Omaha Team System User Group Meeting Next Week

Next week will be our first Team System User Group meeting of the year and will start the third year for the Omaha Team System User Group!  I am looking forward to yet another great year and with Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 just around the corner, there is going to be more new material than we could possibly cover!  So, if you have any specific topics that you would love to see covered in the user group, please let us know.  Also, if you have a topic that you would like to share with the group, we would love to have you.

Next week’s topic, Making Transparency Work—Reporting in Team Foundation Server 2010, will be presented by Michael Querimit (Quilogy) - As application development teams interact with Team Foundation Server 2010, a tremendous amount of information is instrumented and recorded. Explore how the new reporting features of TFS 2010 make transparency work by providing quantitative metrics in meaningful reports and dashboards to help you make better business decisions.

Visit the Omaha Team System User Group site for more information.

VS 2010 and TFS 2010 VM Factory Guidance

But wait, there’s more!…  Along with various other bits of guidance being published recently by the Rangers, there is also the Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Virtualization Guidance.

“Visual Studio 2010 VM Factory is the reference implementation of a software solution that automates the creation of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 virtualized environments. The purpose of this project is to build prescriptive guidance around virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines using the VM Factory. The goal is to help users with the installation and configuration of virtualized environments with least effort and maximum automation.”

If you are planning on virtualizing any portion of your Visual Studio 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2010 installation, then this guidance can be invaluable.  Even if you’re just wandering whether or not you should virtualize, then you should read this guidance.

There are three downloads available on this site:

• Virtualization Guidance for Visual Studio 2010
• Virtualization Visual Studio ALM Rangers Base Image Guide
• Team Foundation Server Planning Guidance Poster - Capacity Planning

Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance Released

If you’re looking for some quick information regarding the myriad features in Visual Studio 2010, then look no further than the recently published Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance.  This is yet another example of a great guidance project released by the Rangers in the past few weeks.

“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.”

This guidance is provided as three separate downloads (a zipped file of XPS documents) containing the following features:

Overview (Default Download) – an overview of the guidance and focus areas, contained in one index table and overview quick reference poster.

Basic Guidance - a collection of basic guidance sheets, focusing on the “what” are the key features and “why” to consider them.

Supporting Guidance  - a set of documents and quick reference posters, supporting the basic guidance sheets.

This set of guidance contains some great looking reference posters and quick-reference sheets and is a great place to start when learning about the various features in Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 Launch Date Set (Again)

As pointed out last month, Microsoft pushed back the launch for Visual Studio 2010 (originally set for March 22nd, 2010).  At that time, they stated only that it would be pushed back a few weeks (citing performance reasons).

Now, several weeks later, they have reset the Visual Studio 2010 launch date for April 12th, 2010 as pointed out by Rob Caron in a “short but sweet blog post.

Although it’s only being pushed back three weeks, it does give us the benefit of getting another interim release (a release candidate to be available in February) prior to the RTM release.  If you weren’t quite ready to “go live” with Beta 2, maybe the RC will fit better within your timelines.

TFS 2010 Requirements Management Guidance Ships!

As we near RTM for Visual Studio 2010, we are going to start seeing more and more information being release providing guidance on the installation, configuration, and usage of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010.  One of the latest guidance project to be release by the Rangers is the Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management Guidance.

“This Ranger solution addresses the People, Process, and Technology guidance for Requirements Engineering (RE) using Team Foundation Server. The goal of this guidance is to provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.”

This release includes the following packages (which can be downloaded separately or together in a single package):

1. Introduction: RM Rangers Guide to the Complete Guide
2. Requirements Management Planning
3. Requirements Traceability
4. Analysis and Breakdown
5. Requirements Elicitation
6. Requirements Specification
7. Requirements Validation
8. Requirements Change Management and Approval
9. Requirements Management checklist sheet

Each of the above sections is packaged as a zipped Microsoft Word (.docx) document.  If you do not have Microsoft Word installed, you can download and install the free viewer from here.

Team Foundation Sidekicks for TFS 2010

Attrice has released version 3.0 of their (most useful) Team Foundation Server Sidekicks for Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2.  This set of utilities has been sorely missed since TFS 2010 was first made available for testing.  This release has pretty much the same functionality as version 2.4 (for TFS 2005/2008) with the following exceptions:

• Permissions Sidekick: this sidekick is not available in this release (to be added back in 2010 RTM timeframe)
• Build Type editing (VS integration only): this feature is not available in this release
• Dynamic History support (VS integration only): the History toolwindow is updated only when it is visible alongside with Source Control Explorer and single instance of the window exists (in 2010 History toolwindow may have multiple instances)

Read more about this release here – you can download version 3.0 directly from here.

VS 2008 & 2010 - Virtual Machine Images

If you’re looking for a set of virtual machines for testing Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2008 or 2010, then you’re in luck!  Brian Randell has just posted about a new set of virtual machine images ready for downloading.

For the 2008 images, the new expiration date is January 31st, 2011.  The 2010 images expire much earlier due to the nature of the beta products – April 9th, 2010.  However, by that time, it’s hoped that the final release of the 2010 products will be out, or if not (because of the delayed launch), then at least a new release candidate should be available by that time.

There are a total of seven images – four 2008 images and three 2010 images.

Read the full post for details.

Final TFS 2010 Beta 2 Patch Available

As of today, the final TFS 2010 Beta 2 patch is being made available.  The list of fixes include:

• If, in the connect dialog, the URL with “/tfs” fails to connect, fails back to base URL (minus “/tfs”).
• Removed an extraneous error that occurred when connecting to a CodePlex with the 2010 Team Explorer.
• Fixed an error that affected connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind an ISA proxy that requires authentication. (This affected people connecting to CodePlex over the Internet.)
• Improved performance when using Crtl-A to select multiple Labels.

You can download the patch from here or here (note: the second link is still in the process of being published so it may not be active for a few hours).

(read this announcement on Brian Harry’s blog)

As announced a few days ago, the originally planned launch date for Visual Studio 2010 has been pushed back several weeks so there are now plans to publish an interim release candidate (RC).  The RC is currently scheduled for release during February, 2010 so you shouldn’t have to wait too long between today’s patch release and the next publicly available release.

Visual Studio 2010 Launch Pushed Back

A couple of months ago it was announced that Visual Studio 2010 would launch on March 22, 2010.  Today, Microsoft announced that, due to extensive feedback (e.g. regarding performance issues, etc.), the official launch will be pushed back a few weeks.

Because of the extended beta period, Microsoft will be providing a Release Candidate, currently scheduled for February, 2010, with a broad “Go Live” license.

I believe this is a great move on Microsoft’s part as it will give them a little more time to “get it right” and will also provide the public with another “Go Live” version for testing and development purposes prior to the official launch.  So, now you won’t have to wait until the end of March next year to get an updated version of VS 2010 but you will have to wait a little longer to get the final (hopefully better) product – not a bad trade-off.

Read more about it here and here.

TFS 2010 Beta 2 Power Tools Released

For anyone that’s been using Team Foundation Server for any amount of time, odds are you’ve also been making use of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (if not, then they’re well worth a look).  If you have been taking advantage of Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2’s “Go Live” license then you’ve had to make due without the enhanced functionality provided by the TFS Power Tools.  That is, until now.

The Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 Power Tools have been released and are now available for download.  Here are the links:

• Team Foundation Power Tools
• TFS MSSCCI Provider

Brian Harry has a great post on the various details here.

Note: this is a pre-release version of the TFS 2010 Power Tools.  The final version will be released around the same time as Visual Studio 2010 (March 22, 2010).