc. and only they need access to the target to generate the proper script and to execute it. Problem solved.

… but question raised: what about the licensing of the vsdbcmd.exe file? Can the developer or ISV just give it to their respective user to deploy the changes?

The answer (thanks to Ted Malone, SQL guru and VSTS MVP) is YES, as explained in this article by Gert Drapers.

BTW - GDR R2 is available so you should download it now!

There has been a vacuum of really good, actionable information on MS Build and Team Foundation Build for developers. I’m pleased to report that this is no longer the case! Inside the Microsoft Build Engine, by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi and William Bartholomew, fills the void with a book that serves well as both a learning guide and a reference tool. Here’s the product description:

"The build process when code gets assembled to see how and how well it works is a critical step in software development. Developers had few options for customizing the build process before Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, but the Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) enables developers to customize each step during a build. MSBuild is extensible and uses an XML file to describe each step, allowing the build master or developer to easily change and augment how projects are built. This book offers hands-on guidance for customizing MSBuild, and provides a cookbook of examples on Web deployment, automated releases, and other essential topics. It also covers Visual Studio Team Foundation Build, the build engine in Visual Studio Team System."

If you have anything to do with automated builds using Team Foundation Server, this book is a must-have. I know this for a fact because I had the opportunity to serve as a technical reviewer for the book.

Some Team System users are complaining about problems with the Team Members feature included in the Team Foundation Server Power Tools – October 2008 Release. For team projects with many members, the load time can be excessive. Other problems have cropped up as well. For instance, one user reported that their Windows Communicator freezes during long TFS operations like “get latest”. Although the Team Members plug-in has some very useful features, you may find that it’s more trouble than it’s worth for your particular situation. In this case, you have two options:

Option 1: Disable the Team Members feature. In the Visual Studio, navigate to Tools –> Options –> Team Foundation Server Power Tools –> General, then set Team Members to False.

This does not remove the Team Members node from your team projects in Team Explorer, but the node no longer does anything. Also, some of the Team Members start-up logic still executes. If this continues to cause problems for you, then try this more drastic fix:

Option 2: Registry hack. This is a more complete way of disabling the TeamMembers feature, but it cannot be done in the Visual Studio IDE.  Using the RegEdit utility, navigate to:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\PowerTools

Add a new String Value named TeamTrackerHidden and set its value to True. 

This setting tells the Team Explorer to not load the Team Members plug-in.  This will cause the Team Members node to appear as a folder with a red X on it, which is mildly annoying. However, this option will definitely eliminate any issues you’re having with the Team Members feature.

(Thanks to Bill Essary @ Microsoft for providing these work-arounds)

Recently I was working with a client who installed the Team Foundation Client 2008 on his workstation, and subsequently decided to install Visual Studio 2008 Development Edition. The installation completed normally, but when he launched Visual Studio he quickly discovered that some important things were missing.

For instance, the File menu was missing the New Project item. It was as if the we were still looking at the Team Foundation Client, and that the installation of the Development Edition had somehow failed. At first this was very puzzling until a sharp developer suggested that we look at the Settings (Tools –> Import and Export Settings)

Sure enough, Team Foundation Client had installed and automatically selected the setting called Project Management. Although the Development Edition installation added a few more settings, it left the selection unchanged. Once we changed the selection to something more appropriate, all the normal menus became visible. Mystery solved!

Kevin Hick, a talented .NET developer who has done extensive work customizing Team Foundation Server at HBOS in the UK, has started a blog to share some of his more interesting TFS discoveries with the rest of us. You find his blog here. If you work with TFS you’ll want to add Kevin’s blog to your reader.

Brian Randell recently announced the availability of new Visual Studio Team System evaluation VPC images. These virtual machines are very handy sandboxes that contain Team Foundation Server and Team Suite, all setup and ready to go. You can use these virtual machines not only for evaluating purposes, but also for learning about Team System and experimenting without worrying about messing up things.

These virtual images are set to expire in December 2009, providing a full year of use. The set consists of four versions:

• VSTS “all-up” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
• TFS “only” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)
• VSTS “all-up” Hyper-V image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
• TFS “only” Hyper-V image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)

Use the links above to navigate to the download pages for these virtual machines. But, if you prefer not to download eleven massive files one at a time, you can use Free Download Manager to queue up and download all the files automatically.

The text file below contains a list of the files to download for each virtual image. Simply copy the list for the image you want, then paste the list into Free Download Manager using Ctrl-Shift-V.

At a client site this week, and having to generate the same initial folder structure for many team projects, so I thought I would create a script (.BAT file, no PowerShell sorry).

Below is the script, but here are a few details to point out:

• I assume that my workspace name and local folder name is the same as the team project
• I put my local workspace folders under a common D:\Workspaces folder
• You can set the team project name easily by tweaking the SET line below
• I could have, and should have parameterized the folder root, TFS, comments, etc.

Hope you can make use of it:

@ECHO OFF

SET TeamProject=Sample

ECHO Create folder Structure
ECHO.

D:
CD\
MD D:\Workspaces
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\DEV"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\QA"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\PROD"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Documents"
CD "\Workspaces\%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Drop existing workspace
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workspace /delete /noprompt /server:TFSSRV1 "%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Create workspace mapping
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workspace /new /noprompt /computer:TFSSRV1 /comment:"Created by Richard Hundhausen" /server:TFSSRV1 "%TeamProject%"
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workfold /server:TFSSRV1 /workspace:"%TeamProject%" /unmap $/
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workfold /server:TFSSRV1 /workspace:"%TeamProject%" /map $/"%TeamProject%" D:\Workspaces\"%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Adding folders to version control
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" add Code /recursive /noprompt
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" add Documents /recursive /noprompt

ECHO.
ECHO Check in
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" checkin /comment:"Created by Richard Hundhausen" /noprompt /recursive "D:/Workspaces/%TeamProject%"

PAUSE

Microsoft published more information today about Visual Studio 10 and .NET 4.0. Click here to read the Press Pass and here to read some additional information.

Oh, and for SA customers, some really interesting news has come out that will impact you in just a few days:

Microsoft also announced that VSTS 2010 will provide a unified VSTS Development and Database product. As a benefit to existing Software Assurance (SA) customers, those who currently own Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition will receive all the following products starting Oct. 1, 2008, for free:

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Software Developers

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Professionals

I was invited by INETA to speak at the Pacific Northwest Access Developer Group (a.ka. the Seattle Access Group). Now, Access developers are typically "teams of one", but I thought that any team developers or consultants attending the meeting would get the ALM story and features of TFS. They did.f

As it turns out, the steps to integrate Microsoft Access 2007 with TFS aren't all that difficult:

1. Install and configure TFS to allow the developers to connect
2. Install the MSSCCI provider on each developer's desktop
3. Install the Access Developer Extensions on each developer's desktop
4. Create and configure the Team Project, version control folders, and workspace(s)
5. Follow the guidance on using Access with Source Control (you can ignore the references to VSS).

Remember: you can't View, Compare, or Annotate any Access objects under source control, with the exception of code (modules, macros).

Thank you to those of you who attended my talk. You can download my presentation here.

As you know, Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1 was released earlier this month. Most of SP1 was about bug fixes and performance, but it seems that the profiler team snuck in several new features as well:

• Adding support for instrumenting 64-bit managed C++ applications
• Improved instrumentation experience with pre-compiled web sites
• Shipping the 64-bit performance SDK (VSPerf.h, VSPerf.lib)
• Ability to load a previously saved filter on non-English VS installations

Here is a link to the VS2008SP1 readme and a page listing all of the SP1 downloads.

While at TechEd 2008 earlier this month I attended a presentation by Colin Bird where, among other things, he presented the next generation of the Conchango Scrum For Team System process template. According to Colin, Conchango will continue to offer a free version of their scrum process template. But, they will also be offering for the first time an "enterprise" version that they will sell for a yet-to-be-determined fee. This enterprise version will contain an exciting new feature: and Electronic Scrum Board. This WPF application simulates the cork board and index cards that many scrum teams use to track the progress of their sprint. Each row represents a Product Backlog Item (also called a User Story) that describes a specific feature to be implemented, while each card represents a Sprint Backlog Item that describes a specific task. The columns on the board represent the various states for a Sprint Backlog Item.

I took this shot while sitting next to David Starr in the presentation, who also took a snap with his camera phone.

When a card is dropped onto a row the board, it is automatically linked to the corresponding Product Backlog Item, and it's State is also updated automatically. This is sooo much more convenient that the current method of updating work items, and the board methaphor makes it much easier to visualize the overall status of the sprint.

I also happened to be part of the same lunchtime discussion of Electronic Scrum Boards with Jeffrey Palermo that David blogged about. I respect Jeffrey's opinion very much, as well as Dave's reaction to Jeffrey's comments. But my take on the topic is slightly different.

As I recall, Jeffrey was not thrilled about the Electronic Scrum Board because a physical cork board works just fine. The cork board is simple and easy to use. It's highly visible to the scrum team and its stakeholders. Why go to the trouble and expense of implementing an inferior solution?

I get it. But I also beg to differ. First, let's assume that an organization has decided to use Team System work item tracking because it offers rich reporting of current and historical data, as well end-to-end traceability resulting from linking work items to changesets to builds to build verification tests. Now, if a scrum is using both work item tracking as well as a cork board, then the same information if being maintained redundantly. This being the case, it's almost certain that the work items will be out of sync with the cork board some if not all of the time.  With two conflicting views of project status, which one is authoritative? Which one do you believe?

Also, the cork board works great if the scrum team is co-located in one open space. Having all team members together in one location is ideal, but the reality is that a growing number of teams are geographically dispersed - sometimes in different parts of the world. For these teams, the cork board offers a poor solution.

Similarly, project stakeholders are often not in the same physical location as the cork board, making it difficult if not impossible for them to benefit from the information the cork board contains.

For these reasons, I believe that the Electronic Scrum board offers a superior solution. It not only shows current status, it also automatically maintains work item history. Analysis of this historical data can calibrate future estimates, enabling better sprint planning. Also, an Electronic Scrum Board offers a far more practical solution for teams that are not co-located.

Finally, I find it curious that scrum teams are in the business of creating automated solutions for others, but some of these same teams are loathe to give up their cork boards for an electronic version. Doesn't that seem just a bit ironic?

I am a simple man. All I ever wanted was drag and drop for source control. That folder chooser dialog was a bear. Now we will get it with Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Thank goodness. From the web site:

• Simplified the user experience through cleaner "Add to Source Control" dialogs, drag and drop support to the Source Control Explorer and a much easier to use "Workspace" dialog for working folder mappings.
• Version control now automatically supports non-solution controlled files.
• Various changes to the Source Control Explorer such as a new checkin date/time display column, local path hyperlink support and en editable source location field.

I am not a big fan of installing a beta SP on may dev laptop, but I gotta tell ya, I did it for that feature alone.

I've seen Test Driven Development work, so why not adjust it slightly and have the attendees (who own the requirements after all) drive the presentation? Today, at the in-between conference (a.k.a. Microsoft Community Summit 2008), I did just that. I had the attendees drive my four hour presentation. I did this in the Open Space room, and it not only fit with the theme of that room, but it worked great!

As the attendees arrived, I handed them 3-5 3x5 cards - the cool ones from 3M that you can sort, stack, and stick to surfaces.

Here are the topics (backlog items) that they came up with:

• How do you customize work item types?
• (What) team size to justify the usage of Team System?
• What's new and improved in VSTS 2008 vs. VSTS 2005?
• Continuous Integration (x 3)
• What performance degradation (can occur) from extensive branching?
• Integration with external tools (e.g. Mercury Quality Center, Doors)
• TDD
• Multiple builds running at the same time
• How to limit CI build to only trigger when for certain check-ins (by location)
• Best practices
• How to customize Code Analysis
• What makes VSTS more beneficial than VS Professional?
• What is Team Foundation Server?

And my personal favorite:

• I'm here to see if you're a good presenter because my company is thinking of bringing you in for a day to teach the team.

For those of you who attended my talk, here's a link to my notes and my worst practices presentation.

I just had a meeting where we discussed setting up a TFS 2008 production server and I went through the system requirements with our system administrator. The focus was on groups needed in Active Directory, what software is needed on the server, things like that.

Here are some camera phone shots of the whiteboard during this discussion. Wow.

What's the takeaway from all this? PLAN YOUR IMPLEMENTAION DELIBERATELY. Stand up a research VM and play with it before you decide how you want to set up a production system.

Groups and Accounts to Create and Administer

Things to Install on the Server

Now that Team Foundation Server 2008 is out, the Visual Studio Team System product team is totally focused on the next version, known as Rosario. If the current release rhythm continues, Rosario is likely to be released in 2010 (Visual Studio 2005 was released in November 2005, and Visual Studio 2008 was released in November 2007).

The latest version of Rosario is now available for public download on the Microsoft download site. This version is called the April Community Technology Preview (CTP). It's called a CTP because the product is still under development. The CTP gives the development community an opportunity to see what's been produced so far and provide feedback. It's not called a Beta because the bits have not been as thoroughly tested. For this reason, Microsoft recommends that this CTP release not be used for any sort of production development.

