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 ...

"USA Customers get FREE Maple Syrup and Crystallized Honey samples from Vermont. USA Customers get one 1.7 oz. sample of 100% Proof Grade A Maple Syrup from Maple Grove Farms and one 2 oz. sample of Grade A Crystallized Honey from Champlain Valley Apiaries."

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.

Here's the install script for TFS, both Dual and Single server install.  Thanks to Etienne Tremblay (VSTS MVP) for all his hard work in putting this together, and updating it for SQL Server 2005 SP1.  

TFSInstallScripts.zip (39.73 KB)

The best tool is the simplest.  It shouldn't get in the way of doing things, and it should be incredibly easy.  One of my favorite Agile dev tools is the digital camera.  Simply snap a quick photo of your whiteboard and you've got a good replacement for a $10,000 whiteboard with print / scan capabilities.  Plus, you then have it in digital format!  No need for scanning.

The problem is that you have flash reflections, etc, and that makes the image harder to read.  You need to do some image manipulation to really make it easy to read and understand.  And it should be in TIF or PDF format if you want to do OCR.  So, head to www.scanr.com  This great little web site takes a digital photo of a white board, and converts it to a very nice PDF document.  It eliminates most of the flash, rotates the image if you've taken a photo of the white board from the side, and saves it as a nice, high-quality PDF.  Check it out!

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.

I just found Protolize.  It's a great resource for web development - everything from Ajax to XHTML.  It's basically a collection of pointers (done very nicely) to various web resources.  Very nice!

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!