Ed Squared

Radio TFS Interview – Using TFS at Infragistics with Ed Blankenship

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:56:42 GMT

I’m up really early this morning. I’m about to head to the airport to spend my Independence Day weekend in the Carolinas for some much needed beach vacation and visit with friends. Thankfully, I didn’t miss Martin Woodward letting me know that the latest Radio TFS episode was made available just a few moments ago that includes my interview about our use of TFS and Visual Studio Team System at Infragistics. It’s a longer episode than normal so it’s perfect if you’re going to be spending some time at the beach like me and listen to a fun talk. We both really enjoyed chatting for this episode so we hope you enjoy it as well!

Using TFS with Ed Blankenship

In this episode we sit down and chat with Ed Blankenship about the use of Team Foundation Server at Infragistics. Ed has had some interesting challenges and experiences in running their TFS instance. Additionally they have done some fairly advanced integration work which we discuss in detail. This is a double-length show, so hopefully plenty of stuff to enjoy if you are sunning yourself on a beach somewhere.

Ed is the Release Engineering Manager at Infragistics, makers of the world's leading presentation layer tools and components. He is also a Microsoft MVP in Visual Studio Team System.

Play Now: Using TFS with Ed Blankenship

As the Release Engineering Manager, he leads the Release Engineering Department which is responsible for automated builds, creating product installers, packaging source code for customers, source configuration management/version control, metrics, release management, work item tracking, licensing enforcement, and development of internal productivity tools. The department also is responsible for TFS Operations & Maintenance.

Ed has been a technical editor for the Wrox Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 2 Developer's Guide, and Silverlight 2 Bible books, author of numerous articles, and has spoken at various user groups, events, and conferences.

Links from the show:

Ed's Blog

Microsoft Process Template

Martin's Blog Post on Check-in Policies

How to turn on Activity Logging with TFS 2005

As usual send any feedback to radiotfs@gmail.com.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions based on the Radio TFS chat. I’m more than happy to get them answered for you!

Take care,

Ed B.

Speaking at the Team System User Group Virtual Edition – EMEA Meeting in June

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:43:44 GMT

Come join! Here’s the website and the details.

Website: http://www.tsug-ve.com/

JUNE EMEA Meeting
Meeting Date: Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Time: 10:00AM PDT/SLT (18:00 UTC)
Location: Microsoft Island in Second Life

Real World TFS: Tips for a Successful Team System Implementation

OK, you’ve decided that Visual Studio Team System & Team Foundation Server is going to bring your organization added value (because it will :)) but what do you do now? This session will cover the 2.5 year successful implementation of VSTS and the experience of that journey at Infragistics, the world’s leading maker of software development tools. The session intends to cover over each phase of the implementation over all of the affected areas for a smooth adoption: Version Control, Builds, Work Item Tracking, global deployment, moving multiple teams, training, automated testing, migration from legacy systems, and integration with other systems and TFS. The goal will be to go through at a high-level what it takes to make you successful by learning from the challenges and obstacles overcome. We’ll also look to the future with VSTS 2010 and see how strategic planning will help make a successful adoption of the new features in the upcoming 2010 release. The session is led by a Team System MVP & Champ who has been in the trenches during the whole implementation.

Prerequisites: A healthy attitude from learning from other’s challenges and a strong desire to make real change at your organization!

Take care,

Ed B.

Easy Assist – Little Known Feature for Live Meeting Account Holders

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:00:44 GMT

I’ll have to admit, the Easy Assist feature is not very discoverable if you have a Live Meeting account but it’s really really really useful! So imagine you have a coworker or a mother who needs help but they’re not where you’re at. There are a lot of different ways for people to do remote assistance support but if you have a Live Meeting account there’s another way that I’ve been using: Easy Assist. It’s the same app that lots of support professionals at Microsoft Product Support & Services use to help customers remotely.

BTW: If you’re an MVP, you have received a complimentary Live Meeting account as part of your benefits!

Downloads for End-users who need support

Download the Microsoft Easy Assist support console for joining an Easy Assist session

Download the Microsoft Easy Assist Safe Mode Client for troubleshooting within Windows Safe Mode

Downloads for Support Agent

Download the Easy Assist Launchpad for setting up Easy Assist sessions

Download the Microsoft Easy Assist support console for joining an Easy Assist session

Easy Assist Launchpad

So the first thing you should do to help create support sessions quickly as a “support agent” is get the Easy Assist Launchpad installed so it sits in your tray and waits for you. When you launch it for the first time, it’ll ask you to put in your Live Meeting credentials. These are the same that you would use when you setup & configure the Live Meeting client.

After you have finished that, the Launchpad will sit in your system tray and has a few options available for you:

I’ve went ahead and chosen “Create Session” and I’m just going to put in something to let my Mom (and I) know this is for her session.

