This post shows how to customize the SQL query used by the Team Foundation Server 2010 SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Stories Overview Report. The objective is to show test status for the current version while including user story status of the current and prior versions. Why? Because we don’t copy completed user stories into the next release. We only want one instance of a user story for the product because we believe copies can get out of sync when they are supposed to be the same. In the...
There are pieces of information spread out on this in various postings for SQL Server Reporting Services used in Team Foundation Server. Here are two: Customizing Report Parameters for Team Foundation Server 2010 TFS 2010: Using Stories Progress in your Dashboards but scoped to Iteration or Areas I will attempt to pull together the essential information. First, there are two ways that SSRS reports filter on iteration and area path: …MDXParam (i.e. Query Based) parameter. For example, the Stories...
UPDATE April 8th 2012: April Update of Visual Studio 11 Beta. Added Code Contracts - released for Dev 11. New version of NuGet Manager This post is a list of the extensions I recommend for use with Visual Studio 11. It’s coming up all the time – what to install, where are the download sites, last version, etc etc, and thus I thought it better to post it here and keep it updated. The basics are Visual Studio 11 connected to a Team Foundation Server 11. Note that we now are at Beta time, and that also...
From Brian Keller: “I’m very pleased to announce the availability of the Visual Studio 11 Beta ALM Virtual Machine along with 6 hands-on-labs / demo scripts. This marks an exciting milestone in our journey towards RTM. You can now roll up your sleeves and start learning about the many capabilities we announced at TechEd North America last year and have been talking about in greater detail since then. You can download and install the beta of Visual Studio 11 (and Team Foundation Server 11, .NET Framework...
Most of us spend our time in Visual Studio writing .NET code within a Visual Studio solution. Given this situation we find it very easy to integrate with Team Foundation Server for our source control and have a well known work pattern. But what happens when you want to use TFS as source control for non-Microsoft development? The most important thing to remember is that source control should be as transparent as possible to the developer. If the particular language or product does not have an Integrated...
When you place a Visual Studio solution into TFS or pull it down for the first time a default working path is set in the workspace mappings. There are times when you need to point source code to a new location. Once option you have is to simply use the Manage Workspaces dialog to edit the local folder for the your solution. Select your workspace. Click on the Local Folder and an ellipse button will appear to allow to set a new folder. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t seem to consistently...
The Objective Three of the 6 development teams using TFS are moving to a different network and domain. There is no on-line connection between the old (source) and new (target) networks. The objective was for the teams to come in Monday morning, bring up their development machine on the new network and have everything as it had been on the old network. Failed Approaches Clone the data tier and move the data tier to the new network. This failed because the procedures for moving the hardware to a new...
I’ll be running a Team Foundation Server 2010 Deep Dive class twice this spring in Stockholm at our friends at Cornerstone. The class is 4 days and we will be “diving deep” into all aspects of TFS 2010, including: Deployment Administration Source Control Check-in Policies Branching strategies Work Items Office integration Reporting Customization Team Build Working with build definitions Developing Custom Activities Automatic deployment Test Management Microsoft Test Manager Creating and running manual...
Scribe - Test Scribe is a documentation power tool designed to construct documents directly from TFS for test plan and test run artefacts for the purpose of discussion, reporting etc. Scribe only works with Microsoft Test Manager, so if you needed to generate documentation for TFS Builds, what options do you have? You could potentially modify the Build Process template to generate report documentation as the build is executed or you could use the TFS data warehouse to extract data to create rich...
Hi Everyone, Welcome to my first blog! Here I will write things I find interesting, with particular focus on Team Foundation Server ... Regards, Dave...
The latest release of the Community TFS Build Extensions include a brand new tool called Community TFS Build Manager and has been created for two reasons: An implementation of the Team Foundation Build API which is referenced by the Rangers Build Customization Guidance V2 (available H1 2012) Provide a solution to a real problem. The Community TFS Build Manager is intended to ease the management of builds in medium to large Team Foundation Server environments, though it does provide a few features...
We needed to swap out the DB box. Our DB box runs SQL Server, SSRS and SSAS. The AT is on its own box and SharePoint is on its own box.NOTE: I will update the blog post per resolution of the issue :) The Microsoft procedure I used was: Restore Data to a Different Server or Instance Setup new DB box with WS08 R2 with all updates applied. Installed SQL SQL 2008 R2 on new DB box (same version as on the old DB box). Took TFS offline. Disabled the transaction backup job from existing backup plan (runs...
