Ewald Hofman

VS 2010 hits RC

Ewald Hofman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:55:50 -1600

The Release Candidate for VS 2010 is available: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2010/02/08/vs-2010-net-4-release-candidate-is-available-for-msdn-subscribers.aspx

The first impression is that the performance of Visual Studio is astonishing.

In the coming weeks I will evaluate the product further, and I hope that the VS 2010 version keeps making me proud being a MVP.

Where is the AdditionalReferencePath in TFS 2010?

Ewald Hofman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:43:27 -1600

When you created a new build definition in TFS 2008, there were a few lines in the TFSBuild.proj file that gave you the ability to give hints where your references were stored. This was very useful when you included the external references in Version Control, so you did not need to install the assemblies in the GAC of every development machine and the build server.

In TFS 2010, the build is now based on Windows Workflow, and there is no default option to add the hintpaths (or additionalreferencepaths) where the build can find your external files. You now have to specify the paths as MSBuild Arguments. You can do that as following:

Find your build definition in the Team Explorer
Right click on the build and choose “Edit Build Definition”
In the list on the left, select the “Process” step
Open the Advanced secion
Select the MSBuild Arguments property and type the following: /p:ReferencePath=”<mypath>\<myfile>”

You can specify multilple reference paths by adding multiple times the /p:ReferencePath.

Session on DevDays NL 2010

Ewald Hofman — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:43:42 -1600

Microsoft has this year for the DevDays 2010 in the Netherlands the opportunity to submit proposal for four wildcard sessions. The submitting is closed and now it is voting time. The sessions that have the most votes will be presented at DevDays.

I have proposed with two session around “Testing with VS 2010” and “Team Build with VS 2010”.

If you find some time and you think these sessions belong at DevDays, please vote at

http://www.devdays.nl/WildCardSessions.aspx?pid=69

Thanks in advance.

VS ALM 2010 pricing

Ewald Hofman — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:32:12 -1600

Times are coming closer to the launch date of VS ALM 2010. Microsoft has just released the pricing for the new products. To refresh the memory, the features in the different SKU’s look like:

The prices that belong to these SKU’s are

Suggested Retail Pricing (USD) for Visual Studio 2010

			With 1-Year MSDN Subscription
Product	Buy	Upgrade	Buy	Renew
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	-	-	$11,899	$3,799
Visual Studio 2010 Premium	-	-	$5,469	$2,299
Visual Studio 2010 Professional	$799	$549	$1,199	$799
Visual Studio Test Professional 2010	-	-	$2,169	$899
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010	$499	$399	-	-
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 CAL	$499	-	-	-
Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 (1000 Virtual Users)	$4,499	-	-	-

5 minute overview of TFS 2010

Ewald Hofman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:43:41 -1600

Ever wanted to know a quick overview of TFS. The VS ALM rangers have delivered a quick reference post, which can be found over here: http://vs2010quickref.codeplex.com/wikipage.

The Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance consists of compact cheat sheets for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010, addressing the core problem of teams in the field who are unaware of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server capabilities or have little time to invest in detailed education.
The artifacts include an overview document and poster that allows you to quickly focus on individual areas like testing, by providing crisp and compact guidance sheets and quick reference posters. You can take these to your 5-min coffee break discussions or use them as a stepping stone to the more detailed and in-depth guidance you will find on MSDN.

New launch date for VS ALM 2010

Ewald Hofman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:36:07 -1600

Microsoft had decided several weeks ago to postpone the previous launch date. It was a hard decision, but the Product Team wanted to be sure to release a product that met quality standards, including performance.

Microsoft has just announced that the new launch date will be

April 12, 2010

. Be aware that the release date and the launch date are not equal dates.

TFS Sidekicks for TFS 2010 Beta 2

Ewald Hofman — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:56:53 -1600

Almost two months ago, I posted the following blog item TFS Sidekicks minor release update (2.4)and indicated that there would be support for TFS 2010 Beta 2 at the end of 2009.

Attrice has announced that they just released an update for the version 2.4 that supports TFS 2010 Beta 2. For more information see http://www.attrice.info/blog/2010/01/03/team-foundation-sidekicks-2-4-release-2/

Great beginning of a new year with a MVP award

Ewald Hofman — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:39:04 -1600

So now and then you receive an email which brings a big smile on your face. That could be with a Dilbert mail or with a joke a friend has sent you. Today I received an email that even brought me a bigger smile.