After, creating the session you’ll have the option to join the session yourself and also send the invite by e-mail (using your default e-mail application) to the person you’re trying to support. Look at the URL… you’ll notice it’s very similar to a Live Meeting invite but instead it has the “joinEA?” inside of it. This is important because this is what makes the end user experience better for the support agent and the person being supported because it will fire off the Easy Assist client instead of the full Live Meeting client.

Support Agent Features

Once you’ve fired off the Easy Assist support agent client, you’ll be able to see the other support agents that are attending as well as the person(s) you are trying to support. You can request that they reboot, share their screen, share your screen, request to control their session, send files, and more. Support agent screens:

All the end user sees is a small window that’s out of view. After the session, it even asks the end user if they would like to uninstall the Easy Assist client since it’s not needed anymore! How nice?! It even works if the customer has booted in safe mode. Very handy at times.

You can see how it’s super easy to escalate a support call from a family member, an IM/e-mail from a co-worker, or even setting up a session for you to get help from a support agent who doesn’t have remote assistance provided by their employer. Hope this is helpful to you!

Ed B.

First TFS iPhone App - TFSToGo

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:14:56 GMT

This has been out for a little while but wanted to make sure that you knew about it as well!

Our Director of Product Development here at Infragistics, Joe Croney, has been working on a personal side project of creating an iPhone app that will connect to Team Foundation Server. He’s got a BETAposted in the Apple iTunes store now. At the moment it only supports checking on Builds but I know he’s starting a backlog.

More screenshots and an FAQ are available at the website: http://www.tfstogo.com/

Joe is looking for some feedback and any bugs so if you find some feel free to report them at support@tfstogo.com. Congrats Joe!

FYI: We’ve found that if you connect over VPN in the iPhone that sometimes a local DNS name isn’t resolved correctly. You can correct this by putting in the hard-coded IP address of the TFS server instead.

Have fun and enjoy!

Ed B.

Draining the Blog Topic Backlog

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:24:27 GMT

It’s been pretty quiet around this blog for quite some time now. Just been busy traveling to TechEd North America and back to our office in New Jersey. Lots going on! However, no one ever has enough time to get everything done :)

I’m going to be a little more demanding on myself to get through my blog topic backlog that I’ve been keeping for a while. I think I’m up to 19 at the moment so I need to get it flushed out! I keep a list alongside my To-Do list in OneNote about different topics that I come across that I blog about. Usually they are from problems that I see day to day that other people probably will want to solve at some point (I always archive the screenshots so I can use them in my blog posts later.) Other topics that end up on the list are in response to something I’ve done while traveling. For example, Martin Woodward and I had the chance to record a Radio TFS episode (not yet aired) where we talked about our implementation of Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team System at Infragistics. I think it was a great session and definitely looking forward to it getting out in the wild. There were a few topics that we talked of stumbles we’ve encountered over the last two years and how we ended up solving them. The goal for us was to get those out in the public since others may be experiencing the same hurdles and looking for resources on how to solve them. It’s more along the lines of “hey, here’s our story so you can learn from our mistakes.” I hope you find them useful. On this blog, I’ll start talking about some of those points that we brought up in more detail since the radio show has to be reduced to a reasonable amount of time :) Some of the stuff we talked about was just down-right cool! More details to come…

So, dear reader, I am pledging to you to get through my current blog topic backlog by the end of June. Let me know if you would like me to write about anything in particular!

Take care,

Ed B.

P.S. I cross-post between my Infragistics Blog and my personal blog . Some posts don’t end up on my Infragistics Blog site so be sure to check http://www.edsquared.com/ from time to time where my long-time colleague Ed Kisinger and I blog. If you’d like to subscribe to that feed, the RSS address is: RSS for Posts

MPT Talk at Dallas VSTS User Group

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:56:37 GMT

I had a really good time last night speaking to the Dallas VSTS User Group about the Microsoft Process Template. If you want more information, I wrote a blog post shortly after the public release of the MPT. I was really sick last month when I was supposed to speak so I’m really glad I got the opportunity to make it up.

One of the things I really enjoy about the group was the open session time after the scheduled talk to discuss problems people were facing with Team System and the group attempts to come up with possible solutions. That’s really a great use of time for a specialized user group like this one.

As a fun extra, thankfully the Demo Gods were okay with me and saved this Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) until after I was finished using the VPC during my talk :) Everyone insisted that I take a screenshot and share with the rest of the world so enjoy!

Ed B.

P.S. As a side note, the experience whenever your evaluation license runs out in Windows Server 2008 has definitely improved. It no longer gives you a BSOD. I was using TFS 2008 SP1 installed in a Windows Server 2003 VPC for my demos.