In this blog post I’ll be walking you through the process of customizing the TFS 2011 Scrum 2.0 Process Template to add a new work item type, introducing new work item queries, modifying existing queries, adding new reports, etc. To give you a bit of context, at the 2011 ALM Summit Anu Bharadwaj presented a talk on Exploratory Testing highlighting how the Team @ Microsoft took advantage of MTM 2011 to test various VS ALM products in the “fun” way by organizing “Testing Tours.” To dive deep in to...
Our TFS instance had been humming along for some time when I noticed that the full and incremental cube refresh jobs started failing. Using Grant Holiday’s “Team Foundation Server 2010 Administrative Report Pack” I was able to better visualize and diagnose the problem. The Problem The full error message was - OLE DB error: OLE DB or ODBC error: Login timeout expired; HYT00; A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found...
Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig. What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute...
So I thought I would change the name of my machine so that the other devs can find the TFS server easily. TFS 2005 would use the cool cmd line util tfsadminutil.....alas he is now gone HERE Are the steps to complete Edit the web.config and is usually located on default install C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config <add key="applicationDatabase" value="Data Source=JUSTIN\SQLI01;Initial Catalog=Tfs_Configuration;I... Security=True;"...
Ever found your self in this helpless situation where you think you have tried every possible suggestion on the internet to bring the build server back but it just won’t work. Well some times before hunting around for a solution it is important to understand what the problem is, if the error messages in the build logs don’t seem to help you can always enable tracing on the build server to get more information on what could possibly be the root cause of failure. In this blog post today I’ll be showing...
The updates are installed, all you want to do now is get connected, authenticated and get going. The first step needed here is to open Visual Studio 2010, once opened then you need to get to Team Explorer. Once there, you will click on the Connect to Team Project button on the toolbar. If you had a connection defined to another TFS environment, this will be adding one more, so you click on Servers… On the next dialog, you will click on Add… Then you will proceed to provide the details of your Team...
Once you have configured your online preview, then you can proceed to connect to it using Visual Studio 2010. In order to get Live ID authentication working and such, there is an update you need to apply. This is something that can be accessed through the Administration page, and then clicking on download software. Clicking on that link will take you to the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog. From this page, you will be able to download the needed component to connect and authenticate...
UPDATED Dec 8th 2011: Added Kanban book by David Anderson “Send me a list of books to read” – that is what I am often asked. No more, as this list is an answer to those request! I have divided it into different subject areas, and each area hold a small number of the books I have found most appropriate and covering for that area. I do love reading books, and there are so many good ones, but the list can’t go on forever. If you feel there are books I have not listed that you feel should be on this...
Welcome back, in part 1 of what is new in VS TFS 2011 I talked about the offering from a developers perspective. In this blog post I’ll be discussing the new features available for Business Analysts and Testers. While working on various ALM implementations the biggest challenge has been to strike the right balance between tools and processes, it is important to re-enforce that there is no substitute for communication. The delivery of a project on time and on budget are not the sole indicators of...
Welcome to my new blog on this site. My current blog is still on: http://hassanfad001.blogspo... and will be moved soon to this site. Stay tuned for all information about: - Visual Studio (VS) - Team Foundation Server (TFS) & Team Foundation Service (Hosted TFS) - Visual Studio Application Life Cycle Management (ALM) - Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) - SharePoint (SP) - Community & MVP Program related staff and Microsoft Technologies at all. - ....ect Thanks. Hassan...
Hi Migrate Quality Center to Team Foundation Server 2010 Using Scrat Scrat :Scrat converts and migrates all of your HP Quality Center™ projects and items over to Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010™. The migration is quick, easy and a safe process that completes in just a few hours Please refer thebelow url : http://www.sela.co.il/alm/p... Test-drive Scrat today: download your free trial version now (which is a fully working version limited to 50 migrated items). Thanks Abhishek...
Our friends at Microsoft have done a wonderful job releasing TFS 2011 preview, there has been great amount of preview documentation and video samples released to help understand the new features. In this blog post I intend to dive deep and compare the database changes done between the two versions of the product. If you are interested to read more about the actual features of TFS 2011, please refer to bharrys blog posts, this, this and this. I’ll be using the following pattern, About the feature...