Microsoft has rewarded me the MVP award on Team System (or VS ALM as the new name will be) for the year 2010.

I am very delighted with this recognition and I will keep posting new articles in 2010 to help you guys (and girls) out to use your TFS installation better.

Happy new year to everybody!

TFS SDK 2010 – Part 5 – Create a new Test Case work item

Ewald Hofman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:26:00 -1600

In Part 1 I have described how to access the Application Instance of the TFS server. This post describes how you can create a new test case based on the TestManagement capabilities. In later posts I will show what you can do more with the test management.

In order to get access to the work items, add a reference to:

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client
WindowBase (which you can find on the .Net tab in the Add Reference Dialog)

You can find the dll’s in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0

Then you have to add the following using statements:

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client;

You can now create the work items with the following code:

// Get the work item store
ITestManagementService tms = tfai.GetTeamFoundationServer(tpc.Id).GetService<ITestManagementService>();

// Get the team project
var project = tms.GetTeamProject("Agile");

var testCase = project.TestCases.Create();
testCase.Title = "Browse my blog";

var navigateToSiteStep = testCase.CreateTestStep();
navigateToSiteStep.Title = "Navigate to \"http://www.ewaldhofman.nl\"";
testCase.Actions.Add(navigateToSiteStep);

var clickOnFirstPostStep = testCase.CreateTestStep();
clickOnFirstPostStep.Title = "Click on the first post in the summary";
clickOnFirstPostStep.ExpectedResult = "The details of the post are visible";
testCase.Actions.Add(clickOnFirstPostStep);

testCase.Save();

The result is a new test case with two steps in it:

TFS 2010 – Adding the SharePoint portal afterwards [Beta 2]

Ewald Hofman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:39:00 -1600

I created a new Team Project in TFS 2010 Beta 2 and choose not to configure SharePoint during the creation of the Team Project. Of course I found out fairly quickly that a portal for TFS is very useful, especially the Iteration and the Product backlog workbooks and the dashboard reports.

This blog describes how you can configure the SharePoint portal afterwards. Many thanks to Adam Cogan, who gave me fantastic directions to improve the blog post.

Update #1 September 9th, 2009: As suggested by Adam Cogan, added the option of the Dummy project.

Update #2 December 11th, 2009: As suggested by Adam Cogan, modified the post to Beta 2 + added the summary.

Summary of your options

You have several options to get the portal to your team project. The best option would be to have the ability in the Team Foundation Administration Console to create the portal for you, but that feature will not be added in TFS 2010 RTM . If you want it in a future version, please vote on https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=519770

Then there are two other options that you can use today:
Option 1: Create a Dummy Project in TFS to get the SharePoint Portal (recommended)
Option 2: Create the Portal in SharePoint and then fix up the missing documents

Option 1: Create a Dummy Project in TFS to get the SharePoint Portal (recommended)

Step 1: Create a new temporary project (with a SharePoint site for it).

Open the Team Explorer
Right click in the Team Explorer the root node (i.e. the project collection)
Select "New team project" from the menu
Walk throught he wizard and make sure you check the option to create the portal (which is by default checked)

Step 2: Disable the site for the new project

Open the Team Explorer
Select the team project you created in step 1
In the menu click on Team -> Show Project Portal.
In the menu click on Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings...
The following dialog pops up
Uncheck the option "Enable team project portal"
Confirm the dialog with OK

Step 3: Enable the site for the original one. Point it to the newly created site.

Open the Team Explorer
Select the team project you want to add the portal to
In the menu open Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings...
The same dialog as in step 2 pops up
Check the option "Enable team project portal"
Click on the "Configure URL" button
The following dialog pops up
In the dialog select in the combobox of the web application the TFS server
Enter in the Relative site path the text "sites/[Project Collection Name]/[Team Project Name created in step 1]"
Confirm the "Specify an existing SharePoint Site" with OK
Check the "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" option
Confirm the dialog "Project Portal Settings" with OK

Step 4: Delete the temporary project you created.