The product team has made impressive progress so far. Rich Hundhausen and I got a sneak preview of this CTP a few weeks ago, and what I saw blew my socks off! Whereas the new features in Team Foundation Server 2008 focused mainly on improvements to build and version control, the main areas of focus for Rosario are project management, design and test (Although I'm interested in all things Team System, I'm somewhat partial to project management).

This April CTP is the third CTP release for Rosario. To see the features included in each release, as well as a slick way to download the beast, check out these posts from Jeff Beehler:

• August 2007 CTP
• November 2007 CTP
• April 2008 CTP (download this one!)

My final talk at VSLive! San Francisco this week was on one of my favorite topics - parallel development. In other words, dealing with the real-world situations where multiple developers are coding away on the same project, and even the same file.

The first order of business was to have a few of the ex-Visual SourceSafers lay down on my couch so we could discuss their phobias and irrational urge to run to their "safe place" - a.k.a. locking.

In all seriousness, we discussed the two locking models of TFS and then explored the many wonderful benefits of not using locks by default, known as shared check out. Most in the audience agreed that the benefits of not blocking each other with their routine development (for example, not locking .csproj files when somebody adds a new file) greatly outweighs the detriment of having to deal with a conflict that requires manual intervention. Of course, arguments can be made either way.

I pointed out that there are four situations where conflicts can occur that may require auto/manual merging:

• CHECK-IN - the most obvious; somebody else may have just checked in competing changes just before you
• GET - you may already have pending changes on one or more of the files you are trying to download
• MERGE - by definition; when you merge changes from one branch to another, the chances are good that you will have to resolve conflicts
• UNSHELVE - not so obvious, but this is basically like a GET, just coming from another location in TFS; unfortunately, Team Explorer doesn't know how to handle the detection/resolving of these types of conflicts, so look to the TFPT UNSHELVE power tool for help

Finally, we looked at setting up a source control folder structure that will support your teams promotion model (a.k.a. staging environment). I proposed a simple structure, that looks somewhat like this:

Some explanations

• Code holds code artifacts - C#, VB, SQL, WiX, etc.
• Documents holds snapshots of the SharePoint site archived at the end of each iteration, release/version, build, etc. (whatever your term is)
• Active development occurs in "Current", which you could name "Dev" or "Main" (although I prefer "Main" for integration)
• Under the "Current" folder you'll have folders for each high-level application/component in the system, including common, database scripts, build definitions, and even setup projects
• "Branches" are just that - QA, UA, RC, Release, and private branches (Bridges), etc.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here.

That was the topic of our discussion today at VSLive! San Francisco. Unfortunately, in the short amount of time (75 minutes) we didn't get too deep into all of the tools and techniques, but I did get my point across: I feel that Team Foundation Server (TFS) can do it all, and you should strive to migrate your source/revision control system, requirements and defect tracking system, document managing system, automated build and deployment system, and even your custom process workflow over to TFS.

That said, there are certainly situations where existing systems must be used. I identified two categories of such legacy software:

• Politicalware - somebody important in the organization bought or built the system and you there are strong feelings about migrating away from it
• Guiltware - the organization spends oodles (that's a lot) of cash on said software, maintenance/support, training, etc. and they haven't seen their ROI (and they may never see it)

I don't know what to tell you about the above situations, except that running in parallel (not good) or integration (better) would be an option. That lead us to the discussion of building custom software to do one-way and two-way synchronization with said systems. We briefly walked through the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit (found on CodePlex) and I demonstrated the TFS to TFS Migration Tool (also found on CodePlex) which uses the toolkit.

I see Team Foundation Server as yet another great "grassroots" platform. Just like .NET was for the developers, TFS is for the team. So, I say get it installed no matter what, even if just for source control, which is the no-brainer. Once it's in-house, then work on migrating the work items, automated builds, and other systems over sooner, rather than later, so you can enjoy the end-to-end traceability, product quality reports, and process quality reports.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here and my demo files here (you'll need to download the SDK and CodePlex toolkit and tool separately).

For those of you who joined me at VSLive! this week in San Francisco, I had fun sharing many worst (or un-preferred) practices I've run into over the years. My talk broke them down into several areas: TFS installation, TFS configuration, team projects, work items, and version control. Hopefully I didn't make anyone feel tool uncomfortable when I highlighted your practice on the big screen!

Actually, it was all in good fun. By highlighting Team System worst practices, we were able to define Team System best practices and preferred practices.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here and my demo files here.

Feel free to let me know about any other worst or worster practices you may know of.

Seriously. They can't.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=259259&SiteID=1

You may delete specific values, but not the list itself. This means you can effectively "zero out" a list by deleting all of it's items.

I don't quite understand why this would be a good feature, as it doesn't really stand up for a test of trace-ability. I just deleted a Team Project whose work items referenced a global list, so there are no references to the list in the system anymore.

Perhaps one way to mitigate this would be to use abstract list names? List A, List B, etc. Then you could re-purpose a list later by giving it new values. Nah.

So, what's the take away? Be very careful about the Global Lists you create in your Team Foundation Server. They will be with you a long time.

Mike Azocar, a fellow Team System MVP, reports:

We released LWS version 2.1 today.  This version includes a new process guidance and SharePoint template as well as many work item enhancements.   You can download it at
www.codeplex.com/vstsscrum

Mike also indicates that they will soon release a version that will work with the Project Server connector.

Having just inherited a TFS installation to manage, I received a request to add some values to a global list. I got a little nervous about this when I saw that the server had many (MANY) global lists in it already and I wanted to be very careful not to break anything during this change.

Of course the first thing I did was consult the master book on the subject of TFS, Rich's Working with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System. This was a great start to groking the whole Global List thing.

The steps needed to do this are pretty simple and documented well from Microsoft. The step to export your current global lists is to use the glexport command line tool. From the Visual Studio command line prompt (this works fine on a client), do this:

glexport /f AllGlobalLists.xml /t myTfsServerName

Credentials used are the local login credentials. This gives me one big file containing all the global lists in the server. Now the question I had was this, "Should I edit this master global lists file and import the whole thing, or should I just try to import changes to one list?" Obviously I wanted to work only on the one list I needed to change, but what effect would it have if I pulled out all the other lists from the file and uploaded just a single list in a smaller XML file?

I was scared to death of deleting all the other lists in the file. I saved a copy of the master, and then took out all the global lists except the one I was interested in, changed the values, and ended up with something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<gl:GLOBALLISTS xmlns:gl="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/workitemtracking/globallists">

  <GLOBALLIST name="Teams - Product Backlog">

    <LISTITEM value="Team A" />

    <LISTITEM value="Team B" />

    <LISTITEM value="User Experience" />

    <LISTITEM value="Team C" />

  </GLOBALLIST>

</gl:GLOBALLISTS>

So, on a wing and a prayer I ran this command:

glimport /f TeamList.xml /t myTfsServerName

And guess what happened: It worked great! All of my other lists were intact and my new team names showed up just fine. So I learned 2 things in this little exercise.

1. You can import a single global list XML file into your TFS server without affecting other lists.
2. glimport and glexport work just fine on a VS2008 client talking to a 2005 TFS server.

Martin Woodward has done his magic again! For those of you who don't know Martin, he is the primary developer of Teamprise, a fantastic suite of client applications that gives Java developers cross-platform access to Team Foundation Server from the command line, a stand-alone GUI or an Eclipse plug-in. In his blog, Martin announced the release of Teamprise 3.0, updated to take advantage of the new features in Team Foundation Server 2008.  This release contains some many impressive new features including check-in policy support, recursive folder compare, single sign on support on windows clients, and gui support for version control undelete and destroy commands. Perhaps the most impressive new feature is the full Team Build integration and the brand new Teamprise Extensions for Team Foundation Build, which allows developers to use Ant scripts with Team Build - amazing! Even better, Teamprise Extensions for Team Foundation Build, including source code, is available free of charge to everyone.

For more information, see Martin's announcement.

Last year I posted a note about how to integrate VSoft Technology FinalBuilder with Team Build. I really like FinalBuilder and think it's easy to use, compared with having to hand-jam the XML of MSBuild.

With the upcoming version 6.0 of FinalBuilder, this integration becomes a snap, even including a Visual Studio add-in for configuring Team Build.

Read this article for more information.

It's generally known that if you want to run any tests, code analysis, or database project build/deployment that you need to install one or more Team Edition of VSTS on your build server. What's not so well known are the licensing ramifications around these scenarios.

Fortunately Jeff Beehler, Team System Chief of Staff, has posted on this subject.

To summarize:

If the users creating the builds are licensed users of the edition in question (or Team Suite), that license extends to Team Foundation Build and you don't need to purchase an additional license. One way to think about it is: the people that are using the Team editions need to be properly licensed which in turn ensures the that the build machines are covered as well. Users who merely queue (execute) and review the automated builds are only required to have a Team Foundation Server CAL.

Have you ever had a production application in the data center act up, and you spend countless hours hunting down the source of the problem? If so, then then you might be interested in a new project on CodePlex called Design for Operations (DFO).

For years now engineers have been designing physical products with ease of manufacturing in mind. Called Design for Manufacturability (DFM), this technique takes fabrication and assembly into consideration early in the design process. DFM has a significant impact by improving the cost and quality of a product. Well, a variant of the technique has finally found its way to the world of software. Called Design for Operations, this technique allows software architects and developers to design their applications with built-in, real-time health monitoring, giving the operations staff much better operational information and improving the quality of service. According to William Loeffler, a Microsoft program manager:

It’s a recent effort from patterns & practices to provide tooling for architects and developers with a means to model their application in terms meaningful to operations. Once modeled the tool can be used to create a Health Model for the application and once the Health Model has been completed at the architect and development roles the tool can be used to generate platform instrumentation as defined in the model. All that’s necessary for the developer is to call the generated API within their solution for each instance of instrumentation. The tool will also generate a Management Pack for System Center OpsMgr 2008 from the model that matches the generated instrumentation.

For more information see:

http://www.codeplex.com/dfo

Hopefully DFO will become mainstream in the software development discipline, in the same way that unit testing has become popular.

Since first seeing the Code Metrics feature in the Development Edition of Visual Studio Team System 2008, I've been on a quest for bad (read: unmanageable) code. Rather than face the tool towards my code, I thought I would pick on Microsoft.

... and it looks like the EntLib has a maintainability index between 77 and 89.

Thanks to Ajoy krishnamoorthy for actually doing the hard work on this.

10:35 AM (Los Angeles)

A fictitious developer, from the fictitious company "Fourth Coffee" is demonstrating the new, agile development features in Visual Studio 2008. She's showing off how to manage team development projects (a.k.a. team projects and work items), giving her tasks to make some changes to her code. Mostly she is showing off the split-screen editor, synchronization of code and designer, integrated design tools, and the new JavaScript debugger.

Oops, she just called it "Team Services" as she closed out her work item. Well, we get the idea.

I know. I know. This doesn't sound like a very interesting post, but it saved me time, and hopefully it can save you some too.

When you install Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft creates a "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt" shortcut, under that program group.

I like to take this shortcut and drop it on my Quick Launch toolbar:

The problem is that when you install the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (or other new command line utilities) you need to put them in the path.

Well, if you look at the file the shortcut calls, it's vcvarsall.bat, but don't bother editing that file because it calls vcvars32.bat, but don't bother editing that file, because it calls vsvars32.bat. If you go ahead and edit that file, you can find where the PATH is getting set, and add the Power Tools path to it:

@set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\VCPackages;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools;%PATH%

Man, I need to keep a closer eye on the work product over at .NET Rocks. I had meant to link up this transcript last Summer, but I dropped the ball. Apologies.

So, what this was was a VSTS panel discussion at Tech-Ed in Orlando last June, with Mike Azocar, Steven Borg, Doug Seven, Joel Semeniuk, and the hosts Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin.

Here's the panel (with Barry Gervin running the microphone)

And some of the audience (you can see Rob Caron and Mickey Gousset in the back).

There's some pretty good questions in there, especially those asked by yours truly!

I just came across this download at Microsoft. It provides an introduction to the concepts and step by step instructions for creating and customizing TFS reports.

The zip file contains instructional PDF documents as well as several sample reports.

Microsoft has released a new version of VSTS Web Access Power tool. This release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of what will ultimately be the 2008 version of the VSTS Web Access Power Tool.

• Built against the TFS 2008 object model - In previous versions of Web Access you had to install Team Explorer 2005 on any machine you were installing Web Access on. With this version, you will now be installing Team Explorer 2008 instead. In some future version, Microsoft hopes to remove the requirement to install any version of Team Explorer.
• Custom control support - added support for web based work item custom controls and have included a folder of documentation and samples on how to create them.
• Build queuing - added UI for the new TFS 2008 feature of build queuing. You can start new queued builds and view the build queue (in addition to the preexisting abilities - like viewing build details).
• Localization support - added support for localizing the web interface. Microsoft will also be localizing text for the final 2008 Power Tool release.
• Bug fixes & Performance improvements - Microsoft has received a number of reports and done more testing on the current version of the Power Tool, and has fixed everything thus far.

This release (and the final 2008 release) can be used with either a TFS 2005 or a TFS 2008 server.  In either case, you will need to install a TFS 2008 Team Explorer on the machine you install Web Access on. Since TFS 2005 did not support build queuing, that functionality will not be available when this and future versions of Web Access are used with a 2005 server.