Microsoft Process Template

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:06:34 GMT

In December, I had the privilege to be the “MVP in Residence” with the Team System product group. Chuck blogged about the experience at the beginning and end of the week. I felt really good about the accomplishments at the end of the week. The main project I worked on was packaging up the Microsoft Process Template (MPT) so that it could used by the public community. I’m happy to announce that it is live on CodePlex now so feel free to download and use it!

Description

The Microsoft Process Template (MPT) is a Microsoft internal, end-to-end project management solution that maps to the Microsoft product development cycle and works with Visual Studio Team System 2008 (VSTS). The MPT offers an out-of-the-box solution and includes all the work item types (forms), queries, documentation, engineering best practices, and reports required for Microsoft development teams to get up and running on Visual Studio Team System. The Engineering Excellence* and Visual Studio Development teams worked together closely over the last year to create this template by compiling the lessons learned from other teams that have implemented similar templates, incorporating engineering best practices, widely socializing the concepts, and finally piloting this template with several product groups.
*The engineering excellence team is a Microsoft business unit that provides Microsoft business group employees with high-quality technical education, best practices and guidance.

Be sure to check out the Introduction and the Getting Started guides to dive in and get the background information for the process template. One of the main things that people will notice is that the MPT simulates work item hierarchy through the the use of some daemon services. There are several ways to simulate hierarchy in TFS 2008 so if you’re looking for a solution the MPT has the services source code and reports created for them.

Here is a sample report that uses the hierarchy to rollup the progress by Feature:

There are a few known issues with the process template which are listed in the Getting Started guide. I’ll be sure to keep the guide updated if I hear of any other known issues.

Other MPT Resources

Gregg Boer, Principal Program Manager on the TFS product group, wrote an excellent series of blog posts of how Microsoft uses the MPT internally along with an overview of the process around tracking progress throughout the release.

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 1 (Our Process)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 2 (Feature Crews)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 3 (Implementing the Process)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 3 (Addendum)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 4

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 5 (Tracking Progress)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 6 (Tracking multiple projects)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS - Chapter 6 (Addendum)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS-Chapter 7 (Tracking Risk)

· How Microsoft/DevDiv uses TFS-Chapter 8 (Tracking Quality Gates)

· How Microsoft/Dev Div uses TFS - Chapter 9 (Transparency in Reporting)

Jeff Beehler and Brian Keller also put together a video of how Jeff uses the MPT & TFS to monitor progress of the release cycle. Take a look on Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/briankel/Better-Project-Management-with-Team-Foundation-Server/

I really want to thank you to everyone that helped getting it packaged up for the public! Also, thanks to Chuck for organizing the week, working logistics, and of course giving me a place to stay!

Ed B.

Azure User Group in Dallas

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:10:41 GMT

I just found out about this group from an MSDN Flash. Check them out; there is a meeting tonight.

Azure User Group Website

The website is home for many Azure User Groups from around the world.

Ed K.

Azure Training Kit Updated

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:29:16 GMT

Download here

Overview

The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. The February release includes the following updates:

19 demo scripts that walkthrough several of the services
10 presentations covering the entire Azure Services Platform
3 additional hands-on labs for Live Services

This technical content covers services including: Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.

Ed K.

TFS Performance Reports Pack

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:10:13 GMT

Grant Holliday, former Team System MVP, is now working on the VSTS product group on various things but most importantly helping keep the internal Microsoft TFS servers in tip-top shape. They have the largest known TFS instances in the world so you could imagine it’s got to be tough keeping it up and running well. Brian Harry posts their usage metrics regularly if you’d like to get an idea of how HUGE it is.

Keeping the performance manageable requires lots of monitoring and looking over the data that gets stored in the activity logging. Grant has packaged up some of the reports they use internally and provided them to the world. The download package is available on his blog post.

Personally, I’m really glad that the product group is investing in dogfooding the early builds of the version of TFS that they are working on. By putting the product under real use and under the load that only Microsoft can generate, we end up with a better product by the time it RTMs.

Thanks again for making this available to the world!

Ed B.

Azure ramp-up

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:27:09 GMT

Here are some links to get you started learning and developing on the Azure platform.

Azure Services Platform

Azure SDK downloads

Azure training Kit

PDC recorded sessions

Azure sample application (IssueTracker)

MSDN Azure blog

Ed K.

One year anniversary of NO TOBACCO

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:58:38 GMT

Well, I have hit my one year mark of not using tobacco products!! Its been extremely hard but well worth the sacrifice. I will not lie to anyone thinking about quitting....I still have cravings but they are not as bad and they do not last as long. The main thing that got me through the first 6 months was "hard candy" by the truck loads (weight gain was present) and family support. After 6 months I was able to manage cravings with exercise and avoiding stressful situations.

