TFS Admin Tool 1.4 Beta Released

The TFS Admin Tool 1.4 beta is now available on CodePlex.

The new beta version provides support for SQL Server 2008. It also contains a lot of code cleanup as housekeeping so that the full set of Code Analysis Rules run against the code come back largely clean or suppressed (suppressed a minimum amount).

Visual Studio DB Professional 2010 Oracle Support

Quest Software has announced that they will be creating an Oracle Database Schema Provider for Visual Studio Team System 2010, which means that all Team System users having Oracle databases in their applications will get the same benefits from the Database Edition as those given to SQL Server databases.

Quest has opened up a Beta program on their TeamFuze.net site for Oracle Professionals using Team System.

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Language Releases

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Team just released 6 additional languages of the recently released GDR on Microsoft Download Center as follows:

Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/9/D/19D1CB8C-82A8-4736-AFF4-51F2E343A312/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/9/D/19D1CB8C-82A8-4736-AFF4-51F2E343A312/setup.exe

German

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/E/F/6EFD0F85-C8C3-4B47-9426-22B0ED4D12CE/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/E/F/6EFD0F85-C8C3-4B47-9426-22B0ED4D12CE/setup.exe

Spanish

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/1/0/A10A906C-5CB9-4DAE-9CC2-B4B233B8AD6B/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/1/0/A10A906C-5CB9-4DAE-9CC2-B4B233B8AD6B/setup.exe

Italian

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/1/6313DB42-DBC5-499F-AB3E-2119689A6A3E/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/1/6313DB42-DBC5-499F-AB3E-2119689A6A3E/setup.exe

Japanese

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/1/3D14DB8E-4507-4AC3-BE96-DDD5E1FF1C8B/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/1/3D14DB8E-4507-4AC3-BE96-DDD5E1FF1C8B/setup.exe

Korean

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/C/2/0C2CAB8A-08D4-4354-9883-502C2639DB04/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/C/2/0C2CAB8A-08D4-4354-9883-502C2639DB04/setup.exe

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR is now RTW

I recently blogged about VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR RC1 which is now finally a RTW available for download from Microsoft Download Center :)

TFS Collaboration Providers

Team Foundation Server Collaboration Providers is a new CodePlex Project that targets Community Contribution for Collaboration providers for different IM and VoIP integration as the TFS 2008 Power Tools enables rich integration with other team members via IM and VoIP chat.

The Power Tools integrates with Live Communicator and Windows Live Messenger Out of the Box.

Skype Provider Initial version is now available as the first Collaboration Provider in the project with more to come ...

VSTS 2008 TFS Power Tools - October 2008 Release

The TFS Power Tools October 2008 Release is now available for download on Microsoft Download Center

New in the October Release

Team Members (NEW!)

• Adds a new node under each Team Project to the Team Explorer called "Team Members" that identifies people who work on the project.
• Serves as a "pivot point" for information about and operations on people and teams.

Windows Shell Extension (NEW!)

• Allows core version control operations within Windows Explorer without using Team Explorer.

PowerShell Support (NEW!)

• Provides a PowerShell pipeline and cmdlets for TFS. Initial support is for basic version control operations.

TFPT (Updated)

• tfpt searchcs - the Search Changesets Power Tool brings up a dialog from which the user can search for changesets that match specific combination of criteria including server path, committed date range, committed user, check-in comments and check-in notes.
• tfpt unshelve /undo - finds all pending changes in your workspace that match the changes in the shelveset and undoes them (including deleting the local files for pending adds).

Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is available for download from Microsoft Download Center

This package is an add-on for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2.
It can be installed on top of either Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1, and it provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.

This download will install the following:

• Silverlight 2 developer runtime
• Silverlight 2 software development kit
• KB956453 for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  and/or
  KB956485 for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1
• Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  and/or
  Silverlight Tools for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes:

• Visual Basic and C# Project templates
• Intellisense and code generators for XAML
• XAML design preview
• Debugging of Silverlight applications
• Remote debugging of Silverlight applications for Mac
• Web reference support
• WCF Templates
• Team Build and command line build support
• Integration with Expression Blend

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR RC1 is now available

Gert Drapers has just announced that VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Release Candidate 1 is now available for download from Microsoft Download Center.

This version will provide an upgrade path to the RTM so it worth trying out …

The documentation as well is available for downloading.

TFS Admin Tool 1.3 Released For TFS 2008 on CodePlex!

An updated version of the TFS Admin tool (v 1.3) has been released on CodePlex.

This version of the tool supports TFS 2008 and WSS 3.0. It can be used to help manage User and Permission settings across TFS, SharePoint and SQL Server Reporting Services platforms.

TFS to TFS Migration Tool Pre-Release Available on CodePlex!

Back in June the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit was released, the toolkit helps migrating data between 3rd party version control and bug tracking systems and TFS.

Having multiple locations and on site development arose the idea of having a TFS to TFS tool as well, so work was begun on writing a TFS to TFS migration tool based on the toolkit.