You can download it here and read more about it at Brian Harry's blog posting.

Microsoft's Patterns & Practices group recently released the final version of the “Team Development with Team Foundation Server” Guide. This guide has been in beta for the last couple of months.

It shows you how to get the most out of Team Foundation Server to help improve the effectiveness of your team-based software development. Whether you are already using Team Foundation Server or adopting from scratch, you’ll find guidance and insights you can tailor for your specific scenarios. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.

Some quick facts:

• 496 – Total number of pages
• 18 – Total number of chapters in this guide
• 11392 – Total number of downloads of the Beta version of this guide
• 8 – Number of attempts to get the Adobe build to work to generate the guide in .pdf format
• 60 – Number of external and MSFT contributors and reviewers

Download the guide from CodePlex.

Ah yes, late August, time to go back to school - even for us adult geeks.

Fortunately, David Starr has provided us an exhaustive list of must-read books, organized by developer, tester, project manager, and executives.

... nothing specifically on VSTS however. I'll have to bug him about that.

The great news just keeps on coming from Microsoft. After a flurry of Team System announcements and downloads recently, we have yet another set of Power Tools to play with.

These tools are designed specifically for the Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Architects and provide the following capabilities:

• View class library projects on the Application Diagram (AD)
• View references to class library projects as connections on the Application Diagram
• Create class library projects from the Application Diagram
• Create references to class library projects from the Application Diagram
• Synchronize properties between class library projects and their representative applications on the Application Diagram
• Create and use class library applications and references on the System Designer (SD)

Fantastic. We haven't seen much out of the Architect tools, except for the SDM SDK in quite some time. I'm looking forward to it.

Download the CTP here. Note: you will also need to download Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

If you have any feedback on these tools, please visit the Architecture & Design forum.

Gert Drapers, the PM for Database Professionals announced that the first set of Power Tools should be released by the end of this week. With that in mind I wanted to blogging about some of the cool new features. Today's blog is on the new Regular Expression builder.

This allows you to choose your regular expression and and preview the result of the expression! Very cool. Here's a tip to add to the list of regular expressions:

Navigate to the AppData\Roaming Folder (this will be different depending on what O/S you're using - for Vista it's C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Roaming) and you'll find a file called RegExHelperConfig.xml.

Add a new record (for example, to add something simple like area code) with the following:

<Record Key="21" DisplayName="Area Code" Regex="[0-9]{3}" />

You can also add a new element which shows up when you click the Insert Element button by inserting a record in the syntax element section of this same file. Then you can distribute this file to all of your developers and they'll have the updated contents!

I believe that at the end of september (I didn't get an exact date from Apress) a Second Edition of Pro Visual Studio 2005 Team System will be released with approximately 100 new pages of content devoted just to the Database Professionals Edition of Team System.

Not only did Microsoft just recently post Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) a few days ago, but yesterday Microsoft made a CTP of the next generation of Visual Studio Team System (codename Rosario) available for download. Craziness ... which do I spend my time with? It's like having two mistresses to pick from.

Anyway, here are the details, if you want to start playing with Rosario: (keep in mind that it won't ship until some time [6,12,18?] months post Visual Studio 2008, so at least 2009):

• Read Jeff Beehler's blog posting
• Read the Rosario Overview whitepaper
• Download the VPC images (8+ files, 700mb each)
• Download the Rosario documentation
• Visit the MSDN newsgroups dedicated to Rosario
• Visit the MSDN homepage for Rosario

Finally, and most important, provide feedback to the team using http://connect.microsoft.com.

Over the past few years, a few of my clients have deployed Team Foundation Server Proxy to improve the performance of their remote/distributed teams. It boosts network performance by caching copies of source control files in a remote location, local to the developer needing the files but away from the main source control location. In short, the proxy helps each user avoid a costly download of the files to their workspace across the slower connection.

So why wouldn't this work for Team Build?

In today's VSTS chat, I asked if anyone had done this. I should have expected that Buck Hodges would have, and even blogged about it.

Still trying to decide if Team System is right for you and if you can afford it. I would say you can't afford *not* to have it. Check out this list of case studies from other companies and teams who agree with me.

Thanks to Rob Caron, for putting together this consolidated list of the "top" Visual Studio Team System case studies. They support a wide range of propositions by showcasing real customers who have gone through the adoption process and have great stories to tell.

Microsoft just released their Team System Web Access Power Tool (formerly known as TeamPlain). This is a Web interface to Team Foundation Server.

If you have team members that don't want Visual Studio/Team Explorer installed on their desktop, but they still want to participate with the project lifecycle, this is a great, web-based approach to getting everyone connected quickly/easily. Here are some of the features:

• 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
• Authentication Modes: Integrated Windows Authentication or Forms Based Authentication (Recommended to use with SSL)

Read more about it in Brian Harry's blog posting.

Yet another Architect MVP has bitten the dust, to join the cooler crowd over here under the Team System MVP banner.

Martin Danner is an experienced developer, project manager, and consultant in the software and information technology field, Danner has an extensive history in the software engineering field. He worked as a senior software engineer at Micron Technology, where he developed applications for the Web and PC, and he managed a group responsible for configuration management and software quality for all corporate software systems. Danner has also worked as a software engineer, developer, and consultant for Northrop Corporation and Price Waterhouse. Danner earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. He is a Microsoft Solution Architect MVP, a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for the .NET Framework (MCSD.NET), as well as a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP).

It wasn't too long ago that Jeff Levinson defected from the Architect MVP camp. What is going on over there?

Sela has created a great little plug-in to VS 2005 that will warn you when you're doing a check-out if there are later revisions of any of those files on the TFS server.  Download it here.

This week Microsoft released the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server – Project Server 2007 connector as a CodePlex project. The project has been up for a few weeks, but is now being broadly advertised.

The TFS-PS2007 connector is designed to integrate the project management capabilities of TFS with Project Server 2007. It's been developed by the Visual Studio Team System Rangers in response to significant customer demand for a connector solution. Future versions of Team System will have native integration with Project Server, in the meantime this Connector solution is the best way to integrate the two Microsoft products. This solution builds on the previous PS2003 VSTS Connector, published on GotDotNet.

That's good advice. I find it helpful to do both. We create high-level objectives of the sort you listed like, "Reduce the number of bugs being released", "Assimilate new team members more easily". Then we create a list of milestones related to one or more high-level objectives. One or more team members takes ownership of achieving milestones which are more specific like, "Research and purchase a good book on unit testing techniques", "Create a Continuous Integration build for all code branches", "Create the Visual Studio 2005 section of the coding conventions document".

The browser support out-of-the-box for Team Edition for Testers is pretty minimal. But, you can extend this support by adding your own browsers (common ones you'll probably want to add are IE7, Firefox and Opera and there are others you can probably think of). The files which provide the configuration for the browser types are stored in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\Templates\LoadTest\Browsers. You will several files which end in the extension ".browser". These files simply contain the header information a browser sends with a request. The IE6.browser file looks like the following:

<Browser Name="Internet Explorer 6.0">
  <Headers>
    <Header Name="User-Agent" Value="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" />
    <Header Name="Accept" Value="*/*" />
    <Header Name="Accept-Language" Value="{{$IEAcceptLanguage}}" />
    <Header Name="Accept-Encoding" Value="GZIP" />
  </Headers>
</Browser>

If you aren't sure of what information to enter in this file, simply open up your favorite browser that isn't in the list and go to http://www.ranks.nl/tools/envtest.html and grab the appropriate values! Use the IE6.browser file as a template. For example, if you wanted to add support to test Opera you might add the following and save it as Opera.browser:

<Browser Name="Opera 8.0">
  <Headers>
    <Header Name="User-Agent" Value="Opera/8.00+(Windows+NT+5.1;+U;+en)" />
    <Header Name="Accept" Value="text/html, image/jpeg, image/gif, image/x-bitmap, */*" />
    <Header Name="Accept-Language" Value="en" />
    <Header Name="Accept-Encoding" Value="GZIP" />
  </Headers>
</Browser>

There are obviously other values you can place here and some of this will be dependent on your locale, plug-ins you have loaded and other environmental factors. Once you save this file, you should be able to go in and create a new load test and Opera 8.0 will now show up as an option in your browser mix list.

Today's chats were well attended, with many experts and well over a hundred guests. The quests came fast and furious, with some great answers given by the experts. It seems people are really anticipating Orcas (and Rosario) for those features that didn't make it into v1.

I have captured the entire transcripts (both expert and guest chats) in this PDF document (for the 10am PST chat) and this PDF document (for the 4pm PST chat).

Note: this is the raw content, copied and pasted from each chat, so you are getting it "as is".

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 in the Visual Studio code name “Orcas” Beta 1 releases for Team Suite and Team Foundation Server.

Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time | Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

Yesterday, Microsoft's Developer Division (DevDiv) released beta 1 of Visual Studio "Orcas", which corresponds with the Connected Systems Division’s beta 1 release of the .NET Framework 3.5. Soma blogged this yesterday morning. Visual Studio "Orcas" enables developers and development teams to rapidly create Software + Services on the latest platforms, including the Web, Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and Windows Server "Longhorn".

As usualy, one of the most common questions about Orcas is, "When will it ship?". Well, here's Microsoft's official/public timeline:

Just to catch you up, Microsoft's Team Foundation Server v1.0 (released March 2006) only works with WSS 2.0. WSS 2.0 is the old version. WSS 3.0 is the new version, and launched with Microsoft Office 2007. It's full of great new features, but alas TFS won't integrate with it naturally. Even installing TFS SP1 won't get you there.

Thanks to Brian Keller, a Technical Evangelist for Team System, who has published a document on how to integrate TFS with WSS 3.0. As Brian explains, keep in mind that this is a "release candidate" of guidance that will eventually be posted to MSDN.

Now I've heard of a lot of things, but an RC of a guidance document?

In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.

“I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month.

“If it’s this bad at Microsoft,” Mr. Horvitz added, “it has to be bad at other companies, too.”

1. Customer - "Your stupid app lost all my contact data!"
2. Help Desk - "Maybe I can help.  Go to Help -> Analyze"
3. Customer - "OK.  I see this list of green and red dots with text."
4. Help Desk - "Can you read me the line next to the first red dot?"
5. Customer - "It says 'Can't find database at C:\myapp\contacts.mdb'"
6. Help Desk - "Hmm...  Can you browse to that directory?"
7. Customer - "No, I deleted it to have room for more mp3's"
8. Help Desk - "Oh...  That's a file required for our app to run.  Did you subscribe to our backup service?"
9. Customer - "Yes."
10. Help Desk "Good, go to Tools -> Options -> Restore Contact..."

You get the idea.  It rocks for troubleshooting those pesky support calls from customers.  For a lot more information, and a very nice screenshot, see Adam Cogan's original posting on this topic!  You can find the specific recommendation in his menu unit tests best practice. (While you're there, check out the rest of his best practices, he has a huge number of great ideas.)

Unfortunately, you cannot ship your Team System unit tests with your application.  I know there's an NUnit to VSTS Unit Test converter.  Does anyone know if VSTS Unit Tests can be converted to NUnit or MbUnit unit tests, so that all of us using VSTS Unit Tests can implement this best practice?

UPDATE:  Adam Cogan claims he got the idea from James Newkirk (of NUnit fame).  That may be the case, but I'll have to credit Adam.  He's got so many best practices on his site (see this rule that covers shipping unit tests for an example) that if he didn't get the idea from Newkirk, he likely would have thought of it himself!

UPDATE TWO:  This IS Adam's idea!  James simply wanted a distributable test harness for developers to use!  I misunderstood his first comment to me!  (By the way, if you have comments on this post, or any other, please send email to steve+comments[at]accentient.com.  We've had to disable comments until we find a way to more effectively eliminate comment spam.)

PEX = Program EXploration (a Microsoft Research project). I'm not really sure what this is, but a fellow RD, Barry Gervin, pointed it out to some of us MVPs recently after he visited a Microsoft Research "science fair".

Apparently, PEX automatically generates unit tests, allowing developers to find bugs early. In addition, it suggests to the programmer how to fix the bugs. Sounds too good to be true, but since it will enable "a new development experience" in Visual Studio Team System, I should probably keep an eye on it.

Maybe this will keep the TDD purists off of VSTS' back.

I've been in Orlando this week, speaking at SQL Connections and have been derelict in my blogging duties, especially with regard to VSTS.

• Microsoft announced on Monday that they had acquired DevBiz (the company that produces TeamPlain), which has been the leader in browser-based access to Team Foundation Server, further boosting cross-platform access (and adoption). TeamPlain Web Access also enables a peripheral team member to browse project information and manipulate work items, source code, etc. I believe the new, official name will become "Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access" (another mouthful). This acquisition also means that we will get to use TeamPlain for FREE (assuming we have a proper client access license for TFS). Read more about the acquisition on Brian Harry's blog and Microsoft PressPass.
  
  
• Microsoft published their Visual Studio Team System "Future Releases" roadmap, even beyond Orcas. So now, we can all speak the words "Rosario" in public. Rosario is the codename for the version of VSTS beyond Orcas. The roadmap is very thorough, even listing service packs and power tools, so you know exactly what delivery vehicle your feature or fix will be arriving in.
  