Ed K.

TFS 2008 Build Notification Power Tool - Workgroup work around

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:58:52 GMT

From those of you that use the Workgroup edition of Team Foundation Server you might have notice that you cannot use the Build Notification Power Tool since you cannot authenticate to TFS.

Here is what I have done to work around the noted limitation:

"RunAs" to the rescue:

C:\Windows\System32>runas.exe /user:ROSCOE\jbm /netonly "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools\BuildNotification.exe"

To automate, create yourself a little batch file for startup. Here is a VBS script to automate the entry of the password for RunAs:

dim WshShell,FSO

set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
set WshEnv = WshShell.Environment("Process")

set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

WshShell.Run("C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /user:ROSCOE\jbm /netonly" & " {YourInstallPath}\BuildNotification.exe")

Wscript.Sleep 300 ' Wait for window to open

WshShell.AppActivate("C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe")
WshShell.SendKeys "{YourUserPassword}"
WshShell.SendKeys VBCRLF

set WshShell=Nothing
set WshEnv=Nothing
set FSO=Nothing

wscript.quit

[UPDATE]
You can "Connect As" from the GUI; Unfortunately, you will have to do this each time you restart.

Ed K.

Team Build at Tulsa TechFest 2008

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:57:00 GMT

I’ve been in the middle of a lot lately and completely forgot to mention Tulsa TechFest 2008! This will be my third year speaking and interestingly I have the only Team System talk this year. If you’re around the area be sure to come by to learn more about automating your build & packaging process using Team System. I’m going to do my Team Build talk that I did earlier this year at the Dallas VSTS User Group but we won’t go into as much depth since we only have 1.5 hours. Looks like another great year with almost. Infragistics has been a proud & regular sponsor of this event and I’m honored to have been invited again!

[Update]

Wanted to be sure I posted my slides and then also made the link to the awesome build lifecycle poster done by our friends in South Africa. Thanks for keeping me honest!

Ed B.

Development Community Volunteer Week

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:11:53 GMT

I didn't get to read my RSS feeds yet today but I got a hint to go read them and I discovered that Chuck wrote a nice blog post about volunteer work and me. I guess the cat's out of the bag now :) Thanks Chuck for the kudos - I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to making a really good use of that time.

There are so many people in the development community that spend countless hours of their volunteer time. Especially in the VSTS community. People are working volunteering time:

developing and supporting open-source projects & tools,
speaking at events and conferences (this takes a considerable amount of time to prepare for,)
leading local user groups,
writing blog posts, technical articles, & books,
answering community questions in the MSDN Forums,
giving feedback, enhancement requests, & reporting problems of Microsoft products to improve them, and
all of the other ways people volunteer time that I can't even begin to think of.

I personally know several people (and more) who really focus on trying to make the entire development community better off with these time & knowledge contributions. (Infragistics as a company has been really supportive in all of our efforts to help the community.) I hope you get as much out of it as I do from learning from everyone. Microsoft has done a great job in recognizing those individuals by creating the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. I'm honored to have been awarded this award earlier this year.

I've really not been able to blog as much as I have liked to or participating in the MSDN Forums answering people's questions. I have focused the volunteer time that I have had in other areas. I had a really great time at the MVP Summit earlier this year and came back with so many different ideas. I really love the VSTS MVP & Champs group - truly a great group of professionals! This brings me to my idea for this year.

I feel like I haven't had time this year to really provide anything meaningful to the community. So, I want to dedicate a work week and do something meaningful for the VSTS community. There are plenty of places that we could all use help so I think that would be something meaningful and useful. I'm planning on doing this time locally in Redmond so that if I need background information on a project, I can get it quickly. I need to meet with some people about Infragistics stuff and really take some vacation time in that area (since it is so beautiful) so I think it's beneficial to be local during that week.

What should I work on?

Chuck mentioned a few ideas that we have so far but the one I personally love is being able to release the gigantic amount of work that Microsoft has done with their internal process templates & reports. Have you seen them? They are awesome! Reports are so tricky to do and take a good chunk of time to be done correctly. The Microsoft internal reports need to be scrubbed for external consumption which is my initial idea for volunteer work.

Or should I work on a productivity tool?

Don't let me taint your opinions though. What do you want/need that would be valuable for VSTS? Go to Chuck's blog post and give us suggestions about what you would like to see me work on. No car washing or details though :) unless it's for a good charity organization then I'll consider it.

Ed B.

Grouping Conditional Clauses in Work Item Queries

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:11:21 GMT

So, I came across something pretty interesting when I was making a work item query today that I've wondered for a while. I can't believe I just came across it today.