This week I’m at the Microsoft Build/Windows conference. Now I’ve been to many conferences throughout the years and this is the first conference where I literally knew nothing about including the agenda. When I signed up for my badge on arrival we got a conference guide with all the hours of the session but no sessions. Very secret, very cloak and dagger. This created a huge buzz but also upped the expectation quite a bit… So with the tabled laid out and the expectation high I sat down and waited...
To start, I love Red Gate Software’s Tools. I have loved them since the first time I started using SQL Backup and SQL Compare when I first started Geekswithblogs.net. I think they create quality products and have been a “Friend of Red Gate” for years. So know that this review is coming from a “fan boy” of sorts. What is SQL Compare? Well the name sort of says it all, this product compares SQL databases. But not just databases, but backups, snapshots, and source control using their product SQL Source...
If your question is, what is this? or perhaps more around … what does this mean? Let me explain a bit about it. Microsoft has been providing this type of services through partners within a given competency to clients that are looking to deploy and implement Microsoft products like SharePoint, Exchange or the strategy behind Windows and Office deployments. The way it works, well you purchase your products and perhaps those products come with Software Assurance and they have training/service credits....
Shervin Shakibi, Microsoft Regional Director, was our speaker at the West Palm Beach .Net User Group July 2011 meeting. Shervin’s talk was demo-centric where he showcased the power of HTML 5 by example. Issues discussed at the meeting included suggestions on mitigating security concerns with HTML 5 source code accessibility as well as the status and timeline for HTML 5 readiness. Shervin’s much anticipated talk brought us over 25 members who filled our CompTec meeting room. We appreciate Shervin’s...
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,TFS SDK 2010,TFS Administration Working as a TFS Administrator maintaining the user workspaces is a very important task. Using the TFS API it is very easy to get a list of user workspaces, undo pending changes and delete workspace mappings if required. It is common to see people leave as the bell curve dips with the project delivery but some times what is left behind is a set of checked out files in workspaces. In this blog post i will show you...
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,Power Tools,TF254027 Error Recently moved from TFS 2010 server to another TFS 2010 server and trying to configure a backup plan using the Backup plan wizard that comes along with the TFS Power Tools. The tool allows you to set up Team Foundation Server backups - The tool can schedule backups for the following databases that your deployment of Team Foundation Server uses: the configuration database the database for each team project collection the databases...
For a generic guide on using a custom diff tool in TFS from My Eclipse:http://msdn.microso... Combine this information with the guide provided on Beyond Compare's website: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:"";...
Yesterday morning I received the wonderful news on my sessions proposal being accepted. With that said, I will be presenting at the SharePoint Saturday The Conference. My session: Requirements Management: From Vision to Mission to Success I will be discussing the way and options in which Team Foundation Server and the SharePoint platform work together to provide a Requirements Management solution. Now, are you going to attend? I think you should! The have extended the registration early bird price...
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS SDK,TFS API,TFS Merge Programmatically,TFS Work Items Programmatically,TFS Administration Console,ALM Download a working Demo: Smart Merge using TFS API The information available in the Merge window in Team Foundation Server 2010 is very important in the decision making during the merging process. However, at present the merge window shows very limited information, more than often you are interested to know the work item, files modified, code reviewer...
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing...
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS 2010 SDK,TFS API,TFS Programming,TFS ALM Download Working Demo Great! You have reached that point where you would like to extend TFS 2010. The first step is to connect to TFS programmatically. 1. Download TFS 2010 SDK => http://visualstudiogallery.... 2. Alternatively you can also download this from the visual studio extension manager 3. Create a new Windows Forms Application project...
Technorati Tags: TFS 2010 Database,TFS 2010,TFS 2010 Administration Considering you have an advanced TFS installation such that the app tier and the data and reporting tier are spread across multiple servers and the data tier goes down because of a network failure. The below error message may seem familiar, Team Foundation Services are not available from server xxx. Technical information (for administrator): Unable to connect to the remote server. Now your first reaction would be to verify whether...
** Source available at http://mergeworkitems.codep... ** Half a year ago I wrote about about Merging Work Items with a custom check-in policy. The policy evaluated the pending changes and for all pending merges, it traversed the merge history to find the associated work items and let the user add them to the current changeset. I promised to post the source to the check-in policy (and I’ve got a lot of requests for it), but I never did. This was primary for two reasons: The technical solution...