  
• Gert Drapers (the data dude) announced Service Release (SR) 1 for VSTS Edition for Database Professionals. He says that it's "in the works" and will be published sometime in Q2 of 2007 (let's hope April). He lists a few of the fixes and features that will be in the SR in a recent blog posting.
  
  
• Yesterday, Microsoft announced that unit testing will become a feature of the Professional edition of Visual Studio Orcas. This has been a passionately-requested feature by everyone in the world not running Dev, Test, or Team Suite editions. Finally, everyone who has Professional edition and up will be able to write and run unit tests. What about code coverage, that's still a question.
  
  
• The Patterns and Practices team has released updated prescriptive guidance on VSTS. JD Meiers lists many of the improvements on a blog post and you can find the guidance itself on CodePlex.
  
  
• Speaking of guidance, Microsoft recently published a 40-page branching guidance document which does a very good job of explaing branching and merging strategies for various size teams.

Recently, Microsoft and IESC Geekcorps have teamed up to send Microsoft developer experts to participate as volunteers in the “Access to International Markets Through Information Technology” (AIM-IT) project in Lebanon. They are currently in search of volunteer experts with expertise in Visual Studio 2005 Team System & Team Foundation Server, as well as MS Solution Framework, and general software development project management.

Those that volunteer with Geekcorps on this project will receive airfare, accommodations, insurance and a living stipend – all paid for by Microsoft. Volunteers’ only out-of-pocket expenses come from any incidentals or personal purchases. Arrangements will be made for you to travel from home to Lebanon (a passport is required) and you will be met at the airport by a program representative. The project’s duration will be approximately 6 weeks.

If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, visit this page.

Thank you to my friends at Basta! for recommending me as an alternate speaker for the Frankfurt .NET User Group meeting last week. Thomas "Teddy" Sohnrey was the coordinator (and my interpreter at times).

The topic was Effective SCM using Visual Studio Team System, and I enjoyed sharing my approaches and best practices to the many software developers in the room.

Of course, what I will remember most about the evening is the venue: Microsoft's office in Bad Homburg, and the free beer in the break room!

As you know, Visual Studio Team System tracks many different work item types, such as requirements, tasks, and bugs. Many agile teams like to use "sticky notes" to post on the wall to organize their backlog of requirements and tasks and plan their iterations. Even Joel on Software's company is doing this.

Since I have no life when I travel, I wrote 3M yesterday to see if they manufacture Post-It note sheets that can be fed through a laser/inkjet printer ... and they do!

They come in 25, 100, 300 or 500 sheet quantities and I checked a couple of sites, such as CDW, #1 Online Catalog, and Computers Unlimited. The prices range from $0.40 to $0.85/sheet, which might be cost prohibitive. Another cool option might be to use the stackable/sortable cards from 3m, although they are not sheet-fed, some printers might be able to "grab them". They come in a few different sizes.

Occasionally I'm asked about the business value of VSTS and TFS. I think it's pretty obvious, but I guess others need more convincing than just my word.

I've pulled together some links below that will help with this.

• Case studies - contains many ROI as well as technical case studies
• Customer evidence - contains some more case studies and testimonials
• Business value whitepaper - SDLC pain points and VSTS benefits
• Software lifecycles - a collection of scenarios providing evidence of VSTS benefits
• TFS Evidence Booklet - a PDF that was handed out at some of the roadshows

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 latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).

Join the chat on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

Richard Waymire has publishes his long-anticipated whitepaper on permissions, security objects, and other security concerns centered around using the Database Professionals edition.

Over the years, we've had a few clients automate their build process by using Final Builder by VSoft Technologies. Much like Team (Foundation) Build, Final Builder is a powerful build & release management tool. Unlike Team Build, Final Builder has a slick UI allowing a build master to quickly design the builds.

Last summer, a new Final Builder version (4.2) was release which included more support for MSBuild and Team Build tasks. With that version, and following the guidance in this article, you can get the two products working together!

1. First, you need a build script for your continuous integration builds.  This script runs every time someone checks in code (with certain restrictions).  You likely won't want an aggregate report on these builds, except for rare cases -- there are just too many of them.  This build is optional.  I'm a fan of CI, but if it's a bridge too far, don't worry.  The critical build is the nightly build...
   
2. A TFS Build for your daily / nightly builds.  This build runs every night at a set time.  This build shows you what was accomplished during that entire day, including quality metrics, code churn, etc.  This is one of the most valuable builds, since its reporting is clearly segmented by time -- one build per day.  This allows a team to see what is being accomplished on a day to day basis.
3. A TFS Build for weekly builds.  This runs every weekend.  Like the daily build, it will allow the reporting engine to show you what was accomplished that week, and how quality changes from week to week.  This allows you to see aggregate changes over a chunkier time sequence, namely weeks. 
   
4. An end-of-iteration build.  I've found you don't need to go any longer than weeks this for most projects, as far as reporting is concerned.  However, you may choose to create a build that runs at the end of every iteration.  This gives you metrics on what was accomplished during the entire iteration.
5. An on-demand build.  This one is used for folks who just need to trigger a build whenever.  Unless it's necessary or useful, you may choose to have this build not report anything back to the data warehouse.

I just noticed that the new TFS Installation Guide (date: 4 Jan, 2007) is available for download from Microsoft. It contains updated help relating to SP1.

The TFS Administrator's Guide is still the Nov 2006 version however.

It looks like I'll be speaking at BASTA! in a few weeks.

I'll be delivering two regular sessions:

• Team System Best Practices (Mar 1, 8:30AM - 9:30AM)

• Customizing and Extending Team Edition for Database Professionals (Mar 1, 3:15PM - 4:15PM)

Thanks to Brian Harry and team for releasing the latest version of the provider.

The enhancements in this latest release include:

• Enable handling branched solutions in Visual Studio 2003
• Fixed issues to enable provider to support TOAD for SQL Server 2.0
• Enhanced the "Choose Folder in Team Foundation Server" dialog
• Fixed bug which prevented Properties Dialog from displaying local path
• Work Items Query list in the Checkin Dialog is loaded and saved on the disk
• "Get" operation performance improvements
• Miscellaneous bug fixes

Download the new provider here, and remember it is for use by anyone who owns a Team Foundation Server Client Access License (CAL).

Some of you have been beta testing it and, thanks in part to your hard work, it's ready for prime-time ... before the holidays!

Click here to learn more, and download SP1 for Visual Studio 2005, Team Foundation Server, and/or the Express editions. In addition, you can download Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta.

Spread the word!

Bookmark this page. It contains the starting point for the V1 (RTM) version of the DB Professional documentation.

This edition became available last Thursday on MSDN. Hazzah!

I've noticed when installing the edition, as well as the CTPs, that it also installs the "ProjectAggregator" ...

A quick search of the forums, finds a post by Robert Merriman (MS) explaining what the ProjectAggregator is ...

"We use the Visual Studio ProjectAggregator to integrate our package into Visual Studio. The ProjectAggregator is from the VSIP SDK and here is some information from the April 2006 readme file for the VSIP SDK:

There is a new ProjectAggregator2 MSI for project systems to leverage. A new aggregator (ProjectAggregator2) was added to the Visual Studio SDK to replace the following two aggregators:

• ProjectAggregator: included with Visual Studio 2005, used for project flavors (also known as project subtypes)
• NativeHierarchyWrapper: included in previous SDK CTPs, used by the MPF project samples

In addition to solving the problems the NativeHierarchyWrapper solved (source code control support for projects implemented in managed code), this new aggregator solve a limitation of the original ProjectAggregator (which did not allow for multiple levels of flavoring)."

Bill Essary, software architect at Microsoft just posted this MSDN article on new team project limit and monitoring recommendations for Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server.

The article includes a downloadable Excel spreadsheet (TeamProjectLimits.xls) containing experimental data which you can use to estimate the maximum number of team projects per server when you use customize work item types.

I just noticed that both the .CHM files were recently updated, and available for download.

• The Installation guide (TFSInstall-v61004.chm) is now version 8.0.61004 (10/6/2006) - 261 kb
• The Administrator's guide (TFSAdmin-v61101.chm) is now version 8.0.61101 (11/1/2006) - 2.2 mb

You'll find the updated hyperlinks at the bottom of our Widgets page.

You may have read my previous post about a company in Phoenix who connected their build process to an orb. Others use lava lamps.

Well, this professional geek used something a little more meaningful - an LCD-TV screen, which actually conveys useful information. Download the source code from his article (TV not included).

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 latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).

Join the chat on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

EBay always makes me laugh. What some people will do to sell their product!

Take this example of an auction for Team Foundation Server ...

Look what the seller is throwing in to "sweeten" the deal ...

During the past couple days I've had the priveledge of working with some of the most knowledgeable and able TFS experts from around the world, and internal at Microsoft.  One of those people is Mike Azocar from Software Architects.  For some very useful information, check out his blog!  It's called, unshockingly, Michael Azocar's Blog!

I just ran across my Visual Studio 2005 Team System book in Hungarian. Very cool!

Check out the Interbook.hu site for more information. I'll see if I can't get a copy.

Check out Chris Birmele's MSDN article "Branching and Merging Primer" on MSDN.

The article is short and sweet, but states the case well for SCM and even includes a few branching patterns.

It's been a long time coming, and will address many common problems people have been running into. Get your hands on the beta and start giving feedback today!

Read Brian Hary's post for more details. You can find SP1 at the Microsoft Connect Site. (Remember that it is beta software)

TFS SP1 is out!  it takes a while to get on the list, and to start the downloads, but it's worth it!  There are lots of improvements in SP1 and I'll be running a few tests against it myself.  Remember, it is Beta, so unless you have a very compelling reason, keep it off your production servers.  But get in there to play with some of the new features!  Especially the ability to host your own WIT controls, so you'll be able to more easily add functionality to the Work Item viewer!

Some other areas of improvement:

• Version Control, WorkItem Tracking and Datawarehouse performance/scale improvements
• "Extranet support"
• WIT Custom Control support
• Support for Office 2007 (Project and Excel - no Sharepoint 2007 support yet), Vista and the new WAP project support
• Detailed Merge History

The release includes fixes for a total of 85 issues!  For more information on the release see Brian Harry's weblog posting, and to sign up for the download visit the Microsoft Connect Site.

Good work, Microsoft! 

Finally, my German last name on a book in German!

I picked this up when I was in Stuttgart last summer at the World Cup. This one now sits on my shelf next to the Russian version.

Reporting in Team System is handled by SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. As such, team members get to enjoy (and are restricted-by) the built-in report rendering extensions (CSV, Excel, HTML, Image, MHTML, PDF, and XML). What's missing from this list is the Microsoft Word DOC format and a richer Microsoft Excel XLS format.

This is where a product called OfficeWriter comes in. It enables you to use Excel or Word to create templates utilizing data markers and merge fields for databinding sections of the document to the various Team Foundation Server data items. After a quick configuration of Reporting Services, your reports can generate documents/spreadsheets based on these templates without the need for Microsoft Office on the server. There's also an integration with Reporting Services that will let you create these documents without any coding at all. Users will design their RDL reports using Excel or Word, without the need for Visual Studio or SQL Report Builder.

Check out their latest version of OfficeWrite (v3.6) at http://officewriter.softartisans.com

Brian Harry has just posted a great Word doc that gives a few ins and outs when building extensions to Team Foundation Server.  It's focused on the Version Control side of the house, but many of the recommendations work for automating Work Item access as well.  Head over to the blog post (here), and download the Advice for developing TFS client applications.doc document.  If you build TFS extensions, it's definitely required reading! 

Here are my slides from yesterday's presentation at Tech-Ed 2006 SEA. Thank you to the many delegates who joined me for the session.

Visual Studio Team System Public MSDN Chat

Come and join members from the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Architect, Developer and Tester editions and Team Foundation Server. There will be experts on hand to answer your questions, so we hope to see you there!

Join the chat on Wednesday September 6th, 2006 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific time.

To add this to your calendar, click here.

To see your local time of when this chat is, click here.

Thanks to Eugene and his crew over at Attrice, the makers of the Team Build Sidekick and other Team Foundation Sidekick widgets. They have just published a nice article describing how they have used the Team Foundation Server Version Control object model and VS automation to implement their product's functionality.

Check it out.

If you are in the Seattle/Redmond area, join me tonight while we look at CTP 5 of the Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.

I'll be starting at 7:15 pm tonight in building 40 at Microsoft. Click here for more details.

I was recently at a client site in Phoenix, teaching a VSTS/SCM course. They have integrated an Ambient Orb Device into their automated build process. If the build passes, it glows green. If it breaks, it glows red.

The orb is inside the developer manager's office, so the devs can peek inside. My understanding is that they have about 15 minutes after seeing red to fix the build and re-run it, before the manager gets an email message.

I just ran into this blog while doing some surfing.  It wasn't on my blog roll, but it is now.    It's by Eugene Zakhareyev from Attrice.  If you remember from our Widgets page, they are the makers of the TFVC Workspace Sidekick and the MSBuild Sidekick.  Both of those are tools you should be checking out!  But back to the blog.  Eugene is blogging many of his own personal observations about TFS, and since he's so intimately involved with TFS, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on his findings and comments!  His blog can be found here.