OK - Just for some background on what I was trying to do: I wanted to get a team query made that returned all of the bugs for my team. The only problem is that our department supports all of our products for mainly builds & installers (among other things) and it causes the Area Paths that we look at to be pretty much all over our TFS server. Usually you would just want all the bugs for a particular product and you can use the UNDER operator for the Area Path field. I need to use multiple condition clauses using the UNDER operator. I knew that the Work Item Query Language (WIQL) had a way for putting parenthesis around the conditionals in the WHERE clause. (The WIQL syntax is very similar to T-SQL if you haven't ever seen it before.) For example, here's part of a sample WIQL query that I was going after....

SELECT [System.Id], (Other Fields) FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.WorkItemType] = 'Bug' AND [System.State] <> 'Closed' AND ([System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\.NET\Installers' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\.NET\ASP.NET\Builds' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\.NET\WinForms\Builds' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\WPF\Builds' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\WPF\Installers' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\QTP\WinForms\Builds' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\QTP\WinForms\Installers' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\RFT\WinForms\Builds' OR [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\RFT\WinForms\Installers')

My problem was - how do I put parenthesis in the query using the Work Item Query Editor? (UI in Visual Studio)

However, I remember reading Brian's post yesterday about the new Alerts Editor (which by the way is totally awesome and immediately adds value to the product without waiting for the next major release) and thought, I wonder how they did that in the UI with the alerts XPath queries because I know you can't get very good alerts without the ability to group the XPath query conditionals. Let me steal an image from Brian's post with a little editing showing off a grouping of condition clauses:

I thought to myself, hmmmm... that grid looks pretty similar to WIQ Editor grid that exists today in Team Explorer 2008 and started searching everywhere for the "group" tool button (since there is not a toolbar above the grid.) I found it. It's in the context menu whenever you select multiple rows. Seriously, I can't believe I haven't ever seen it before. I guess I don't usually write very complex work item queries :)

Have fun writing some useful queries for yourself and your team now!

Ed B.

New Team System MVP

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:09:21 GMT

Speaking of Team System, I found out last week that I have been officially inducted into the Team System MVP group. Earlier this year, I was awarded as an MVP in the Client Application Development competency. Don't get me wrong, I still love WPF & Silverlight development and will continue to be involved in that community in the future. I'm even working on finishing up the technical editing of a Silverlight 2 book right this minute. Or actually I'm procrastinating writing blog posts :)

Being part of the Team System MVP group, I'm really joining one of the most awesome groups ever. I spent all of my time earlier this year at the MVP Summit at all of the Team System sessions and they truly are one of the best product teams at Microsoft. They truly value our feedback and the Team System MVPs really love and care for the product just as much and want to see it grow by leaps and bounds. And when I say love and care for the product, you don't even understand! :) This is definitely a good fit and I'm honored to officially join the group. So when do I get to learn the "secret handshake?"

Ed B.

Enter the Coolest Team System Gadget Contest!

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:46:35 GMT

Fellow Team System MVP Mike Azocar has announced an awesome new contest to stir up the Team System tools ecoystem. There are some really cool prizes so far including a free license for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 w/ MSDN Premium subscription and there are more donated prizes coming... Get the full details at his blog post: Want to be famous- Enter the Coolest Team System Gadget Contest!

Have you created a useful gadget for Team System? Do you have one in mind? I am looking for the coolest community built tool for VSTS. It can be something for TFS, for Visual Studio, or something that is stand alone. The winner will receive a one year subscription to MSDN with Team Suite!

To enter, submit a screen cast (up to 3 minutes long) which tells everyone why your gadget is the coolest and the source code. All submissions will be released to the public as free source to use and enjoy (with you getting all the credit of course). Videos will also be made available to the public to help make you famous! This should be something new (i.e. not on Codeplex or previously released) and not something repackaged. Submissions accepted up until August 31st 2008. Winner will be announced September 15th 2008.

Judges will be Mike Azocar, Martin Woodward, and I so this is going to be a lot of fun!

Ed B.

Speaking about Team Build 2008 at the Dallas VSTS User Group

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:38:52 GMT

I'll be speaking on July 1, 2008 at the Dallas Visual Studio Team System User Group. Starts at 6 PM. This is going to be a really exciting session for me personally and I love that we have a big block of time to get into some really fun Team Build details. I think we are meeting at the Notion Solutions office in Irving for the July meeting but I'll double-check and update if there is a change.

Here are a few topics that I'll make sure we talk about:

New Features for Team Build 2008
Fun Stuff around Builds at Infragistics
Build Notification Power Tool
Building Java applications using Team Build & TeamPrise - (This blows people's minds away)
Building Installers using Wix
New Changes in TFS 2008 Service Pack 1 for Team Build
If time, Extensibility with the Team Build API

Be sure to sign up on the user group website to get updates and the RSVP link whenever it gets sent out.

