March 31, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

And March is a wrap. On with the links…

Test Manager Video Recording Result With .xesc How Can I Play It? from Eran Ruso
When you record videos using the Data and Diagnostic collection tools, it creates an .xesc file. In order to play it, you’ll need Expression Encoder 4 or the proper codec. Take your pick.

I’ll Be Speaking at Tech Ed 2011-North America from Mickey Gousset
My good friend Mickey Gousset will be speaking on IntelliTrace at Tech Ed 2011 – North America this May in Atlanta. Mickey is an excellent speaker and all around great guy (although I’m quite a bit better looking), so if you make it to Tech Ed you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t attend his talk.

Refresh TFS Warehouse, Cube and Reports on Demand from Neno Loje
The TFS Warehouse and OLAP Cube only updates every two hours, so if you need to see the very latest report data, download Neno’s tfsrefreshwarehouse.exe utility and get it done on demand.

Enabling IIS Express Support in VS 2010 SP1 from Visual Web Developer Team Blog
With Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, Visual Studio now supports the option to use IIS Express as your development server instead of Cassini. This post details how to enable and configure IIS Express and Visual Studio 2010 to make it a reality.

March 30, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Seriously? March is almost over? On with the links…

Troubleshooting Tips for IntelliSense Slowness from the Visual C++ Team Blog
IntelliSense can collect lots of data. LOTS of data. And the consequence of all that data collection is that IntelliSense impacts execution speed and resource use. This post deals with common causes of IntelliSense slowness and what you can do about it.

How to Waste Time with Lab Management – Missing the Obvious that MTM Points to a Team Project from Richard Fennell
Richard has a nice post on using Microsoft Test Management with Lab Management that betrays a usability quirk. In his case, he couldn’t find an environment that he knew was running and it was all because environments and libraries are Team Project specific, not Team Project Collection specific. It’s also a good lesson to first examine the “obvious” when trying to figure out why something isn’t behaving like it should.

A Nice Case Study from InnovaSystems from Brian Harry
Brian highlights a case study with InnovaSystems, an organization who use TFS to achieve CMM Level 3 compliance. Case studies tend to have lots of fluff but they also tend to contain some great guidance on how TFS is being used in the real world as well, so check it out.

March 29, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Keeping the party going…on with the links…

Visual Studio UI Test Extensibility–Scenarios & Guiding Principles from Mathew Aniyan
This post provides really incredible insight into the Coded UI Testing tools, the scenarios it enables, how it works, and how you can extend the tools. Mathew also provides an up-to-date list of the various technologies that are supported with Coded UI tests. If you are using or intend to use Coded UI test automation, this is a must-read.

How to Distribute Custom Checkin Policies and Work Item Controls Using the Power Tools from Buck Hodges
Buck has some insight into a really cool feature of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools that allows an easy distribution mechanism to help distribute custom check-in policies and WIT controls to your team. There’s no way to auto-update these custom dlls, but this is the next best thing.

Monitoring Check-in Policy Overrides from Colin Dembovsky
When demonstrating check-in policies, many teams seem to misunderstand the whole purpose of the override capabilities. The entire point of policies isn’t about enforcement, it’s about management. Colin shows you how to better manage policy overrides so you can make sure the policies are being enforced appropriately.

TFS Integration Platform Updated (Mar ‘11) from Brian Harry
The Team Foundation Server Integration Tools have a fresh new release with lots and lots of bug fixes. Brian has a list of all the fixes if you want the details.

March 28, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Another week of fun lies ahead. On with the links…

Where Is All The History When Using The Move Or Rename In Source Control? from Eran Ruso
When you rename objects in version control in Team Foundation Server 2010, the “history” for the item seems to disappear, but that’s not the case. Eran shows you where the history has gone and how to take a look at the history details.

Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN Licensing White Paper (Updated) from Wes Macdonald
There have been lots of licensing changes to the Visual Studio ALM toolset, and those updates are now reflected in the Microsoft licensing whitepaper. Wes has a nice rundown of the specific changes, including some of the items we’ve already covered such as the introduction of unlimited load testing for Ultimate edition MSDN subscribers.

