Presentation Slides

Today concludes my run of talks (at least for the next few weeks :-) that I’ve been giving over the past few weeks so I thought I’d post the PowerPoint decks in case anyone might find some use from them.  With that said…

• An Introduction to Silverlight 3 – presented at the Farm Credit Services of America internal User Group.
• VSTS – What’s in it for me? – presented at the Omaha Team System User Group,  Dubuque, IA .NET User Group, and Tulsa TechFest.
• Team Foundation Build 2008 – Automating the Build Process – presented at Tulsa TechFest.
• Using Team Foundation Build 2008 in the Real World – presented at Tulsa TechFest and the Tyson Developer Conference.
• Keeping Up with C# – presented at the Tyson Developer Conference.

Team Foundation Sidekicks Updated (v2.4)

First of all, if you are using Team Foundation Server and don’t currently make use of the Team Foundation Sidekicks (from Attrice Corporation), you should.  That said, Attrice has released an update (v2.4) to their current set of Team Foundation Sidekicks.

This update resolves a few issues with the previous release as well as one new feature - “Users View Sidekick”, which offers the following features:

• Display all users in Valid Users group on TFS server
• Search users list by user name or display name

This is the last planned release that will support TFS 2005/2008.  All future enhancements will target TFS 2010 with a beta (for VS 2010) possibly available by the end of the year.

For more information:

• http://www.attrice.info/blog/2009/11/12/team-foundation-sidekicks-2-4-release/
• http://www.attrice.info/cm/tfs/index.htm

Cross Platform Support for TFS Gets Better

Yesterday, Microsoft announced they will be purchasing the Teamprise-related assets of SourceGear.  The Teamprise tools allows software developers to take advantage of various features of Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (e.g. work item tracking, automated builds, and reporting features) from other environments such as Macintosh- and Linux/Unix-based systems.  There is also an Eclipse plug-in that provides functionality almost identical to that of the Team Explorer client that integrates with Visual Studio.

Having this technology more accessible (e.g. via Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate) will no doubt go a long way in helping development teams that work across multiple platforms (e.g. .NET, Java, etc.) work and plan with an integrated set of ALM tools.  Having those tools integrated into their development environment of choice – Visual Studio or Eclipse, is the icing on the cake.

The Teamprise technology will be available with Visual Studio 2010 and can be acquired in one of several ways:

• Purchased separately with one TFS CAL (for approximately $799).
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN will include the Teamprise technology.
• Free upgrade to the Microsoft branded product to all current Teamprise owners once released.

Support will continue to be offered by Teamprise until the Microsoft branded product is released, at which time, Microsoft will take over support.

More Information:

• Press Release
• http://www.microsoft.com/pathways/teamprise/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/11/09/microsoft-has-acquired-the-teamprise-client-suite.aspx
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4473

Visual Studio 2010 “Live” Sessions

Starting today (November 3rd, 2010), a series of Microsoft Office Live Meeting sessions will be hosted presenting on various features of Visual Studio 2010.  Whether you’ve already spent a lot of time with the Visual Studio 2010 betas or you’re new to the product, these sessions will be a great source of information.

• Nov 3rd 10:00-11:00AM -Getting Started with IntelliTrace (formerly the “Historical Debugger”) by Habib Heydarian and Justin Marks
• Nov 4th 10:00-11:00AM - Getting Started with SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 by Boris Scholl
• Nov 5th 9:00am-10:00am - A Lap Around Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2010 by Lisa Feigenbaum
• Nov 5th 10:00am-11:00am - Getting Started with Managed Extensibility Framework by Glen Block
• Nov 6th 10:00-11:00AM - Getting started with Design and Discovery Tools (Architecture) by Mark Groves

All times listed are PST and all sessions will use the same LiveMeeting connection information as follows:

LiveMeeting:	https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/0000000379_103/join?id=76P755&role=attend&pw=p%2C%2Fzk2K%7CM
Conf call:	Toll Free (US Only): 866-500-6738
Toll:	203-480-8000
Participant code:	#198585

If you do not already have the Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 client installed, you can save yourself a little time by installing it now (rather than waiting for the meeting to start).