Ed B.

Openings in Release Engineering Department at Infragistics

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:52:35 GMT

Our team has been kept extremely busy lately with our new responsibilities. What does the Release Engineering team do exactly? Along with creating builds and installers for ALL of our products, we now have responsibility of Team Foundation Server Operations, and the entire development lifecycle of internal productivity tools that we call the "Internal Tools Suite." So to sum it up, if it has to do with automation or the release process, it's us :) We need some help (so I can get around to doing some blog posts again haha.)

Here's the positions we have open for the department:

Software Engineer in Release II, Princeton, New Jersey
Software Engineer in Release I, Sofia, Bulgaria

Come join our team! It's been extremely exciting lately with what we're doing internally at Infragistics. Contact me if you're interested: ed AT infragistics DOT com

Ed B.

New Visual Studio Extensibility Book Available

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:57:43 GMT

There is a new book about VSX out from Wrox called “Professional Visual Studio Extensibility” and looks pretty promising if you are first starting out to learn add-ins and VSPackages. It's actually the first one that I've seen get released so I hope it does well. VSX is a topic that I have a keen interest in.

A quick overview of Visual Studio Shell and Domain-Specific Languages Tools
Techniques for creating, debugging, testing, and deploying your add-ins
Ways to work with user interface elements, Windows Forms, and controls via code in your add-ins
Steps for extending Visual Studio functionality using VSPackages
Tips for writing and managing code snippets to make your coding process easier
Using Visual Studio templates to save time when writing code for common projects
How to use MSBuild to write custom builds for Visual Studio and .NET applications
New techniques for recording, developing, debugging, deploying, and running macros

Ed B.

April 2008 CTP Available for Visual Studio Team System "Rosario"

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:00:49 GMT

It's finally available! Seriously - this CTP has quite a bit of features that they have added and you can start to see that VSTS is and will continue to be a strong if not the best ALM offering. The new features are added to Head over to Jeff Beehler's blog post to find out more details of what has been added...

I haven't picked a favorite feature just yet :) The three I just really like the most across the whole offering:

New Team Build System based on Windows Workflow Foundation
Historical Debugging (this will really help with the Debug and Repro scenarios)
Great Test Case Management System

Here's a list of all the new features!

Architecture Edition

Exploringthe existing code structure

Designing process flow as activities

Designing user interactions with systems

Designing system functionality as components

Visualizing and designing types in systems

Visualizing and designing interaction sequences in systems

Development Edition

Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with rule sets

Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger

Identify the test impact of code changes

Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Database Edition

Building and using an off-line representation of your operational database as a “sandbox” development environment.

Using Data Generation to custom-build data for testing your database application.

Making and unit-testing schema and code changes in an off-line environment.

Performing static code analysis of your programmability objects.

Test Edition

Planning a testing effort

Executing manual test cases

Verify the fix

Automate a manual test and add validation.

Team Foundation Server

Managing an Agile schedule

Easier reporting from Excel

Managing features with the CMMI Process

A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer

An enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window

A new history view that shows labels applied to a file as well as how changes were merged across branches

A new automated build system built on Windows Workflow Foundation, featuring dynamic build machine allocation from a machine pool and distributed build functionality

Rollback for a check in (currently only available at the command line)

Many Source Control Explorer usability enhancements

Be sure to head to their Connect site with your feedback!

Ed B.

Work Item Workflow Transition, Server Level Security Group

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:50:49 GMT

When creating a transition between states you may want to use a "Server" level security group for the "For" and/or "Not". Taking a first stab at doing this you will probably do as the screen shot below.

When you go to validate this you will get the error shown in the screen shot below. You might even bang your head a couple times trying to figure out what the deal is. :) TF26171

The correct way to specify a SERVER security group is shown in the screen shot below

Ed K.

Visual Studio Team System Rosario TAP

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:09:32 GMT

I'm really excited because the last three days I've been in Redmond, WA attending the TAP briefing for the next version of Visual Studio Team System code named "Rosario." All I can say is WOW - I'm completely impressed with the work that Microsoft has done and the amount of effort they are making into making the next version of Team System be absolutely awesome.

A lot of big announcements were made and we received a lot of insight into the future. However, I'm not allowed to say anything just yet about any of it since we were all under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) I'm reviewing the latest bits and going to start several blog articles about the multitude of amazing features and as soon as I am able to talk about it I will. (By the way there are early bits available in the November CTP already that you can download using the Rosario link above!)

It was great meeting with the other VSTS Champs in person and putting faces with names. Truly a great event and I really got the impression that the VSTS product team members were genuinely interested in how we felt about the product and our opinions about what we were being shown. That kind of commitment to receiving feedback from real end users really shows in the quality of their product.