Many of our clients need to access the TFS Version Control system from VS 2002/2003, as well as other development environments including SQL Server Management Studio.  They've been able to do this for some time, but the plug-in to support it always felt a bit clunky.  So it is with great pleasure that I can report the new MSSCCI plug-in (available here) was released yesterday!  In addition to improving the interface, there were several other additions, too.  Now, database developers can access their version controlled T-SQL scripts using Enterprise Manager.  Plus, developers can now modify work items during the check in process! 

If you use the MSSCCI provider for working with TFVC, go download the new version right away!  And, if you're looking for further cool plug-ins, don't hesitate to check our Widget's page, located here.

Team System SP1 is due out...  sometime.  We still don't have a date from Microsoft (as of 10 Aug 2006), however, Brian Harry has provided us with a short list of some of the features to be released.  You can read about it here.

My favorite new feature is WIT Custom Controls.  This means we'll finally be able to host a control that will display custom data without having to rebuild the entire Work Item display framework.  Very cool.  A few already pop to mind:  a Grid display, graphical displays (small embedded charts), and maybe even a tiny Wiki. 

Fawcette (FTPOnline) just published a smattering of new articles on Team System, including my new article on the forethcoming edition for Database Professionals.

Brian Harry discloses some of the expected features and fixes in TFS SP1 as well as features in the new version of the MSSCCI provider (GetLatest on Checkout being one of them).

Read more here.

Here are some of the useful resources on the Web for the Team System Edition for Database Professionals:

• MSDN Site
• PowerToys Site
• Team Blog
• Thomas Murphy's Blog
• Cameron Skinner's Blog
• Matt Nunn's Blog
• Gert Draper's Blog
• Richard Waymire's Blog
• Sachin Rekhi's Blog
• MSDN Forum

Aside from MSF, Scrum, XP, and RUP, I've been finding some other methodologies and frameworks as I travel and meet with teams. Some might make for interesting Process Templates in Team System. Here are just a few, in no particular order ...

• Prince2 - a process-based approach for project management providing an easily tailored and scaleable method for the management of all types of projects. The method is the de-facto standard for project management in the UK and is practiced worldwide.
• Six Sigma - a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects, defined as unacceptable deviation from the mean or target; and to systematically work towards managing variation to eliminate those defects
• Lean Software Development - a translation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain.
• Zachman Framework - a framework for Enterprise Architecture which provides a formal and highly structured way of defining an enterprise's systems architecture.
• DoDAF - a framework for development of a systems architecture or enterprise architecture (EA).

Added Later ...

• Team Software Process (TSP) - helps a high-performance engineer to ensure quality software products, create secure software products, and improve process management in an organization
• Personal Software Process (PSP) - shows engineers how to manage the quality of their projects, make commitments they can meet, improve estimating and planning, reduce defects in their products

Do you know any others? If so, provide links in the comments.

If nothing else, I now know how to spell my name in Russian!

Here's a link to view the back of the book as well.

Thanks to our friends at AVICode for sending me this copy. We enjoyed co-presenting with them at Tech-Ed in Boston.

We just finished up a VSTS training class in Johannesburg, South Africa. Thank you to my students and the Netscope training center for making this a fun class.

From left to right: Oliver, Shereen, Robin, Richard, Esendal, and Anton.

Wow, I'm honored! One of my sharper students at a recent talk in Reston, VA was actually paying attention to my discussion of extensibility and customization and has built a VSTS Check-In Policy to help track time working on team projects.

It looks promising. You can read about it at the VSTS Forums, or go to the GotDotNet site. I'll have it available on the Widgets page soon, too.

The secret is out! I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and not have to look over both shoulders before saying the words "Data Dude" or "K2".

That's right, Database Professionals will soon get a chance to be part of the Team!

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals delivers a market-shifting database development product designed to manage database change, improve software quality through database testing and bring the benefits of Visual Studio Team System and life cycle development to the database professional.

Read more here.

It's a bit of an older case study, but one I haven't seen before. It's a quick read, as it goes through the situation, solution, benefits, and conclusion.

My inteview with Scott Swigart is out in the current Dr. Dobbs. You can read it online here.

Had I known that it was going to make the print version, I wouldn't have been so cheesy!

Hat-Tip to Korby Parnell and James Newkirk, and the rest of the CodePlex crew. The beta is online, and you can read about it here and try it here.

What is it, you ask?

CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end. CodePlex is open to the public free of charge.

Addison-Wesley has just released Sam Guckenheimer's book "Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System". Sam is a member of the Visual Studio Team System product team. I'm very interested in reading

Given Sam's extensive background in the industry, I'm really looking foward to reading this book!

Congratulations, Sam!

If you are moving from one State to another programmatically, you can only move to certain allowed states.  According to this posting, there is no easy way to determine which states are allowed.  That's a crying shame!  It's especially problematic if you are migrating work items from one system to another.

Join me in Minneapolis Thursday at the Microsoft Launch event of Team Foundation Server. It should be fun.

Here are the details.

Microsoft just put the 180–day Trial Edition of Team Foundation Server (English) up at the Microsoft Downloads site. It used to be on MSDN downloads, but they have made it more accessible for the rest of the world.

Get it here.

Wow, I wish more readers felt like Paul Lockwood. Read his glowing review of my Working with Visual Studio 2005 Team System book here.

I just got word that the Scrum for Team System: Beta 3 is now available. This build targets Team Foundation Server (Release Candidate). To download the installer, visit the Announcements section of the forum (by visiting http://scrum-master.com/vsts and clicking on the Forum link once signed in).

Check out Ashwin Karuhatty's blog for some good resources on migrating to Team Foundation Version Control. You should bookmark his site, because they'll be more good resources to come.

Microsoft has published this known issues page pertaining to the TFS Release Candidate. It should be read by all who are installing/upgrading.

You can also refer to the readme online as well.

I've spent some time this evening and put together, what I consider to be a fairly comprehensive list of Team System and Team Foundation Server add-ins, utilities, and full-on products.

www.accentient.com/widgets.aspx

Did I miss any? Let me know!

-Rich

TeamPlain Web Access is a web interface for Team Foundation Server that allows you to manage work items, documents, reports and source control repositories.

These guys also make a Team System plug-in for Eclipse and Visual Studio 2003.

MSDN subscription customers can download from the MSDN subscriber download site

Jeff Beehler posted these instructions to upgrade from Beta3/Refresh:

1. Backup your server and copy the data to a safe location
2. Download the Team Foundation Server RC
3. Download the Upgrade Utility
4. Uninstall Team Foundation Server Beta 3 Refresh
5. Follow the upgrade instructions, which are included with the Upgrade Utility
6. Install Team Foundation Server RC
7. Complete the post install upgrade instructions, which are included with the Upgrade Utility

For a reference to the major changes since Beta3 refresh, please see Jeff's posting.

Here is the link to the support site for my Team System book. It contains comments and corrections.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905038

Also, I just found an error today, thanks to a reader:

"In your book on page 179 you put a reference to a figure 8-1 as the Team Model comparison, but the figure shows the Process Model comparison.
Have you ever seen this error ? Do you have the right figure ?"

This should refer to figure 8-4

Microsoft just announced this a few minutes ago, literally. It appears they are on track for a Calendar Q1 release of TFS!

What:   Tech-Ed 2006
Where:  Boston, MA
When:   June 11-16, 2006
Why:     Dude, it's Tech-Ed!!!

Be sure to visit the site and get registered!

And, if you can make it, be sure to attend an awesome pre-conference seminar on customizing Team System.

One of the main sticking points with many people is the lack of integration between Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) and Microsoft Project Server.  Sure, you can indirectly connect the two through a MS Project file, and there's some light integration there.  But most people want to use VSTS as part of a complete lifecycle management too... and that means tracking resources across multiple projects, and many across several organizational stovepipes.  That's where MS Project Server comes in. 

In the future, Microsoft will likely do a great deal of integration between the two, but for right now you'll need to download the Project Server Visual Studio Team System Connector.  I haven't used it yet, but am planning on taking a look at it once it's been upgraded to support either TFS RC or TFS RTM.  I'll let you know!

Bookmark this site if you are interested in what Microsoft Research is doing to improve the quality of software through analysis, program verification and software measurement techniques. I wonder how many of these tools might make it into VSTS in the future? MUTT might be interesting.

Here are a couple of interesting articles:

• Use of Relative Code Churn Measures to Predict System Defect Density
• Static Analysis Tools as Early Indicators of Pre-Release Defect Density

This question was recently asked on the VSTS forums.

As Rob Caron explains, the integration depends solely on Borland's ability to integrate TFS into Delphi's IDE. Until then options include using the standalone Team Explorer, command-line utilities, or possibly the newly available MSSCII Provider for Team Foundation Server.

According to Jeff Beehler's recent blog posting, we should see an RC by the end of February. We're getting closer folks!

Don't miss these chats!  They're great for finding out what the latest info is, and how to solve some of your knotties problems!

Team System MSDN Public Chat

Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developer &
Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers

When: Wednesday, January 18^th 2006 @ 10am PST (1pm EST)

What: Join us to discuss the Profiler, Test Tools (Unit, Generic, Manual), Web & Load Testing, and Code Analysis (FxCop & PREFast).  We have questions for you, will answer questions from you, and will chat about the exciting new technology.

Where: http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats

Teamlook brings together the ad-hoc communications domain, specifically messaging, and the structured software engineering team domain by integrating Microsoft Outlook 2003 with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System.

Visit Personify Design's site to download Teamlook and check it out.

Also, check out their TFS Outlook Starter Kit.

Netdesk, a Microsoft Gold-certified training center, has partnered with us to deliver a 5-day end-to-end Visual Studio Team System course from February 27 - March 3, 2006.  They'll have it up on their web site soon, but I wanted to let everyone out there know what's coming!  I'll be sure to link to the course registration when it's up.  But you can contact them now for pricing and more information.

The course will cover all the roles in Team System, and attendees can expect to be knowledgeable in all areas of VSTS, including extensibility and custom reporting.  It's an excellent class for both early Team System adopters, and also technical decision makers who are determining whether or not their companies should implement Team System.

While driving yesterday, I was listening to a Podcast by Alistair Cockburn (pronounced, I learned, like Coburn, not like an uncomfortable genital condition).  He was discussing Agile development, something I'm very interested in.  One of the things he's learned over the years is that "People trump process".  Basically, if a process is too confining, restrictive or proscriptive, people will always find a way around the process.  In addition, if the process is too chaotic, people will spontaneously create something to add a light structure to their development process.

This has dramatic implications for Team System.  One of the onerous tasks in many process tools is reporting work.  Developers are forced to not only leave their tool (Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc), but also often forced to enter data that doesn't seem to relate directly to the task of creating good code.  In Visual Studio Team System, process is tightly integrated into the development process at the tool level.  Thus, it takes far less effort for developers to implement process.  In fact, process guidance can be automated into the way Team System behaves, not just in the form of must-read references and directives.  This means developers can be exposed to process in a way that often fits their personality.  Most developers I know aren't the type of folks who want to read corporate process guidance.  They want to solve problems.  When a process methodology intrudes in Team System development, forcing devs to write unit tests or run code analysis prior to a check-in, for example, the developer treats the problem differently.  Now, although they may moan about it, the problem becomes a challenge, a bug, and they figure out a way around it.  Thus, devs are exposed to process periodically, throughout their development lifecycle, as a series of challenges, not as an "all or nothing" read of hundreds of pages of corporate process, procedures and conventions in document form.

This, I believe is one of the strengths of Team System.

Rich Hundhausen and myself just spoke to crowds of over 1,200 people at the Dev breakouts at the Seattle Visual Studio 2005 launch.  I provided a Team System End-to-End, while Rich made sure everyone knew how to create enterprise applications using the Architect features of Team System, SQL Server 2005 and some of the cooler features of BizTalk Server 2006. 

A huge adrenalin rush!  No matter how many times you speak in front of large audiences, it's still a rush! 

Photos coming!

My good friend, business partner and coblogger, Rich Hundhausen posted this a while back.  I just had a need for it, and LOVE the work that Christopher Bowen did putting this list together.  It's a list of all the tools, both open source and not, that are impacted (positively or negatively) by the release of Visual Studio 2005 Team System.  You can find the link here.

We've been getting some questions lately on this, and here are the answers:

• Partners at the Certified Partner level will receive the new Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription.  As before, this will include 5 MSDN licenses.

• Partners at the Gold Certified Partner level will receive the enhanced version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers with MSDN Premium Subscription. As before, this will include 10 MSDN licenses.

Notice that neither level include Architect or Test editions, nor do they include Team Suite. Read Ajay's post for more information.

In two recent articles, in eWeek and SearchVB.com, it seems that Ivar Jacobson (one of the fathers of UML and RUP) has recently joined the Microsoft VSIP program. He is working on the Essential Unified Process (Essential UP) that is going to be integrated into Visual Studio 2005. Essential UP will be a more agile and lightweight development process based on good practices and principles of both MSF and RUP.

Now that VS/SQL/VSTS are available for download, I've been getting a lot of licensing questions, especially about MSDN/U subscriptions and the elusive Team Suite. Ajay Sudan put together a nice, consise FAQ at the VSTS forum.