How To: In Place Branch Switching with TFS 2010 from Richard Banks
Branch switching in TFS can sometimes be a pain because branches are mapped to separate folders, unlike how some modern version control systems work. But there is a way to work around that, and Richard shows you how.

Dependency Diagrams (VS2010 Quick Hits) on YouTube
The Visual Studio ALM team has published a nice quick video to YouTube on the dependency diagrams feature in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition. If you’re unfamiliar with dependency diagrams, this will give you a nice peek into how they work and why they are good tools to help you better understand your existing code assets.

March 25, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Friday returns! On with the links…

Customize Team Build 2010 Series from Ewald Hofman
This is an older item that I’ve never linked to and that definitely deserves your attention. Ewald has written an awesome 15-part series on customizing Team Build 2010 that will help you get going with Team Build 2010 basics, Windows Workflow, and other build components by solving common problems. Specifics include updating assembly versions, creating custom workflow activities, and executing PowerShell scripts. Hat tip to Eran Ruso for the link.

Architecture Guidance – A Glimpse of What is Imminent from Willy-Peter Schaub
The ALM Rangers team is ramping up for the imminent release of the architectural guidance and this post provides us a video that provides a peek into some of the goodness is coming. Can’t. Wait. When it’s released, this is where you’ll find it.

Test and Lab Management Changes in Visual Studio Service Pack 1 Release from Amit Chatterjee
Amit has a nice post highlighting the new Test and Lab Management changes in Visual Studio Service Pack 1. Among the changes is support for Internet Explorer 9 with Fast Forward and Coded UI Tests.

Up to Eleven: Urban Turtle 3.10, Our 11th Release in 11 Months! from Urban Turtle
Urban Turtle continues to crank out the releases and live up to its reputation of agility with Urban Turtle 3.10. In 3.10, they’ve added improved support for Scrum for Team System v3, Team Configuration and Management, and many other improvements.

March 24, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Because software won’t make itself…yet. On with the links…

Pepper: A Visual Studio Settings Synchronization & Backup Extension from Robert MacLean
Pepper is a new extension for Visual Studio 2010 that finally brings synchronization, backup, and portability capabilities to your Visual Studio profile settings. If you use Visual Studio on multiple machines or tend to pave your machine regularly (here!) this is a godsend.

Who Created that TFS Event Subscription from Neno Loje
Neno continues an amazingly prolific run of posts by showing us how to query the TFS database to determine who created a TFS event subscription. This may be necessary if you’re trying to understand certain events behaviors or want to see who is and is not monitoring certain events. And to reiterate Neno’s warning: do not make any changes to the TFS databases!

Unable to manage Reporting Services Role with TFS Administration Tool 2.1 on Team Foundation Server 2010 from Ladislau Szomoru
A common issue people have seen with the TFS Administration Tool 2.1 is an issue where users are unable to manage the Reporting Services role. If you’ve installed TFS Service Pack 1, you should now be good to go. This post has all the details.

Visual Studio Setup Projects (vdproj) will Not Ship with Future Versions of VS from Buck Hodges
Considering I’ve been unable to get straight answers from MS on how to properly utilize (“it should work!”) Visual Studio Setup Projects with MSBuild and MSDeploy, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is abandoning them in future versions of Visual Studio. They have been a second class citizen for some time. Now they should go full bore and get rid of Website projects as well.

March 23, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Marching forward. On with the links…

Where Do I Fix a Production Defect? from Bill Heys
Bill has another exploration of version control branching and merging practices when he tackles a question about where production defects should be addressed. Good stuff, as always.

Enriching Your Work Item Descriptions by Moving Them to a HTML Field from Neno Loje
In this post, Neno shows you how to customize your process template by adding an HTML description field to your work items and how you can migrate the existing description text field data to your newly created field, using his TfsMoveDescriptions.exe tool.

First Post Back – Read the Latest Books from Jeff Levinson
Jeff’s new book, Software Testing with Visual Studio 2010, has been released and is available physically and digitally. I haven’t had a chance to dive into it yet, but it’s on the list.

TFS 2010 is Complete ALM from Colin Dembovsky
Colin has a nice post explaining the breadth of Team Foundation Server. Many regard TFS as a version control system or a work tracking system, when it’s really a lot more than that.

