This Service Pack addresses a range of issues that were found through customer and partner feedback as well as our own internal testing. Many of these issues were reported by you and I thank you for taking the time to report them to us. The release also adds a number of customer requested functionality and enhancements to some of the most common development scenarios to Visual Studio that I think you’ll find interesting and valuable.
I'm currently working in a shop that tracks defects in Quality Center but I would like for our development team to be able to work with TFS defects directly from their Visual Studio IDE. I started to work on an in-house solution for synchronizing defects, however, I recently found out about a utility for synchronizing bug/defect items between Mercury Quality Center and Team Foundation Server. Although I haven't used it yet (I'll be trying it out over the next week or so) it looks to be very promising.
Here is a quick rundown of how it works:
It doesn't support attachments at this time but I'm told this capability is coming soon (i.e. possibly next week). I'll post my experiences once I've had a chance to work with it for a little while.
Click here for more information or click here for pricing.
The SRL Team has released a new utility to help with the management of Team Foundation Server permissions.? TFS Permission Manager 1.0 has allows you to work with all aspects of TFS-related permissions and includes the following capabilities:
If you have the responsibility?of managing?permissions on a TFS server then this utility could be a big time saver.
You can download the utility here.
Microsoft has made available for download a Virtual PC (VPC) based set of training for Visual Studio Team System basics.? The modules within this training program include:
This is a relatively large download (5GB) and is comprised of eight separate files that must be downloaded and then extracted (a single download would have been nice :-).? The extracted files will take up about 15GB of space and can be ran using Virtual PC 2004 or Virtual Server 2005.
I haven't had a chance to go through the training yet but plan to do so in the near future.? I will post back with any interesting experiences I may have :-)
Recently, I've started experimenting with the capabilities of add-ins for VS 2005 because I want to write some extensions for Team Foundation Server. However, before I could really get to work on the more complex add-ins I needed to start with something simple.
For anyone who has ever worked with Visual Studio 2005 solutions that contains multiple projects, you've probably spent a fair amount of time collapsing the project items in the Solution Explorer. So, my first "useful" add-in simply allows you to collapse all solution project items with a single mouse click.
After you install this add-in and run Visual Studio 2005, you will notice a new menu item, "Collapse All", when you right-click on a solution in the Solution Explorer. Selecting this menu option will collapse all project items within the solution.
I'm also planning on adding a few more features to this particular add-in down the road but even in its current state, it's already proven to be a time saver.
You can download the add-in here.
The 2006 Heartland Developers Conference has officially come to a close. It was two days of a lot of technical sessions, food, prizes, games, socializing, and more. Although I don't know the official attendee count (yet) it was somewhere around 600 which is pretty good considering this was only the 3rd year for the conference. Philip and Joe did a great job putting this together (no surprise there :-). This was the first year I attended HDC and rumor has it that HDC '07 will be in Omaha as well so I look forward to attending again next year - I'm sure it will be even better!
I also had the pleasure of giving a presentation of Team Build at the end of the first day and had a pretty good turn out. I think the presentation went pretty well considering it was during the 5:00-6:30pm time slot at the end of the first day. If anyone is interested in the slides used for the presentation, you can get them here. I had the opportunity to answer a lot of questions during the presentation as well as at the end of the presentation. This was the first time I had ever presented at developers conference and it was a great experience. I hope I get a chance to do it again.
There were a lot of great topics covered throughout the two-day conference but some of the highlights for me would have to include the talks on LINQ and Custom Windows Workflow Activities as well as my own presentation on Team Build :-) I had attended talks on LINQ and Windows Workflow at this year's TechEd in Boston and it's nice to see how well the technology has progressed.
Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Pros CTP6 is now available. Check out Cameron's post for the full details. Here is an excerpt of what's new since CTP5:
Having support for Team Build should be a definite plus when it comes to versioning a database with an application release. I look forward to playing around with that feature.
It's official - I'll be presenting on Team Foundation Server's Team Build features at the up coming 2006 Heartland Developers Conference. This will be the first time I've attended the HDC (it's only in its 3rd year) and I'm looking forward to it.
I'll post a link to the presentation materials as the event date approaches.
If anyone out there is attending the HDC this year I'd be interested in hearing from you.
Brian has also posted some various ramblings on Visual Studio SP1. This is an interesting read with interesting reader comments.
On a (somewhat) related note, the Visual Studio 2005 SDK v3 RTM has also been released which includes tools, documentation and samples for developers to write, build, test and deploy extensions for Visual Studio 2005 (including Team Foundation Server).Read the full post on Brian Harry's blog or click here to download the new set of Power Toys.
Update: Rob Caron has announced a new forum for the TFS Power Toys. You can use this forum to provide feedback as well as ask questions related to the TFS Power Toys.
Lately I have been reviewing a lot of Visual Studio Team System videos and Webcasts. After several days of searching I had acquired several link so I thought I would make this list public. You can view the list of videos and Webcasts here.
Please let me know if you've seen any VSTS-related video or Webcast that is not included in this list and I'll get it added.
As some of you may be aware, I've kept a list of useful (at least in my mind) links to various Team Foundation Server-related sites and utilities on our company's web site. There are currently two links:
Although I feel this is a useful list I thought I would make it easier to access by providing RSS feeds to the content. So now there are two more links:
This feed should be viewable by any news aggregator that supports the RSS 2.0 standard.
As always, if you've ran across a useful TFS utility or web site, let me know and I'll add it to the list.