Full Disclaimer: Since I am on the GeeksWithBlog.NET Influencer list, I was issued a free 1-year subscription to DiscountASP.NET TFS2010 remote hosting. With that said, the thoughts/opinions located below are my own. I’ve always like Team Foundation Server. The main thing that I’ve hated about it was installing/maintaining it. I’d rather spend that time learning more about things such as Silverlight/WPF/WP7. I really didn’t know what to expect as we use another source control at work and I’ve never...
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I’ll be speaking on IntelliTrace at Tech Ed 2001 – North America. This blog post is the first in a series that I’ll publish as I delve into IntelliTrace in more detail, in preparation for my talk. IntelliTrace is enabled by default in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, but it is configured so as to only capture some basic information, so as to not impact application performance. I thought a good starting point would be to look and see what the different configuration...
If you are going to be in the Washington D.C. area on April 28th, and you want to learn more about both Scrum, and how to utilize Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010, then you really need to attend the free 1-day seminar, “Agile Scrum Development Practices with the Experts”. This event is being hosted by Ken Schwaber, one of the co-founders of the Scrum process, as well as Richard Hundhausen, who, in addition to his many qualifications, has helped develop the official Microsoft “Professional Scrum...
I’m trying to setup TFS Lab Management on a new server and I ran into a really weird issue trying to configure it that I figured I’d share the solution to in case anybody else encountered it. This was a brand new machine, I installed Windows Server 2008 R2, all the Windows Updates, joined the machine to the domain, then started running through the Lab Management Install Guide: Configuring Lab Management for the First Time I had a previously created Domain Account called TFSLAB created specifically...
*Moved to: Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. Although I had no errors on my main computer, my netbook did have problems. Although I am not ready to call it a Service Pack problem just yet! Update 2011-03-10 – Running the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 install a second time worked Read more about Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service...
In the last month or so I have been able to test and experience first hand the offering from discountasp.net for hosted TFS 2010. This first part is a description of the setup process for the account itself and getting some additional information on what you will find through the portal on their site. Not long ago, I posted a little tidbit on hosting TFS. Through it I also did a shameless plug to my employer, our services and the type of hosting we recommend. So, wouldn’t me running on discountasp.net...
Disclosure: I performed the following activities on my Windows 7 SP1 system, Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and a local Basic installation of TFS 2010. As with any deployment of a service pack into a server environment, take your recommended precautions and be aware of the changes you are putting in. With that said, make sure you backup your databases, and that you have an exit/rollback strategy in the event of an unexpected situation. Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 corresponds to KB2182621....
There is an update available for the TFS Power Tools and the TFS Build Power Tools. Among the updates to the Tools: Changes to the Team Foundation Server Backups Add-In for TFS Admin Console. Added functionality to the Windows Shell Extension. Changes to the tfpt command line tool that allows you to script build management commands. For a full detail of the changes, read Brian Harry’s post http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bha...
*Moved to: Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cacheThere are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database. Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com...
The Past A few years ago my small software company made the jump from storing code on a shared folder to source code control. At the time we had evaluated a few of the options and settled on Tortoise SVN. The main motivation for going the SVN route was that we found a great plugin for Visual Studio that allowed us to avoid the command prompt for uploading changes (like I said we are windows programmers… command prompt bad!! ) and it was free. Up to now we have been pretty happy with SVN as it removed...
While it was very quiet here on my blog during the last months, this was not at all true for the rest of my professional life. The simple story is that I was too busy to find the time for authoring blog posts (and you might see from my previous ones that they’re usually not of the ‘Hey, I’m currently reading X’ or ‘I’m currently thinking about Y’ kind…). Anyway. Among the things I did during the last months were setting up a TFS environment (2010) and introducing a development team to the MSTest...
Last year I started a new job with a logistics company in the North of England, where I was responsible for the management, design and development of IT Integration strategies, architectures and solutions using BizTalk Server 2009. This included the design and implementation of the BizTalk Server 2009 infrastructure, the definition of development standards, mentoring a fellow developer in the ways of BizTalk and migrating a number of existing solutions from Softshare over to BizTalk 2009. Unfortunately...
*Moved to: How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com...