VSTS Guidance ...

Visual Studi Team System Guidance is now available on CodePlex

The purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.

VSTS Future Releases ...

Microsoft released their roadmap for Team System and Team Foundation Server on MSDN.

Check it to see the many additions planned for VSTS and TFS, which target architects, developers, testers, and database professionals (in addition, of course, to project managers).

TeamPlain is now Free for TFS Customers!!

As part of an acquisition made by Microsoft over devBix, TeamPlain is now free for TFS Customers. It can be downloaded here.

Check the PressPass.

Thanks Microsoft for the great addition ...

TeamPlain Web Access is a web interface for Microsoft® Team Foundation
Server that allows managing work items, shared documents, reports and source control repositories.

• Streamlines Team System usage
• Enables broader participation to development lifecycle
• Allows cross platform access to Team Foundation Server (TFS)
• Enables fine grained security configurations not present in TFS
• Helps organizations to leverage their Team System migration and adoptation

TFS Branching Guidance ...

TFS Branching Guidance is now available on CodePlex

The purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around doing branching and merging using Team Foundation Server. It's a collaborative effort between industry experts, Microsoft Services, patterns & practices, and VSTS team members.

Work Item Tracking ...

Brian A. Randel just published a great article on Work Item Tracking. It can be found on MSDN VS2005 Technical Articles

The Work Item Tracking subsystem offered by Team Foundation Server exposes a rich object model for integration with your own solutions. Accessing work item information from any application only requires a few lines of code. In addition, when building an application, you can let the built-in controls do the heavy lifting to provide a rich and consistent interface. In the next column, I'll show you how to integrate work item support into the add-in that I started in the previous column.

Performance Testing Guidance

Patterns & Practices: Performance Testing Guidance is now available on CodePlex.

The purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around doing performance testing and using Visual Studio 2005.

It's a collaborative effort between industry experts, Microsoft ACE, Patterns & Practices, Premier, and VSTS team members.

Usage Scenarios:

• Improve efficiency and effectiveness of your performance testing
• Learn expert techniques performance testing
• Apply expert techniques for performance testing using Visual Studio.NET 2005

Database Unit Testing with VSTS for DB Professionals

Sachin Rekhi just published his detailed whitepaper on Database Unit Testing.

It can be found on MSDN VS2005 Technical Articles

Summary: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals is the first toolset to deliver a comprehensive framework for performing database unit tests. This product brings to the data community the same first-class capabilities for performing unit tests that many application developers enjoy today. This paper explains exactly what database unit testing is, shows you how to develop database unit tests by using the framework, and walks you through how to leverage its rich capabilities to develop an effective strategy for performing database unit tests inside your organization.

Viewing Other Users' Pending Changes in VS

You can always view other users' Pending Changes by Running "tf status /user:* $/ /r" but it's not that neat and appealing to everyone.

Ekobit released a new free VS Add-In that allows you to directly see other users' Pending Changes from withing VS2005.

Check it out!!

Using the List Pending Changes browser is relatively simple. You can access
the browser from the View menu -> Other Windows -> List Pending Changes
menu item. In order to list checked out files you must fill out the Path input
field. Path input field represents the root of your search and it must be in
Visual Studio Team System source control path format (example: $/MyProject).
Beside entering the path manualy you may use the Path field as a combo box and
select the path from the given list of paths.

TFS Work Item Management Outlook Addin

The SRL Team has released an Addin for MS Outlook that connects to TFS.

You can generate a Work Item right from MS Outlook. You can view queries, you can search your work items, you can even generate a work item based on content from an email.

Subject can be mapped to task title, body to description, or any field can by mapped to anything else.

Customising TFS Builds with MSBuild Tasks

I just came acrossa great help for customizing TFS Builds, The MSBuild Community Tasks Project which is an open source project for MSBuild tasks. The goal of the project is to provide a collection of open source tasks for MSBuild.

VSTS Add In - Search Work Items

Finally a great Add In that provides keyword search to be searched across all fields in all workitems.

The tool does the search whil giving thought on performance impact and providing a template to reduce such impact.

Check the Search Work Items Add In on Noah Coad's Blog post.

Visual Studio 4.0 SDK is Now Available Including Updates to TFS Extensibility Documentation

The Visual Studio 4.0 SDK was released early March '07.

On behalf of the VS Tools Ecosystem team, we are pleased to announce that after months of hard work, we have completed shipping the VS SDK 4.0 RTM release! We have done tons of work to make this release friendly to developers who are new to Visual Studio extensibility. It is available for immediate download on the Microsoft Download Center.

We are excited to present some of the new features included in this release:

• VS SDK Browser – the new entry-point to the entire SDK; includes new QuickStart Tutorials and a completely revamped sample browsing experience
• Package Load Analyzer – allows developers to easily debug package load failures
• Toolbox Installer redistributable package – allows component vendors that simplifies deployment, along with sample
• TFS Contents – new and updated TFS samples and documentation
• Sandcastle – new set of tools for generating managed class library documentation (Sandcastle)
• Updated Setup experience
• And much more!

Here's what's new in it for TFS in particular.
Team Foundation Server Extensibility

• New Work Item Custom Control API Sample and Help Documentation
• Demonstrates how to use the Work Item Custom Control APIs introduced in Visual Studio 2005 SP1.
• New Version Control Merge History API Documentation
• Demonstrates how to use the enhanced QueryMergesWithDetails API introduced in Visual Studio 2005 SP1.
• Updated Team Explorer PcwTESample
• This sample can be found in \VisualStudioTeamSystemIntegration\Team Explorer and Project Creation\PcwTESample\.
• Fixed problems that prevented the sample from building.
• Updated Team Foundation Server Collectibles Sample
• This sample can be found in \VisualStudioTeamSystemIntegration\Team Foundation Core Services\ExtendingTeamFoundationSample\.
• Re-written to use best practices.
• Updated ReadMe.doc to reflect new architecture.
• All Team Foundation Server Pubic Assemblies Updated to Visual Studio 2005 SP1
• These assemblies can be found in \VisualStudioIntegration\Common\Assemblies\.
• Updated Team Foundation Server BisSubscribe.exe Tool
• This tool was updated to the RTM version and can be found in \VisualStudioTeamSystemIntegration\Utilities\EventSubscriptionTool\.
• The SDK version of this tool now provides unsubscribe capability.
• Added Visual Studio Team Explorer Package GUID’s, Menu ID’s and Group ID’s Header Files
• The newly provided header file contains the constants required for integrating with existing Team Explorer shortcut menus when you create Visual Studio Integration Package projects. The TFS_VC_IDs.h file can be found in \VisualStudioTeamSystemIntegration\Version Control\ and the TFS_WIT_IDs.h file can be found in \VisualStudioTeamSystemIntegration\Work Item Tracking\.

VS2005 SP1 Vista Update Now Available

VS2005 SP1 update for Vista is now available on download center.

You can download the update from Microsoft Downloads.

You've to apply VS2005 SP1 before applying this update on Vista.

TFS Migration Toolkit Specs Published

If you are interested in writing version control or work item tracking conversion tools, be sure to check it out the TFS Migration Toolkit Specs that has been just published and give them your feedback.