All I can say is that I can't wait until we receive the final bits and are using it in production!

Ed B.

Globalization - CultureInfo

Ed Kisinger (EdSquared.com) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:56:14 GMT

Sorry this post is mainly for me again :(

I am building some tools to help manage the complexities that come along with Localizing an enterprise application. I will post the source(s) when I get a chance to clean everything up :)

Neutral and Specific codes for localization

Culture/Language Name	Culture
"" (empty string)	Invariant culture
af	Afrikaans
af-ZA	Afrikaans (South Africa)
sq	Albanian
sq-AL	Albanian (Albania)
ar	Arabic
ar-DZ	Arabic (Algeria)
ar-BH	Arabic (Bahrain)
ar-EG	Arabic (Egypt)
ar-IQ	Arabic (Iraq)
ar-JO	Arabic (Jordan)
ar-KW	Arabic (Kuwait)
ar-LB	Arabic (Lebanon)
ar-LY	Arabic (Libya)
ar-MA	Arabic (Morocco)
ar-OM	Arabic (Oman)
ar-QA	Arabic (Qatar)
ar-SA	Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
ar-SY	Arabic (Syria)
ar-TN	Arabic (Tunisia)
ar-AE	Arabic (U.A.E.)
ar-YE	Arabic (Yemen)
hy	Armenian
hy-AM	Armenian (Armenia)
az	Azeri
az-Cyrl-AZ	Azeri (Azerbaijan, Cyrillic)
az-Latn-AZ	Azeri (Azerbaijan, Latin)
eu	Basque
eu-ES	Basque (Basque)
be	Belarusian
be-BY	Belarusian (Belarus)
bg	Bulgarian
bg-BG	Bulgarian (Bulgaria)
ca	Catalan
ca-ES	Catalan (Catalan)
zh-HK	Chinese (Hong Kong SAR, PRC)
zh-MO	Chinese (Macao SAR)
zh-CN	Chinese (PRC)
zh-Hans	Chinese (Simplified)
zh-SG	Chinese (Singapore)
zh-TW	Chinese (Taiwan)
zh-Hant	Chinese (Traditional)
hr	Croatian
hr-HR	Croatian (Croatia)
cs	Czech
cs-CZ	Czech (Czech Republic)
da	Danish
da-DK	Danish (Denmark)
dv	Divehi
dv-MV	Divehi (Maldives)
nl	Dutch
nl-BE	Dutch (Belgium)
nl-NL	Dutch (Netherlands)
en	English
en-AU	English (Australia)
en-BZ	English (Belize)
en-CA	English (Canada)
en-029	English (Caribbean)
en-IE	English (Ireland)
en-JM	English (Jamaica)
en-NZ	English (New Zealand)
en-PH	English (Philippines)
en-ZA	English (South Africa
en-TT	English (Trinidad and Tobago)
en-GB	English (United Kingdom)
en-US	English (United States)
en-ZW	English (Zimbabwe)
et	Estonian
et-EE	Estonian (Estonia)
fo	Faroese
fo-FO	Faroese (Faroe Islands)
fa	Farsi
fa-IR	Farsi (Iran)
fi	Finnish
fi-FI	Finnish (Finland)
fr	French
fr-BE	French (Belgium)
fr-CA	French (Canada)
fr-FR	French (France)
fr-LU	French (Luxembourg)
fr-MC	French (Monaco)
fr-CH	French (Switzerland)
gl	Galician
gl-ES	Galician (Spain)
ka	Georgian
ka-GE	Georgian (Georgia)
de	German
de-AT	German (Austria)
de-DE	German (Germany)
de-LI	German (Liechtenstein)
de-LU	German (Luxembourg)
de-CH	German (Switzerland)
el	Greek
el-GR	Greek (Greece)
gu	Gujarati
gu-IN	Gujarati (India)
he	Hebrew
he-IL	Hebrew (Israel)
hi	Hindi
hi-IN	Hindi (India)
hu	Hungarian
hu-HU	Hungarian (Hungary)
is	Icelandic
is-IS	Icelandic (Iceland)
id	Indonesian
id-ID	Indonesian (Indonesia)
it	Italian
it-IT	Italian (Italy)
it-CH	Italian (Switzerland)
ja	Japanese
ja-JP	Japanese (Japan)
kn	Kannada
kn-IN	Kannada (India)
kk	Kazakh
kk-KZ	Kazakh (Kazakhstan)
kok	Konkani
kok-IN	Konkani (India)
ko	Korean
ko-KR	Korean (Korea)
ky	Kyrgyz
ky-KG	Kyrgyz (Kyrgyzstan)
lv	Latvian
lv-LV	Latvian (Latvia)
lt	Lithuanian
lt-LT	Lithuanian (Lithuania)
mk	Macedonian
mk-MK	Macedonian (Macedonia, FYROM)
ms	Malay
ms-BN	Malay (Brunei Darussalam)
ms-MY	Malay (Malaysia)
mr	Marathi
mr-IN	Marathi (India)
mn	Mongolian
mn-MN	Mongolian (Mongolia)
no	Norwegian
nb-NO	Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)
nn-NO	Norwegian (Nynorsk, Norway)
pl	Polish
pl-PL	Polish (Poland)
pt	Portuguese
pt-BR	Portuguese (Brazil)
pt-PT	Portuguese (Portugal)
pa	Punjabi
pa-IN	Punjabi (India)
ro	Romanian
ro-RO	Romanian (Romania)
ru	Russian
ru-RU	Russian (Russia)
sa	Sanskrit
sa-IN	Sanskrit (India)
sr-Cyrl-CS	Serbian (Serbia, Cyrillic)
sr-Latn-CS	Serbian (Serbia, Latin)
sk	Slovak
sk-SK	Slovak (Slovakia)
sl	Slovenian
sl-SI	Slovenian (Slovenia)
es	Spanish
es-AR	Spanish (Argentina)
es-BO	Spanish (Bolivia)
es-CL	Spanish (Chile)
es-CO	Spanish (Colombia)
es-CR	Spanish (Costa Rica)
es-DO	Spanish (Dominican Republic)
es-EC	Spanish (Ecuador)
es-SV	Spanish (El Salvador)
es-GT	Spanish (Guatemala)
es-HN	Spanish (Honduras)
es-MX	Spanish (Mexico)
es-NI	Spanish (Nicaragua)
es-PA	Spanish (Panama)
es-PY	Spanish (Paraguay)
es-PE	Spanish (Peru)
es-PR	Spanish (Puerto Rico)
es-ES	Spanish (Spain)
es-ES_tradnl	Spanish (Spain, Traditional Sort)
es-UY	Spanish (Uruguay)
es-VE	Spanish (Venezuela)
sw	Swahili
sw-KE	Swahili (Kenya)
sv	Swedish
sv-FI	Swedish (Finland)
sv-SE	Swedish (Sweden)
syr	Syriac
syr-SY	Syriac (Syria)
ta	Tamil
ta-IN	Tamil (India)
tt	Tatar
tt-RU	Tatar (Russia)
te	Telugu
te-IN	Telugu (India)
th	Thai
th-TH	Thai (Thailand)
tr	Turkish
tr-TR	Turkish (Turkey)
uk	Ukrainian
uk-UA	Ukrainian (Ukraine)
ur	Urdu
ur-PK	Urdu (Pakistan)
uz	Uzbek
uz-Cyrl-UZ	Uzbek (Uzbekistan, Cyrillic)
uz-Latn-UZ	Uzbek (Uzbekistan, Latin)
vi	Vietnamese
vi-VN	Vietnamese (Vietnam)