March 22, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Better late than never! On with the links…

Team Explorer 2010 SP1 Bug Viewing Build Summary from Brian Harry
If you’re using Team Explorer 2010 with Service Pack 1 installed against a TFS 2008 server, you’ll want to download a hotfix for an issue that crashes Visual Studio when viewing build information. Brian has the details.

Integrating Dynamics AX 2009 and TFS 2010 – 6 Part Series from Anthony Borton
Enhance ALM, an Australian TFS services provider, recently implemented TFS 2010 in a client’s Dynamics AX development environment and captured an extensive description on the steps they took to get everything connected. If this is a problem you face, you should definitely check it out.

Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance Refresh – Capacity Planning Poster from Willy-Peter Schaub
One of the best guides out there to helping you identify the hardware you’ll need to implement TFS is the capacity planning guide that is part of the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guide published by the Visual Studio ALM Rangers. It’s been recently refreshed with new information, so take a look if you’re interested.

Licensing Changes in TFS 2010: Creating Work Items and Viewing the Once Created by the User Does Not Require a CAL from Neno Loje
The licensing story for TFS work items has changed slightly, enabling scenarios where your customers (more specifically, external users) can report issues and track those issues without requiring a CAL or External Connector License. The previous license only allowed this scenario for internal users. With licensing issues, you should always double-check anything you read with a Microsoft licensing expert, but this is really promising as more than a few teams want to allow their users to interact with their defect tracking system but not at the expense of any additional licensing cost. This is long overdue.

March 21, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

Spring finally made it! On with the links…

Branching and Merging Improvements in TFS 2010 from the Visual Studio ALM Blog
In Team Foundation Server 2010, the most interesting new features related to version control are definitely the branching and merging improvements, such as tracking changesets across branches, viewing the branch hierarchy, and how branches are visually represented. This post provides a nice overview of these new features that will serve as a primer for those of you just getting your feet wet with TFS 2010.

Test Case Migrator Between Projects – WPF Metro from Shai Raiten
Shai has built a nice little tool that will copy Test Case work items and Shared Step work items from one Team Project to another. He’s included details and a brief how-to in order to get you going.

Hands-On Labs: ALM features in Visual Studio 2010 from Neno Loje
Neno has a nice run-down of the ALM related hands-on labs that are part of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Course. Included are labs on IntelliTrace, the architect tools, and Coded UI tests.

A Not Well Known Feature of TFS Web Access from Alkampfer
If you don’t use Team Web Access you haven’t seen it, but one of the nifty little features is the ability to see a state diagram of the work item type you currently have open and the ability to see a map of the transitions and states in the work item history control. Check out the post for details, or open TWA and see for yourself.

March 18, 2011 – VS/TFS Links and Quick Hits

TGIF! On with the links…

Integrate Fitnesse with TFS 2010 Team Build – aka How to Use Build-Deploy-Test Workflow with Physical Environment from Definition of Done
This is a nice post that discusses Fitnesse testing and enabling Fitness testing with TFS build. More specifically, it involves implementing a Build-Deploy-Test build workflow for a physical test environment. You get two topics for the price of one.

Getting the WP7 SDK onto a Windows Server 2008 TFS Build Agent from Richard Fennell
If you want to build windows phone applications using TFS Build, you need the Windows Phone SDK to be installed on your build agent. If you’re using Windows Server 2008 as your build agent, your out of luck, because the SDK required Windows 7 or Windows Vista during the install process. Richard has an unsupported workaround that will get the SDK installed on Windows Server 2008, but use it at your own risk.

Hidden Gem in TFS 2010: How to Rollback a Changeset with tf rollback from Buck Hodges
Buck has a nice overview of the rollback capabilities in TFS. You can rollback via the command line, in case you weren’t aware. Apparently, it was planned to be available via a menu item but time constraints prevented that from happening. It’s still nearly unforgiveable, but here’s hoping it finds its way into the product in the next version of TFS and Visual Studio.

Copy TFS Queries Between Iterations from Alkampfer
This post follows up a previous post I linked with code that copies queries between TFS iterations. A number of teams struggle with the administrative effort to prepare a Team Project, specifically those using the MSF for Agile 5.0 template, for a new iteration. This should help alleviate some of that effort.