A pre-release of this TFS to TFS Migration Tool is now available on CodePlex!

This tool enables migration of work items and version control items with history between TFS servers. To learn more about the tool, you can visit the TFS to TFS Migration Tool page on CodePlex.

The purpose of this pre-release is for testing and stabilizing of the tool before officially releasing the tool.

VS 2005 TFS Power Tools Updated

Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Power Tools is a set of enhancements, tools and command-line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server user experience.

This release includes everything from the previous Power Tools release and includes two great new tools, the Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer and Work Item Templates.

Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer
This release of the Team Foundation Power Tools includes the first release of the Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer (Team Foundation Server BPA).

The Team Foundation Server BPA is a diagnostic tool that performs the following functions:

• Gathers configuration information from a Team Foundation Server deployment
• Performs specific tests on the Team Foundation Server deployment
• Analyzes the collected information according to specific rules and reports the findings as information, warning, or error messages
• Provides links to articles to resolve warning and error messages

You can use the Team Foundation Server BPA in either a pre-installation or a production Team Foundation Server environment. You can use the Team Foundation Server BPA to perform the following tasks:

• Proactively verify that the Team Foundation Server configuration is set according to recommended best practices
• Determine configurations that differ from default, recommended, or required settings
  Identify the source of problems in an unhealthy Team Foundation Server deployment

Work Item Templates
Team Foundation Power Tools installs a Work Item Templates feature that supports the ability to create, apply, capture, and set default work item templates. This feature adds additional menu items to the Team Work Item Templates menu.

You use work item templates to create or update work items. Work item templates automatically set field values. This feature conveniently reduces the number of steps to create or update work items. For example, you can create a task template that will set the area path, iteration path, and discipline whenever you use it to create or edit a task.

VSTS Web Access for TFS 2008 Updated

MS released a new version of VSTS Web Access.

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

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.

The only things left to do for the Final Web Access Power Tool release for VSTS 2008 are publishing some documentation, producing the localized builds and going through the final release process. The final version will be released about the same time VSTS 2008 is released.

The big advances in this update include:

• 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, we hope to remove the requirement to install any version of Team Explorer.
• Custom control support - We've 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 - We 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 - We've added support for localizing the web interface and are preparing to hand off our text to the localization team so they can begin preparing localized versions for the final 2008 Power Tool release.
• Bug fixes & Performance improvements - We've received a number of reports and done more testing ourselves on the last version of the Power Tool that we shipped and we have fixed everything we know of.

Team System Web Access Power Tool Available!

Team System Web Access Power Tool is released the as the first "official" power tool release of Team System Web Access. It can be downloaded from here.

When Microsoft first acquired DevBiz, they provided v1.0 of TeamPlain for download. Based on customer demand, they uploaded a preview of TeamPlain 2.0. Neither were supported by Microsoft customer support but both were available for download by all TFS licensed users.

With the release of the Team System Web Access Power Tool, several things have changed.

This version is based on the TeamPlain 2.0 code base but a great deal of work has gone into it since March.

Although, it is still not yet an officially released Microsoft product it has taken some great strides, including:

• Microsoft Customer Support Services will now support it.
• The code has been run through the Microsoft release process which is an extensive gauntlet of checks that help ensure quality. Among the more important ones is a security review to make sure the code is not susceptible to attack.
• MS have tested it to a moderate degree (including internally dogfooding it for a couple of months).
• It contains numerous bug fixes beyond what was in the last available download. Some notable ones include:
• Because of dogfooding they have made substantial additional performance improvements - particularly on first page load and work item load and save.
• They have re-branded it as Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access
• They have improved some of the graphics and visuals.
• They removed all of the old licensing code that required separate keys to be entered.
• Improved error logging and added Dr. Watson support so reports of any crashes you experience can be sent to MS for investigation.

It also includes most of the features originally on the TeamPlain 2.0 feature list, including:

General Improvements

• Better, faster and easier with the new Ajax user interface
• Dramatic performance improvements for large team projects with a lot of work items, queries, area paths, and people
• Theme support for the user interface (and a new Olive theme)
• Manage alerts, subscribe to custom alerts
• Home page customizations
• Many dialogs open in their own window now, such as the work item editor, report viewer, file viewer and build results

Work Item Tracking

• Ajax style design to avoid page reloads and to provide live feedback about the status of the work items
• Work item type icons
• Context sensitive menus for work items
• Improved web controls to handle large datasets better
• Improved query editor with grouping
• Edit multiple work items at once (bulk editing)
• Add related work item
• Create copy of a work item
• Send work items and query results as email
• Copy queries between team projects

Build

• There is a new "Build" tab in this release, allowing to manage team builds.
• View the list of builds, and apply filters
• Start a new build
• Monitor build progress live
• View build logs, errors or warnings
• Stop running builds
• Delete a build
• Change the quality of a build

Source Control

• Faster browsing
• Visual Diff for text files
• Annotate (a.k.a. Blame)
• Download the latest or a previous version of a file