The Team Foundation Server setup experience has been evolving for over a year now in response to feedback Microsoft has received. While they’ve made significant progress since the first release last year as Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, there’s still more that can be done. Microsoft has created a survey to ask some specific questions based on your experience with Team Foundation Server Beta 3. If you have attempted (successfully or otherwise) to install Team Foundation Server Beta 3, Microsoft invites you to participate in this brief online survey.

The survey can be taken anonymously, or you have the option of providing contact information should wish to be contacted about your setup experience. Partial surveys are not preserved, so please complete the survey before navigating away from the page.

Microsoft has listed the VSTS MVPs on their site. You can view their profiles here.

What is an MVP?
The MVP award is a one-year renewable reward given to just under 3,000 customers worldwide who are community leaders for their past year's accomplishments in a specific competency (ex: ASP.NET, C#, VSTS). A non-Microsoft employee is nominated by an employee or other MVP, their contributions to the community are evaluated, and they are voted on by an MVP Lead and PG Lead. Contributions can include answering MSDN Forum questions, writing articles & books, having an active & popular blog, working with the product teams, running a local user group, giving presentations, etc.   A quick intro to what an MVP is can be found on the MVP Website.

Don't miss the upcoming MSDN chat, this Wednesday at 10am (PST) on Developer & Tester Tools in Visual Studio 2005.  If you haven't attended one of the MSDN chats, I strongly encourage it!  Not only do they provide a bunch of solid information, there will be an entire series of Visual Studio and Team System experts on hand to answer any specific questions you have.  I attended one of these recently, and got to ask some hard questions that ended up revealing bugs in the latest release of Team System.  The folks there not only thanked me for my support, they worked overtime to get a workaround to me ASAP!  I can't recommend the chats enough!  Be there!

I've been frantically working for the past few days on an important Team System demo using the latest bits. 

Folks, we've come a LONG way from Beta 1!  And we still have a ways to go!  The UI is much smoother, and more accessible, however, some things still aren't working efficiently.  Web tests aren't consistently reliable.  Or maybe it's just that the built-in web server isn't reliable.  But it's been a MAJOR frustration!  The workaround is to deploy the web site to IIS to do ALL your tests!  This is a best practice anyway, but once you have it out on IIS, it becomes very difficult (impossible?) to run code coverage analysis on your web code! 

Once I'm done with this beast, I'll be sure to post all the tips and tricks I've learned!

Steven Wilssens attended the preconference on Team System that Rich and I presented at PDC this year.  He's blogged it.  But the best is his incredible summary!  He manages in just a few paragraphs to effectively summarize the content of the full day pre-con.  I whole heartedly recommend his post! 

In addition, he's got several other great posts.  I especially like his post on the testing "V model".  It explains how the various classes of tests (unit, integration, acceptance, etc) relate to the software development lifecycle.  You can find that post here. 

I've gone ahead and added him to my personal blogroll.  There's good stuff on his blog for all of you Team System addicts, especially those of you interested in testing.  It doesn't have a lot of posts yet, but the posts it has are all very valuable.  Check it out!

If you've been trying to find GssUtil.exe so you can script the new Beta 3 release of TFS, you won't be able to!  Instead, you'll use the new TfsSecurity.  Luckily, adding groups and individual users uses the same command line (except of course, the name of the EXE), so it's a simple search and replace!  So, in short, there's been a name change, GssUtil.exe is now TfsSecurity.exe (at least for the purposes of roles and logins).

Happy TFSing!

I just found the URL to my forthcoming Team System book on Amazon. This is the revised edition that I just finished last month! Too bad there's no graphic, and the date is wrong. I was told it'll be up there the first of October.

Thanks again for all your support on this!

Update: A friend, Peter Nowak, from Germany pointed me towards the listing on Amazon.de! He also mentioned it in a recent blog posting.

(Click to expand)

Focused primarily on the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) developer communities, the beta experience contains the latest news, free resources, training, and a free newsletter. Note: You won't find United States in the dropdown list, so try United Kingdom.

Besides the main launch event in San Francisco, on November 7, there are a few others in the West. Please feel free to register using code: LaunchTour2005.
  
Tuesday, December 6
  Colorado Convention Center
  700 14th Street
  Denver, CO.  80202
  303-228-8000
 
Tuesday, December 6
  Anaheim Convention Center
  800 W. Katella Ave.
  Anaheim, CA.  90802
  714-765-8950

Every time I show the show off the wonderful reports that are automatically generated by Team Foundation Server, I usually get asked about the Code Churn report, and what Code Churn is.  After months of giving a good, but unofficial definition, Dave Bost, on his blog, did the hard work and discovered a wonderful (but academic) whitepaper on the Code Churn technology used by Microsoft in VSTS.  The PDF can be found at Microsoft Research.  It's called Use of Relative Code Churn Measures to Predict System Defect Density, by Nachiappan Nagappan; Thomas Ball.  Here's the abstract:

Here are some of the points from Soma's blog entry this morning ...

• We're 77 days out from launch
• In September, there will be a Release Candidate (RC1) of Visual Studio 2005
• This RC will be available to MSDN subscribers, early adopters, and beta customers
• Beta 3 of Team Foundation Server (TFS) will be released at the same time as the RC1
• TFS Beta 3 will including a "Go Live" license with technical support for Premier customers
• TFS Beta 3 will carry us through the launch of Visual Studio 2005
• TFS RTM will be in the first quarter of 2006

Please re-read that bottom bullet!

When
  09/08/2005 (8:30 AM - 5:00 PM)

Where
  Microsoft Boise, CW Moore Bldg, Basement Conference Room A, 250 S. 5th Street, Boise, ID 83702
  Click here for directions

Registration
  Registration is free; however, seating is limited. Click here to register and use code # 304061

Agenda and Session Details

Microsoft is entering into the software lifecycle tools market with the release of the new Visual Studio Team System product. Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) expands significantly on Microsoft's demonstrated successes in delivering highly productive tools, by offering businesses tightly integrated and extensible lifecycle tools to increase the predictability of their software development process. VSTS offers developers, architects, testers and project managers a seamless way to communicate and increase the effectiveness of software development and the successes of projects.

We have put together a free, day-long comprehensive technical training to help our customers understand the power and value of Visual Studio Team System. This session will cover the core features of the product and the details around Developer, Architect and the Test editions.

Some agenda topics:

• Designers – Class Designer, Logical Datacenter Designer, Application Designer
• Code Analysis, Methodologies and Source Control Management
• Unit Testing, Web Testing and Load Testing
• Build Server, Reporting, Work Item Management, Integration

Breakfast and Lunch will be provided. See you there!

For more information:
  Contact Jason Mauer (jmauer@microsoft.com)

David Anderson of Microsoft will be hosting a Webcast and Chat on August 18th. The Webcast will run from 11 AM to 12 PM Pacific Time (GMT -8), with the chat starting at 12 PM and running to 1 PM Pacific Time. Bring your MSF/CMMI questions and be there.

Thanks to Rob Caron for the original posting ...

Since I have nothing else going on in my life (ya - right), I thought I would start installing the July CTP of TFS and VSTS. This CTP requires a dual-installation, because you have to use the June CTP of SQL Server 2005 which uses a different build of the .NET Framework than VSTS July CTP. Anyway, I've run into some problems, which I will share with you ...

• You can install SQL 2005 June CTP on the same VPC as the DC, because of this problem.
• So, I had to create a separate VPC for the DC (at least it runs with < 200mb of memory allocated).

More to come, I'm sure ...

If anyone is planning on attending the PDC, be sure to come a day early and check out the great pre-conferences. I'll be presenting a full day on Team System development, Sunday the 11th.

See you in LA!

Thanks for attending Steve and/or my talks (if you did). Here are links to the presentations on SQL Server 2005 and Team System.

• Introducing Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence (BI)
• SQL Server 2005 for Developers
  

Thank you for attending my talks in Amsterdam this week. As promised, here are the presentation materials and sample code from my talks:

• DEV300 - Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS) Extensibility (PPT) - 2.6 mb
• DEV300 - Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS) Extensibility (Samples) - 2.4 mb
• SEC385 - Practical Security for Internet and Extranet Solutions (PPT and screenshots) - 4.3 mb
• SEC385 - Practical Security for Internet and Extranet Solutions (Samples) - 1 mb

I hope you enjoyed the talks. I know I did. Please email me with any questions!

-Rich

The MOC 2631 Beta is over.  Whew!  What an experience!  Lots of excellent lessons learned. 

1. Boeing and Safeco (our guinea pig companies) have some great employees!  Some good developers, architects, testers and project managers. 
2. Many of the students really GOT Team System.  They saw how it could work in the team.  But almost everyone wanted to see more.  Both deeper content in their roles, and also more about how the other roles were using Team System.
3. Beta attendees had some really strong feelings on how VSTS should be taught.  There are two schools of thought (roughly): Some attendees wanted to work with all of the roles, so they wanted to walk though an entire dev project acting as each role in turn.  Others wanted to stay in a single role, and work as part of an overall team.  This course was designed for the second group of folks, since we work with a team with many roles, each one working as part of the dev lifecycle, until a final project is built and deployed. 
4. People are VERY patient with Beta software and beta courseware.  We had several problems, some of our causing (the courseware) and some not.  Everyone was very patient, very helpful, and full of good suggestions.  My faith in humanity is restored!
5. Microsoft needs to spend some serious time explaining the difference between a MOC course and a MOC workshop.  In a course, the instructor teaches about 50% of the time, and labs reinforce the learning.  In a workshop, there is very little teaching.  Only the bare minimum is explained and attendees are expected to learn through self-discovery.  This throws people, both attendees and instructors, to no end.  Very few people 'get' it before having lived it at least once.  Most hard-core folks love it after a couple days, but some people prefer passive learning.  It's tough to build a course for everyone, and workshops are an extreme example of this.
6. Unless you're doing a demo, try not to run TFS inside a VPC.  It has issues.  Our TFS had trouble holding up to the 11 student load and crashed at least once a day when load was high.  (It appears that having more than one or two people creating projects at the same time was enough to bring it down.)  Now, don't get panicked.  We were running in a VPC.  Specifics: Host was a 2.8 GHz processor with 3 Gig of RAM.  We gave the VPC client 2.3 Gig of RAM.  We thought that might be enough to host 11 heavy users, but it couldn't quite hold up.  Now, MS dogfoods Team System with thousands of users, so I'm confident this is a configuration or VPC issue.  Still, we've followed all the set-up guides and tips and tricks we could find.  (And, yes, if we put VS2005 directly on the image and run it as an all-in-one VPC, everything works fine...  with a load of 1 person...)
7. Still several user interface bugs in VS2005.  We've run into a reproducible error that drives us batty.  We have a web service project open that was checked out from source control.  We create a test by right clicking a method in the Web service.  Test creation fails.  If we close VS2005, and reopen it and reload the project (with the project already checked out from source control), it will create the test just fine.  This is just one of them.  We've run into lots!  (See the blog.)
8. We love Team System.  Despite its bugs, performance issues in a VPC and a tendency to be a bit counterintuitive in the UI, both Rich and I love Team System.  Once the issues start getting solved and bugs fixed, this is going to be one very useful tool -- one that I won't want to be without!

Welcome all attendees of the MOC 2631 class!  We're glad you're here, feel free to poke around and look at some of the problems we've discovered with Team System, and some of the fixes we've found.  You'll see we've had quite an adventure!

Glad you could make it to the Beta.  Feel free to ask us any questions, even if class is over.

This has happened to us a few times, so I'm sure we're not alone ...

You go to configure your Unit Test project for Code Coverage, but your test run configuration is missing. In other words, you click Test - Edit Test Run Configurations - and see "No Test Run Configurations Available".

Solution: Add a new item at the solution level (not to the test project!) and select a Test Run Configuration as the template

Still trying to kill a site...  Pretty much the answer is that you can clean up most of the database stuff, but you'll always see it in the VS2005 Team Explorer.  But, here's how to get the most from DeleteTeamProject.

Log in as TFSSetup (I'm coming in from a client), since that Login has god-like powers.  But before you can run DeleteTeamProject.exe, you first must open VS2005 and connect to the TFS (or use the command line). 

Finally run it:  DeleteTeamProject /domain:{serverName} /force MyStupidProjectIWantToKill

And it will delete everything from Currituck, scc, Report Server and Sharepoint, but it will fail on vstfs.  I mentioned that TFSSetup has god-like powers over team system...  Well, to delete something from vstfs, I'm beginning to believe you need to be logged in as BillG (and I don't mean Bill Gibson).

To those of you who have worked with Team System for a while, this post is redundant -- EVERYONE knows Rob Caron's blog.  But if you're new to Team System, you need to go to Rob Caron's blog, right away!  There's likely not one person who's gone through working with any of the Team System Betas or builds that has not relied on his blog for either a direct answer or a link to another blog.  Rob knows the Team System ecosystem better than anyone, and is up to date, not just on the product itself, but on the work other, non-MS, people are doing.  If someone has a clear solution to a VSTS problem, you can be assured there's a link from Rob's blog to it.  So, without further ado, if you haven't been there or haven't added it to your RSS aggregator, do so now!  Here's the link.