For anyone who has ever had to generate documentation for their .NET projects, you know only too well how difficult and time consuming that can be.
There have been a few utilities available in the past that helped out in this area. One example is NDoc. NDoc generates some very nice API documentation in several different formats. However, it doesn't work so well for Visual Studio 2005. Also, the original developer of NDoc has recently announced that he is dropping future development for NDoc in favor of Sandcastle (as well as other circumstances - although the project may be picked up and administered by another volunteer).
Microsoft's Sandcastle project may not be as extensive as NDoc in some areas (e.g. support for custom tags - at least not yet) but it appears that it will support the majority of everyone's needs out of the box with the ability to be extended as needed.
If you follow the various examples on creating Sandcastle documentation you'll find that it's rather tedious to setup the initial scripting necessary to generate your final help file. However, there are some nice tools out there to help with this task as well.
So far, my favorite tool has to be Sandcastle Help File Builder - an open source utility available at The Code Project. This utility has a UI that looks almost identical to that of NDoc and works in a similar fashion. It allows you to simply refer to the assemblies you wish to document, set some custom properties, and generate your documentation. If you're looking for a UI to interface with Sandcastle, this is the tool to look at.
Here are some various Sandcastle links:
The History Sidekick application pane provides the following features:
I have to say that I've been using the original Sidekick utilities for a while now and they just keep getting better and better. Thanks go to Attrice for providing these utilities.
The developers from Attrice have done it again. They have released a brand new sidekick - the Microsoft Build Sidekick. The Microsoft Build Sidekick allows you to edit your MSBuild projects in a graphical, hierarchical format. You can also use this utility to modify your TFS build types. It can take a few seconds to open up a build file and have it displayed in the utility but once it's loaded, it is very easy to work with.
Here is a list of initial features:
This is a nice feature set for a "1.0" product. Here are a couple of features I have suggested be added to the product (we'll see if they get implemented :-)
Also, a new blog dedicated entirely to the set of Team Foundation Sidekicks has been created. Click here to check it out.
Check out the Sidekicks page for more details.
Read the full details in Mitch's post.
Before creating a team project, you should carefully plan the scope of the project and consider the future path for the modification, growth, and maintenance of the team project. This topic presents a list of questions you must answer to determine whether you may want to create a new team project or expand an existing project. This list of questions is presented as a starting point for your deliberation and is not intended to be exhaustive or definitive for all software development projects.
This is definitely a good read if you haven't done so already. This document is a sub-topic of Creating and Managing Team Projects within MSDN. So, there is a lot of other useful Team System information at this site.
CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end. CodePlex is open to the public free of charge.
Design Tools Enhancements
Class Designer Enhancements
Brief Description
Optimized for Microsoft ClearTypeThe Microsoft Consolas Font Family is a set of highly legible fonts designed for ClearType. It is intended for use in programming environments and other circumstances where a monospaced font is specified. This installation package will set the default font for Visual Studio to Consolas.Overview
Consolas is intended for use in programming environments and other circumstances where a monospaced font is specified. All characters have the same width, like old typewriters, making it a good choice for personal and business correspondence. Optimizing the font specifically for ClearType allowed a design with proportions closer to normal text than traditional monospaced fonts like Courier. This allows for more comfortable reading of extended text on-screen.
The package will change the default text face in Visual Studio to the Consolas family.
This package is only intended for licensed users of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Click here for more information.
Workspace Sidekick is a tool for TFS Administrators and advanced users providing Graphic User Interface for viewing and performing administrative changes on TFS workspaces.
You can download individual chapters or the entire set as a single zip file.Get a focused, first look at the features and capabilities in Microsoft Visual Basic 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and the .NET Framework 2.0. If you currently work with Visual Basic 6, these authors fully understand the adoption and code migration issues you'll encounter. They'll step you through a quick primer on .NET Framework programming, offering guidance for a productive transition. If you already work with .NET, you'll jump directly into what's new, learning how to extend your existing skills. From the innovations in rapid application development, debugging, and deployment, to new data access, desktop, and Web programming capabilities, you get the insights and code walkthroughs you need to be productive right away.
I came across a (relatively) new Microsoft site today that is dedicated to providing technical information for Visual Studio Team System.
Here you can access comprehensive resources from introductory to expert that include both online and self-paced training, the latest technical articles, videos, evaluation downloads, Webcasts by Visual Studio Team System experts and more. Take the first step to expand your opportunities!
There are a few "coming soon..." placeholders here and there but there is still a lot of good information on this site if you're interested in learning more about Team System.
I came across this utility a while back that allows you to easily remove project items from the Visual Studio MRU list. It works for the 2002, 2003, and 2005 versions. I saw a post today on a forum asking for a utility to do this so I thought I'd post this out for others to see (source code is included).
Check it out at: http://weblogs.asp.net/egarmon/archive/2005/02/04/366825.aspx
We just recently updated to the RC1 release of Team Foundation Server and I had to reconfigure the e-mail settings on the server. I had to do this the first time as well when we installed the Beta 3 Refresh version.
I didn't take part in the actual installation process so I don't know if the install asks for the SMTP server and Reply To address and the person installing it for us just didn't enter it, or if it's just not part of the setup.
In any case, if you ever need to go back and change the e-mail (SMTP) server or Reply To address, you can do it by editing the Web.config file under the following web service folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\Services
Note that your installation folder could be different.
The SMTP server is configured by the "smtpServer" key/value pair under appSettings and the Reply To address is configured by the "emailNotificationFromAddress" key/value pair.