Open the command prompt (Start –> Run, cmd)
Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE
Enter the following command:

TFSDeleteProject /q /collection:http://<servername>:8080/tfs/<project_collection_name> <Team Project Name>

for example, TFSDeleteProject /q /collection:http://localhost:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection TempProject

Option 2: Create the Portal in SharePoint and then fix up the missing documents

Step 1: Create new portal site

Go to the sharepoint site of your project collection (/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">http://<servername>/sites/<project_collection_name>/default.aspx)
Click on the Site Actions at the left side of the screen and choose the option Site Settings
In the site settings, choose the Sites and workspaces option
Create a new site
Enter the values for the Title, the description, the site address. And choose for the TFS2010 Agile Dashboard as template.
Create the site, by clicking on the Create button

Step 2: Integrate portal site with team project

Open Visual Studio
Open the Team Explorer (View -> Team Explorer)
Select in the Team Explorer tool window the Team Project for which you are create a new portal
Open the Project Portal Settings (Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Setings...)
Check the Enable team project portal checkbox
Click on Configure URL...
You will get a new dialog as below
Enter the url to the TFS server in the web application combobox
And specify the relative site path: sites/<project collection>/<site name>
Confirm with OK
Check in the Project Portal Settings dialog the checkbox "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project"
Confirm the settings with OK (this takes a while...)
When you now browse to the portal, you will see that the dashboards are now showing up with the data for the current team project. We will fix that in the next step.

Step 3: Download process template

To get a copy of the documents that are default in a team project, we need to have a fresh set of files that are not attached to a team project yet. You can do that with the following steps.
Start the Process Template Manager (Team -> Team Project Collection Settings -> Process Template Manager...)
Choose the Agile process template and click on download
Choose a folder to download

Step 4: Add Product and Iteration backlog

Go to the Team Explorer in Visual Studio
Make sure the team project is in the list of team projects, and expand the team project
Right click the Documents node, and choose New Document Library
Enter "Shared Documents", and click on Add
Right click the Shared Documents node and choose Upload Document
Go the the file location where you stored the process template from step 3 and then navigate to the subdirectory "Agile Process Template 5.0\MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0\Windows SharePoint Services\Shared Documents\Project Management"
Select in the Open Dialog the files "Iteration Backlog" and "Product Backlog", and click Open

Step 5: Bind Iteration backlog workbook to the team project

Right click on the "Iteration Backlog" file and select Edit, and confirm any warning messages
Place your cursor in cell A1 of the Iteration backlog worksheet
Switch to the Team ribbon and click New List.
Select your Team Project and click Connect
From the New List dialog, select the Iteration Backlog query in the Workbook Queries folder.

The final step is to add a set of document properties that allow the workbook to communicate with the TFS reporting warehouse. Before we create the properties we need to collect some information about your project. The first piece of information comes from the table created in the previous step. As you collect these properties, copy them into notepad so they can be used in later steps.

Property	How to retrieve the value?
[Table name]	Switch to the Design ribbon and select the Table Name value in the Properties portion of the ribbon
[Project GUID]	In the Visual Studio Team Explorer, right click your Team Project and select Properties. Select the URL value and copy the GUID (long value with lots of characters) at the end of the URL
[Team Project name]	In the Properties dialog, select the Name field and copy the value
[TFS server name]	In the Properties dialog, select the Server Name field and copy the value [UPDATE] I have found that this is not correct: you need to specify the instance of your SQL Server. The value is used to create a connection to the TFS cube.

Switch back to the Iteration Backlog workbook.
Click the Office button and select Prepare – Properties.
Click the Document Properties – Server drop down and select Advanced Properties.

Switch to the Custom tab and add the following properties using the values you collected above.

Variable name	Value
[Table name]_ASServerName	[TFS server name]
[Table name]_ASDatabase	tfs_warehouse
[Table name]_TeamProjectName	[Team Project name]
[Table name]_TeamProjectId	[Project GUID]

Click OK to close the properties dialog.
It is possible that the Estimated Work (Hours) is showing the #REF! value. To resolve that change the formula with:

=SUMIFS([Table name][Original Estimate]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task")

For example

=SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Original Estimate]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task")
Also the Total Remaining Work in the Individual Capacity table may contain #REF! values. To resolve that change the formula with:

=SUMIFS([Table name][Remaining Work]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Assigned To];[Team Member];[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task")

For example

=SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Remaining Work]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Assigned To];[Team Member];VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task")
Save and close the workbook.

Step 6: Bind Product backlog workbook to the team project

Repeat the steps for binding the Iteration backlog for thiw workbook too.
In the worksheet Capacity, the formula of the Storypoints might be missing. You can resolve it with:

=IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS([Table name][Story Points];[Table name][Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))

Example

=IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS(VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Story Points];VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))