There's a nice little utility out there for Team System.  It allows you to delete a team project.  You know, those Foo1 and MyTest projects you create right away?  Right!  Well, there's no way in VSTS to delete those, so someone at MS gave us a wonderful little utility, DeleteTeamProject.exe.  UPDATE:  Except I can't get it to work.  It deletes everything useful, but you can't get rid of it from the Team Explorer.  :-(

(BUT BE CAREFUL!  It isn't part of VSTS, it's just a utility someone threw together for the Beta.  There is no error checking, and it fails unless everything is JUST RIGHT, and once it fails your TFS is completely corrupted, but you can then run with the /force attribute.)

Bottom Line Up Front - here's how you use it:  DeleteTeamProject /domain:{MyTFSServerName} "My Team Project"

Pretty easy to use, but there are some gotchas!

First, it's located in a pretty remote directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies (assuming you're on drive C:)

Second, here are the parameters you can pass it.  /q and /domain and /force, as well as the project name.   /q just schwacks the project without asking for user confirmation, and /domain refers to the name of the TFS server.    Yes, you read that right!  That took a while to figure out.  /force continues deleting pieces even if one fails (useful if you only get 1/2 way through).

Buck Hodges has a post that talks about using it in the Dec CTP, but some stuff has changed, I think.  I tried leaving /domain off (since it wasn't required if you're only on one domain, but that didn't work.  I'm on a VPC domain, which is on top of another domain, so that could be why).  I tried /domain:MyDomain and that didn't work, neither did /domain:MyDomain\MyServer, but /domain:MyServerName worked!

Happy Deleting!  Oh, one more gotcha!  You'd better have your ducks in a row, and all your source code checked in, since it deletes stuff out of the TFS databases WITHOUT USING A TRANSACTION.  So if you have just one little file checked out somewhere on your whole dev team, it will fail 1/2 way through.  You can use the /force attribute to ignore the errors in the deletions and continue deleting pieces that weren't deleted yet.  But you can't change your mind and go back.

I hope I didn't scare you away.  When you need it, you need it!  Just take all necessary precautions, and then some.  Maybe this feature will be added in the final release.

And the start of another list.

1. Enabling code coverage for a web service doesn't use the new name of Code Analysis, it still says "Enable FxCop" (but when doing anything but web services, the checkbox is "Enable Code Analysis"
2. When you run FxCop (Code Analysis), you get a list of errors and warnings in the Error List.  If you right-click -> Show Error Help, an error pops up that says "The operation could not be completed. Not implemented".  Fix:  Use Google or MSN Search. 
3. When using FxCop for a web service, I couldn't find a way to change the rules from warnings to errors, even though that process is trivial for DLLs and windows apps.

Ognjen had the same problem with very sluggish performance in his TFS.  He had the presence of mind to post his question to the MSDN newsgroups, and get the answer from Mike Attili, who redircted him to Buck Hodges blog post (see post below). 

Ognjen, thanks for leaving us the comment!  We eventually found it on Google, but had we read your comment earlier it would have saved us lots of grief.  We owe you a beer next time your in Seattle!  Thanks again!

You've gotta see this post by Buck Hodges!  There is VERY heavy load on TFS, and it's because in Beta 2 the refresh rate for Analysis Services was set to 2 minutes instead of the normal 60 minutes!  It's a major Team Foundation Server performance problem when it's installed directly out of the box.  Here's a cut from the Buck's blog entry.

Did you install your beta data tier in Virtual PC or Virtual Server and see a high CPU load while its running?  Even on real hardware, you may notice some load when nothing would appear to be going on.  Someone mentioned on an internal mailing list that the data tier CPU load for a combined app and data tier installed in Virtual Server was quite high, averaging about 50-70% with most of that time being used by SQL analysis services (msmdsrv.exe).

Check out his fix!

UPDATE:  I'm going to include his fix here, in case his site is down, or he moves his blog entry.  But don't forget to go check out Buck Hodges' blog.  The following is a cut/paste from his blog.  I hesitate to quote so much, but this is such a critical issue that it needs the broadest possible exposure.  Once again, check out his post for more updates, and great information on TFS.

The warehouse was designed to run processing every hour. For demo purposes the period was changed to 2 minutes in beta 2. On a weak system or a virtual machine you will see this behavior.

Change the run interval on the app tier as follows.

1. Stop TFSServerScheduler using 'net stop TFSServerScheduler'.
2. Go to http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/warehousecontroller.asmx using a browser on the app tier.  Click on ChangeSetting and enter the following values and then press the 'Invoke' button (3600 seconds = run once per hour).
   1. settingID: RunIntervalSeconds
   2. newValue: 3600
3. Restart TFSServerScheduler using 'net start TFSServerScheduler'.

Note: It is important to restart TFSServerScheduler, as the interval is cached and will not take effect until the next run.

You can also manually kick off the data warehouse.  Here are the steps to do so:

1. Go to http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/warehousecontroller.asmx using a browser on the app tier.
2. Click the ‘Run’ link.
3. Press the ‘Invoke’ button.

 This will trigger a refresh of the reports.

Thanks, Buck!  We thank you, presenters everywhere thank you, and TFS performance thanks you!

And a few more bugs and annoyances.

1)  When you implement an application (i.e. Web Service) from the Application Diagram, you are not prompted to check the resulting project to source control.  Workaround:  Add it yourself manually from solution explorer.  Nothing too difficult to do, just would be a bit more consistent with the rest of the 'new project' functionality in VS2005.

2) When you implement a Web service from an Application Diagram, the resulting code doesn't contain a reference to System.Xml.  I know that this isn't a bug...  But it seems wierd, since you so often use Xmk in XML Web services.

3) When you implement a unit test, using the right-click method from the code, there can be problems if you're dealing with XML.  If you are passing a System.Xml.XmlDocument as a parameter, the unit test converts it to an XmlNode.  These are much harder to deal with, since in a unit test, you may want to just load the XML from a file.  But the problem goes very deep into Visual Studio, since the return type of a Web service is converted from XmlDocument to XmlNode.  Yet they are NOT interchangable.

4) Team Foundation Server seems to sometimes slow to an absolute crawl, with processor utilization hitting 100% for 10 - 15 minutes at a time.  Generally, this is when you attempt to check in a solution to TFS from a client.  We have our TFS on a standalone box, set up according the setup guide.  We must be missing some optimizations somewhere.  The web server and SQL Server processes compete for processor time, pushing it up to 100%.  Something's wrong.

5) When adding Unit Tests to a class, you can simply right-click a method and choose "Create Tests". It prompts you for the language, file names, etc. - but not the path. The new project is tucked away under My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\ ... which is an annoyance, if you like to tuck all your related projects in sub-folders under a common solution folder -- or if you just plain hate My Documents.  Fix: First create a Test Project, by right-clicking your solution.  Then when you

Here's the latest round of bugs and annoyances on our weekend of discovery:

• When you copy/paste an application prototype, or drag and drop a saved to toolbox prototype, it overwrites your Class Namespace with the name of the new application
• Speaking of copy/paste in the application designers, you can't use the keyboard - Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, you have to use the mouse.
• Can we hide the labels of our Web app and Web service endpoints by default?
• When you rename the DefaultSystem1.dd (deployment diagram) to a better name, such as MyDeployment.dd, it doesn't seem to take right away. It seems like you have to save/reopen the document.
• Semi-related to the above, the deployment report always seems to read “Default“, no matter what I name the AD, LDD, or DD.
• When the validation of a deployment diagram finds “warnings“, these then become “errors“ in the deployment report.
• It seems that Visual Studio is applying my "Clean Build" source control policy when checking in Distributed System Designer solutions, which don't have any code to "build". You can always override the policy constraint; but, this is a pain.

Just a small list of some bugs I've run across, and fixes where applicable.  (Right now all of the fixes seem to involve shutting down and restarting VS2005 -- Clicking Refresh anywhere doesn't seem to work.)  Rob Carron has responded to a few of these in the comments.  I've copied them here in red.

1) Newly created Iterations are not available to use in new Work Items until VS2005 is shut down and restarted.

I've confirmed this is a known issue.

2) If you are assigned a Work Item, such as a Task, from someone at another computer, it is not enough to simply Refresh the Work Items folder.  You must close and reopen VS2005.

Refreshing the Work Items folder will show you new queries, but not new work items. To see new work items, you'll need to refresh an open query. Otherwise, just open a query.

3) When creating an Application Diagram: if you drag an ASP.NET WebService onto the design surface, you get the same shape and defaults as when you drag an ASP.NET WebApplication.  (Although this may be TECHNICALLY correct, it is very confusing to have two different items to drag over that have nearly identical graphical images).  When implemening, the only selections are based on Web Sites, however the do correctly implement into a Web Service.

4) When a unit test project is created by Test1, and checked into source control, and then Dev1 on a different machine opens up the same project (from File -> Recent Projects), Dev1 is alerted that a new project has been added to the solution and prompted to include the new project.  When Dev1 says “Yes“ to downloading the project, a message saying that the SCC database is corrupt is raised.  However, by going to File -> Open from Source Control you can get the whole solution with the new projects and everything works!

5) Error messages seem to occur on a fairly regular basis (one every 30 minutes or so of heavy use).  Almost always they are easily recoved from.  This isn't much help, but you know you're not alone!  It may have to do with memory.  We have TFS running in its own VPC with 1.5 Gig of memory, and 11 clients each in VPCs with only 640 Meg of memory.  The errors are annoying, but generally non-reproducible, so I think it has something to do with memory or configuration in some way.

6) When you delete a file inside of SCC (from the Source Control Explorer), then reattempt to add a file with the same name, you get an error telling you that a file with the same name exists in Source Control.  Fix: Simply close and reopen VS2005 on the client.

7) Not technically Team System, but VS2005 error.  When you build a web service in VS2005 Beta 2, then build a deployment package for that web service and finally deploy it to an IIS web server, it sets the desired version of the Framework to version 1.1, not 2.0!!!!  Fix: Go into IIS and fix it there.

8) When you create a new Team Project, and then go visit the Team Project Portal (the SharePoint site), you will always get two control errors: “unable to locate control: ctl00oreportcell”. If you close or minimize the Builds, Bug Rates, and Quality Indicators, the errors go away ... or they are hidden at least.

9) When you open the Project Portal (in WSS), you are given the option of looking at the process guidance (link on Quick Launch).  Way cool, but once you're there, there is no easy way back to previous page.  The browser's Back button won't work.  Fix: use the drop down on the browser's back button, and go back two pages!

10) When you use a Project Query to query your work items, it appears that you are sorting ascending on ID (it's got the little up arrow), however, if you've added some items it is not in order.  (But then again, there are THREE things with the arrow show sorting, so I'm not sure which is the primary sort order.)  OK, not a bug, but weird.

11)  When you copy a Work Item, you are automatically assigned in the “Assigned To:“ column, instead of the person who was originally assigned.  Fix:  Reassign!

12) In addition to 11 there are some refresh issues with the old “Assigned To:“.  In fact, when you highlight the copied work item it shows “newAssignee“ in the Assigned to column, but when you highlight something else, it goes back to “oldAssignee“. If you rehighlight, the “newAssignee“ shows up again, etc.  Fix:  Rerun the query.

13) When you go to Check in a piece of code, and you are only working with one Team Project, you often want to associate the checkin with a work item.  However, when you do so, you are shown the work items from all the Team Projects on the entire TFS server, even though you may not even be a member of those.  Workaround:  Try to ignore the frustration. 

14) Big one!  Risk is a type of Work Item in the Agile 4.0 methodology help files, but it is NOT available as a work item in the MSF 4.0 Agile template in Team System.

Tips:

1) In the Distributed System Designers, when connection applications or logical servers, and your lines look messy, right-click any of the connections, and choose “Redraw Connection”.  This works GREAT for beautifying your connections.

2) When starting VS2005, you can use the Right-Click -> Run As... command to log in as a different user.  You then interact with TFS as the “run as” identity.  This can be useful if you're giving Team System demos on VPC and don't want to continually log in and out of the VPC.  Hint: you can even have two copies of VS2005 running, each under a different identity!

3) When creating a new project, you can select “Add this project to Source Control“.  Don't do this!  It will AUTOMATICALLY create a new directory somewhere in the SCC directory structure, and it seems like this is simply the last place you added something!  So if you're working on a different team project, you'll be in the wrong location.  Instead, leave the box unchecked, and then right click the project or solution in the Solution Explorer, and add to Source Control that way.  You then have full control over the location (on the TFS box) of your source files.

4) Occasionally in Team Suite, my Task Manager shows the devenv.exe using well over 200, even 300mb of RAM at times. This is a good time to exit and restart Visual Studio 2005.

5) After viewing your Deployment Report in Internet Explorer, save it as a Web Archive (single file .MHT) and then you can upload this to the project portal, embedding all the graphics and such into the one file.

Just a small list of some bugs I've run across, and fixes where applicable.  (Right now all of the fixes seem to involve shutting down and restarting VS2005 -- Clicking Refresh anywhere doesn't seem to work.)  Rob Carron has responded to a few of these in the comments.  I've copied them here in red.