Ed K.

Multiple Localized Team System Web Access Sites

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:44:16 GMT

So here at Infragistics we're truly a global company now which makes life as a TFS Administrator very "interesting" for sure! Everyone is working around the clock and things can go wrong pretty much 24-7. Oh well - I'm used to it already :)

If you didn't know, last week Microsoft announced that all of the localized versions of Team System Web Access (TSWA) had been finished and available for download. This was great because we needed a couple of them for internal use. The only problem I found was that you can't install more than one version of TSWA on the same machine. That's no fun :(

Thankfully Hakan came to my rescue and gave me a few steps to try and they definitely worked out for me. I did everything on a separate virtual machine, gathered all of the files I needed, and then copied them to the TSWA web server.

Disclaimer: If you're going to follow the steps be mindful that this is completely unsupported by Microsoft.

Install <localized version>
Copy the files to C:\TSWA\<localized version code>
Uninstall <localized version>
(Repeat for all languages)
Manually create web sites in IIS to point to each of the different languages

Make sure each TSWA instance uses a different IIS AppPool
Make sure each TSWA instance points to a different cachedir

There you go! Also, it might be helpful to use host headers to help users out with discovering their localized versions of TSWA. This allows you to use port 80 as well instead of the usual default of 8090. For example:

English - tfsweb.[your domain]
Japanese - tfsweb-jp.[your domain]
German - tfsweb-de.[your domain]
etc.

Ed B.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1

Ed Blankenship (EdSquared.com) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:12:26 GMT

It's available now on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. It's only available on the front of the Subscriptions site for right now. It may not show up immediately so you might want to log off of your Windows Live ID and log back in while you're on the same page.

Ed B.