1) Newly created Iterations are not available to use in new Work Items until VS2005 is shut down and restarted.

I've confirmed this is a known issue.

2) If you are assigned a Work Item, such as a Task, from someone at another computer, it is not enough to simply Refresh the Work Items folder.  You must close and reopen VS2005.

Refreshing the Work Items folder will show you new queries, but not new work items. To see new work items, you'll need to refresh an open query. Otherwise, just open a query.

3) When creating an Application Diagram: if you drag an ASP.NET WebService onto the design surface, you get the same shape and defaults as when you drag an ASP.NET WebApplication.  (Although this may be TECHNICALLY correct, it is very confusing to have two different items to drag over that have nearly identical graphical images).  When implemening, the only selections are based on Web Sites, however the do correctly implement into a Web Service.

4) When a unit test project is created by Test1, and checked into source control, and then Dev1 on a different machine opens up the same project (from File -> Recent Projects), Dev1 is alerted that a new project has been added to the solution and prompted to include the new project.  When Dev1 says “Yes“ to downloading the project, a message saying that the SCC database is corrupt is raised.  However, by going to File -> Open from Source Control you can get the whole solution with the new projects and everything works!

5) Error messages seem to occur on a fairly regular basis (one every 30 minutes or so of heavy use).  Almost always they are easily recoved from.  This isn't much help, but you know you're not alone!  It may have to do with memory.  We have TFS running in its own VPC with 1.5 Gig of memory, and 11 clients each in VPCs with only 640 Meg of memory.  The errors are annoying, but generally non-reproducible, so I think it has something to do with memory or configuration in some way.

6) When you delete a file inside of SCC (from the Source Control Explorer), then reattempt to add a file with the same name, you get an error telling you that a file with the same name exists in Source Control.  Fix: Simply close and reopen VS2005 on the client.

7) Not technically Team System, but VS2005 error.  When you build a web service in VS2005 Beta 2, then build a deployment package for that web service and finally deploy it to an IIS web server, it sets the desired version of the Framework to version 1.1, not 2.0!!!!  Fix:

Eric Lee gives a presentation on Enterprise Dev and Testing Tools in VS2005 Team System.

A great talk about the WHY of team development.  Why is team development important?  How can Team System help?

Eric is a great presenter.  The audience is hooked, and he's on a roll! 

Cool points:

• Everything in VS Team Foundation Server (TFS) is exposed as a web service, so you can develop any kind of client that you like.  Don't like the built-in support for Excel and Project?  Build a new one!
• You can plug into the event system!  You can create a Web Service, and then TFS will call YOU!  Almost a SOAP call-back!  You can already set up email notifications when it changes.
• TFS can handle all of your administrative UI stuff. 
• Team Build - coming soon - you'll be able to do a scheduled build, run the unit tests, coverage tests, etc, and will generate a build report!  Oh, way cool!
• Code Analyzer (was FxCop) - rules engine that is fully extensible and configurable.  You can catch the errors that are well known.  "This will allow you to focus on making new errors." (got a good laugh)
• Code Profiler - It's been used for many years at Microsoft.  Makes testing your code for performance much easier!
• Unit Tests - I'm very excited about this!  Programmers NEED to use Unit Tests, and they just don't, since it's an initial hurdle.  But once you've done it, you're sold! 
• Unit Tests can use data binding to expand the unit testing to be very powerful!
• Unit Tests can run against web applications.
• Testing infrastructure is robust enough to handle MS internal tests, which can number in the 10s of thousands of tests.  Cool!
• Team Testing is extensible - “More time spent being sure testing was extensible than in building tests.“
• Reports include quality measurements at the development level and deployment level.

Time for a demo!  Cool stuff from the demo:

• XSD Schemas are shipped for every notification, so you can actually generate your own classes to consume them!
• Code coverage data is exportable to XML format!
• Code coverage can merge the results of several different test runs!  So test runs can be aggregated.
• Code coverage results can be aggregated before sending the report to TFS.  Reports can then be generated based on the reports.
• Test Manager UI - a great UI for a tester who is responsible for hundreds or thousands of tests.
• He's demonstrating the code analysis tools specifically to find the SQL injection vulnerability, this is WAY, WAY cool!  And the door is WIDE open for 3rd parties.  This is INCREDIBLE!
• Now he's showing the tests for memory leaks, possible buffer overruns, and several other more advanced tests.  This is literally AMAZING, absolutely AMAZING!
• Demonstration of a custom validation rule for a web test (and how the object model can be used in the web tests).  Another way, way cool feature.  And it worked like a champ!
• There's a wizard to help you configure the profiling of a web application.  This is a huge improvement over what I've seen before.

This is incredible!  Between Ajay and Eric, the audience has been exposed to so much cool stuff in Visual Studio Team System.  And they are enthralled!  This product is going to be BIG!  It's already 6:30 in the evening and the keynote room is still filled with people, all literally sitting on the edge of their seats.

I can hardly stand it!  I'm so fidgety with excitement!  I'm writing a MOC course on this topic, so I'm familiar with so much of the presentation.  But to see the reactions of the people here, and to see the number of doors opened by this technology is so exciting!  The possibilities for 3rd party extensions here are just amazing!!!

Ajay Sudan is presenting an overview of Team System at VSLive2005.  He's giving an excellent overview of the entire topic.  To be cleaned up later...

Cool Info:

• Team foundation will support up to 500 developers out of the box.  For more developers, TFS installs can be 'chained'.
• You can create a new project by BRANCHING from an existing project!!
• Can install your companies data center as a 'drag and drop' control from the toolbox.
• Code Coverage is easy!  You can show how much of your code is covered by your unit tests with a few clicks!

Demo: Adventure Works - Expose web services to the outside world.  Will need to move to a three-tier architecture

• Create a new project - Give it a name
• Pick a development process template - MSF 4.0 Agile or MSF 4.0 Complete
• This creates a group of tasks, and a structure with document templates needed to use MSF 4.0 Agile (or whatever you picked)
• Name the project portal - this will create a Sharepoint site
• He's opening up a new design surface using the Application Designer
• He simply drags two new web services to the diagram and connects them.  This is the power of the designers!
• He's viewing the “Settings and Constraints“ that he wants for the Web Services.  This is a cool feature that ties into the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).
• Ajay stresses that he's just 'whiteboarding' right now.
• But here comes the “Generate“ click, and BINGO! the application is designed.
• A quick switch to the Logical Datacenter Designer.  This will allow an IT expert to define restrictions, etc of the IT architecture.  Once again, this is a tie-in to the DSI (using the System Definition Model (SDM)).
• He's adding a new a new Distributed System Diagram to the project, and doing the drag drop.
• Using the AdventureWorks Center that the IT folks already installed in the toolbox.
• He's binding the services created in the Application Diagram object to the actual infrastructure of the AdventureWorks servers in the Logical Datacenter Diagram. 
• We can now validate the diagram to ensure that all constraints are met, and that we can deploy the application.
• The validation failed, since AdWorks is using NT4 and the web services require Windows Server 2003.
• So, he simply adds a Work Item, telling the Infrastructure Architect to upgrade the server! 
• Now, he's generating code.
• By right-clicking, he's able to generate a new unit test.  (This kicks butt, and will be available in VS Professional, too)
• So, he can easily build unit tests against against the code.
• In addition, the can show the code coverage easily.
• Now, when he runs the application, the code coverage will run and he can see how much of his code is covered by the unit tests. (Green highlights are code that is covered, Red highlights show code that isn't covered).
• Now he does the Static Code Analysis - remember, it's extensible.
• Cool piece!  He's setting up a rule that forces devs to run static code analysis, code coverage and unit tests BEFORE allowing them to check in code.
• Class Designer is next - he's stressing that the code and designer are different views of the same thing (there is no 'round tripping' going on here)
• Now he's built the code to make the Web service run. (The web service sends an instant message to his IM client.)
• Now it's time for integration with AdWorks.  What happens is that when the customer checks out, they will be sent an IM thanking them for their purpose. 
• What makes it easy is that the proxies are all created automatically when the architecture was designed.
  Next test will be a Web Test. 
• This will record his click streams as he wanders through his application.
• Now, he's got his 'test', but he needs to extend it to order more than just one item.
• So he uses the UI to extend the test to order multiple different items.  These items will come from a database, randomly.
• Now, using the web test, he's going to extend it by adding a Load Test
• Load Tests are a container for any types of test.  Can run a constant stress, or ramp up over time.  You can also specify which tests you want to run. 
• with Load tests you can simluate think time, browser types, and network types.
• The load tests will collect lots of different performance counters.  There are three groupings of perf counters to help you.
• Now, running the load test, and the data starts to plot out graphically.
• By opening up the IM client, we can see that the test is running, since he's getting lots of IM alerts.
• There are built in thresholds and reasonable numbers that you can use, just in case you're not an expert at interpreting performance counters.
• Back to VSTS.
• He's going to check in his code, and he's associating the code checked in with the work items he was assigned.
• He's mentioning shelving - a temporary branch that can be used to store code at the server without officially checking it in.
• Key point: VSTS tracks important data without the need to individually ask developers for input.  Yea!

Great presentation and demo!  Lot's of excitement in the crowd!!  YES!!!  VSTS ROCKS!

Martin Danner (web site) of Arrowrock has agreed to assist us in developing Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) for Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).  He's an expert in process methodologies, UML and project management -- all critical experiences for us right now!  Plus he's a smart developer with solid business experience, and an overall great guy. 

Looks like he'll also be writing some VSTS Whitepapers for MSDN, and also becoming a general VSTS expert.  Welcome aboard, Martin!

OK.  I've mentioned before...  Don't even begin to install any of the Team System components without reading the Installation Guide.  Of course, if you're not an MCSE type (I know I'm not), there are certain unfortunate assumptions made.  “Set up a domain controller with all the appropriate settings.”  Uh...  OK...  And how do I do that.  Luckily, Paul Murphy (a brilliant MS employee, who also happens to be a great sailor) has a post to help us out!  Check out http://blogs.aspadvice.com/pmurphy/archive/2004/12/23/2035.aspx for all the details!  Oh, and check out his blog, too!

The newest CTP supporting VSTS is here!  It's now available for download for those with MSDN subscriptions.  I'd highly recommend you read the installation guide BEFORE attempting to even begin the install (especially if the older CTP was any indication of the difficulty of installation for this CTP).  And, as always, go to Rob Caron's blog for the latest install news.  (Yes, he ALREADY has a post discussing the new installation script for the Dec CTP!  It's at http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2004/12/22/330396.aspx) 

Once again, Microsoft shows they “Get it” when it comes to developers!  About 30 developers and other interested participants were treated to specific answers to specific questions from the VSTS team at Micrsosoft. 

MSDN India hosted the chat on VSTS at the programmer-friendly 2:30 AM PST (my time here in Seattle, so it was easy to catch before heading off to bed).  I didn't recognize all the names of the experts, but their screen names were Amit, Akash, Khushboo, Rob Caron, Keith_Rowe.  Every one of them had spot-on answers to the hard questions.  I have to admit to hogging question time, but the experts were all very gracious about it. 

I'll post a link to the chat transcript soon!  OK, time for bed!

Thanks to Christopher Bowen for reminding me to use the Visual Studio 2005 newgroups!  There's finally a reasonable amount of traffic there, and its a great place to get your questions answered!  If a Google search doesn't get you a satisfying answer, the newsgroups should!  Plus, it's a great place for Microsoft to get feedback to improve the product. 

There are 12 different newsgroups, just in the VSTS section!  Plus you can get info on SQL CLR, C#, MSBuild and tons of other technologies!  You can check out the newsgroups via web at http://communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.asp?icp=whidbey&slcid=us or you can use your NNTP reader. 

Coming up tomorrow morning at 2:30 am (December 23rd).  Yes, that's 2:30 AM.  Finally, Microsoft is scheduling chats during standard developer hours!  Now we won't have to drag our butts out of bed at some ungodly pre-noon hour! 

There's more chats in January, too.  Don't miss them!  I wasn't able to attend the last two, but Rich Hundhausen (also from Accentient, Inc) was.  And he got a good chunk of his questions answered right then and there!  Check them out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats.

Hat tip:  Richard Hundhausen (http://blog.hundhausen.com/)

Accentient has been contracted by Microsoft to design the first Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) course for Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).  VSTS is one of the most compelling new technologies to come out of Microsoft since .NET.  It allows developers, testers, architects and even program managers to work together to build software.  Now, these types of systems are nothing new.  What IS new is the fantastic integration with Visual Studio, and the was development metrics are collected and reported.  One of the reasons developers tend to hate team tools, is that they have to open up a different application and enter things like “I'm XX% done”.  That tends to be both a hassle for the developers and a source of errors (developers seem to spend over half of any given development project at an internal estimate that they are 80% complete).  VSTS does most of this tracking automatically.  VSTS isn't just a reporting tool though; it has other wonderful features!  It brings Test Driven Development into the mainstream.  Many developers have learned the wonders of NUnit for unit testing.  VSTS now brings unit testing into the development environment.  Plus, it's extensible, so you can still use many of the unit testing tools you've gotten used to.  I'm not going to enumerate all the wonders of VSTS now, but I'll create a searchable category on this blog for “Team System”.  Come back for more posts!