TFS Agile Poker for Windows 8

If you have been involved with agile software development in any form or fashion, chances are you’ve spent some time estimating effort or relative size of user stories.  This is often done by selecting a card from a special planning poker deck.  A typical planning poker deck is based on a Fibonacci sequence (e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…) though the sequence is sometimes modified after 13 for even numbers (e.g. 20, 40, 100).  This process works fairly well when all participants are located relatively close to each other (i.e. in the same room).  What if the team members are geographically separated?
It just so happens that a fellow Visual Studio ALM MVP, Mike Douglas, has recently released TFS Agile Poker for Windows 8 that works with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (or Team Foundation Service).

TFS Agile Poker is a free cross-platform tool for distributed and co-located teams to point (i.e. estimate) your Team Foundation Server backlog. TFS Agile Poker can be used with Team Foundation Service or or your on-premises Team Foundation Server 2010 or 2012 installation using theTFS OData Services.

Microsoft’s Brian Keller selected TFS Agile Poker as his pick of the week in This Week On Channel 9 (starting at 14:14 in the video).
The app is free and is currently available for Windows 8 with plans for Windows Phone, Web/HTML5, Android, and iOS.  Read more about this app here.

MSDN Improved

Today, Microsoft launched an updated and improved version of its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) site. Although many developers rely upon web-based search results to get them to the content they need within MSDN, the site is also used by many (sometimes newer) developers as an entry point into the vast set of developer resources provided by Microsoft. You may also visit MSDN simply to catch up with what’s new in development technology.
With that said, there were a few things that Microsoft targeted with this update (as taken from Brian Harry’s post on this subject):

• Simple:   We designed the site to help developers get started with Microsoft more easily, and get them to the information that they need.  We heard from the community that finding the right information, often spread between different locations, could be challenging.  The Microsoft Developer Network addresses that feedback by providing a single point of entry for all developers.
• Relevant: We want to meet developers where they are and talk with them on their terms.  With the Microsoft Developer Network, an iOS developer, for example, can quickly understand the opportunity available from our platform and then easily navigate to the educational or technical content he needs to get started.
• Community Driven: Microsoft has an incredible developer ecosystem, and we wanted to provide even more opportunity for the community to engage with us and with each other.  We designed the Microsoft Developer Network with that in mind creating a “Perspectives” section with community blogs, an integrated social feed, and a “Connect” area that allows developers to tell their stories, get advice and connect with us directly.

The site launch happening today is for English-based geographies, but this is just the beginning of a phased worldwide launch.   Expect to see the global launch roll out over the next few months!
I for one am excited to see these updates to MSDN. I rely heavily on the content provided by MSDN and any enhancements that make it easier, faster, and more accurate when locating specific information is a big win as far as I’m concerned!

My First Experience with the AGENT Smartwatch SDK

If you follow the smartwatch industry at all, it’s likely you’ve heard of at least a couple of up and coming offerings.  One is the Pebble smartwatch, one of Kickstarter’s great success stories.  This project had an initial goal of raising $100,000 and ended up raising over $1,000,000!  I backed the Pebble project and was super excited when it showed up a few months ago.
Although I don’t use an iPhone for day-to-day use (I really love my Nokia Lumia 920), I do own one so I was able to link it with the Pebble and play around.  After trying out several watch faces, and a few apps, I really wanted to create some watch faces of my own.  However, Windows Phone is not currently supported (nor do I know if they have any concrete plans to support it).  I do have my iPhone but I don’t own a Mac so I can’t develop software for the iPhone (Xcode doesn’t run on non-Mac platforms).  I don’t own an Android phone and I really don’t feel the need to purchase one just to create apps for the Pebble.
This is where another Kickstarter project comes in – the AGENT smartwatch.  This project also had an initial goal of $100,000 and managed to raise just over $1,000,000 during the funding period.  What I really like about this watch is that it supports Windows Phone (as well as iOS and Android) and that it’s SDK is based on the .NET Micro Framework.  I don’t exactly need another smartwatch, but this one will support my phone (assuming it actually makes it to production) as well as my geeky urges, so, what the hey!? I decided to go ahead and back the project.

In the meantime, while I’m waiting (months) for my AGENT to show up, I can start experimenting with apps and watch faces now with their AGENT SDK.

Developing watch faces for the Agent watch, which currently run only on an emulator because you can’t get an actual watch yet, is fairly straightforward.  However, before you start, you need to download a few tools.

1. Visual Studio 2012.  Any edition of Visual Studio 2012 will work – even the free Express edition.
2. The .NET Micro Framework SDK v4.3.
3. The AGENT SDK v0.1.1 (June 2013, Preview Release).

Once you’ve installed the above tools, you will see a new set of AGENT templates within Visual Studio:

The AGENT Watch Application template provides a simple “Hello World” starter application whereas the AGENT Watch Face template provides a simple digital watch.  Once you create a new project based on either of these templates, you can immediately run the application (by pressing F5) within the AGENT Emulator.  Here is the AGENT Watch Face template running straight “out of the box”:

This is a very basic app but it does provide a starting point.
In my case, I wanted to design a watch face that might be used to help younger children learn how to read analog watch and clock dials. Before I started, I sketched out a simple mockup of what I was thinking:

Not very artistic, I know :-)  However, it provided me with a visual and gave me a goal for my first custom watch face for the AGENT smartwatch.
Though I’m not going to go into the code in this post (I’ll save that for subsequent posts) the final result ended up looking something like this:

I designed the watch face to have three modes: “Easy”, “Moderate”, and “Advanced”.  You can cycle through the modes by pressing the middle, right button.  The “Easy” mode provides visual indicators on the hands making it very easy to see what they represent.  There are also numbers at the four main positions on the watch face (the final version would like have all 12 numbers) as well as a digital readout of the time at the bottom.
The “Moderate” mode removes the visual indicators from the hands as well as the numbers from the dial leaving only the digital readout for hints.
“Advanced” mode removes all visual indicators leaving only the hands and the date.
This watch face could definitely stand to be polished a little and it likely will be before the AGENT smartwatch is shipped (to backers) later this year.
If you would like to create your own watch faces and/or apps for the AGENT smartwatch, here are a few links to help you get started.  I will be posting more information as well but these are great starting points.

• Get the tools (the same links as above).
• Getting started with Developing for the AGENT Smartwatch – this is a great read for starters!
• Scott Hanselman gets into the act with his Sneak Peek.
• Playing Around With the AGENT SDK to Create a Custom Watch Face – a great post that shows how to create and embed various fonts for your watchface/app.
• AGENT.Contrib project – a super-great resource for sample code for the AGENT SDK.  The ButtonHelper class is one great example provided within this project that makes it easy to react to button presses on the watch.
• AGENT Forums – a great place to ask questions about the AGENT SDK as well as to post your apps and watch faces for review and discussion.

I have no intentions of getting rid of my Pebble – I still hope for Windows Phone support some day – but at least I now have an easy outlet for my desire to build smartwatch apps and watch faces.  All I need now is just a little more… time :-)

Demystifying Microsoft’s Git Offering

Although Microsoft is definitely late to the distributed version control (DVC) game, they’re pretty much in the game now and their DVC offering is only getting better. In order to provide distributed capabilities within its current version control offering, Team Foundation Server, the Visual Studio team had to make a decision: build something brand new (possibly proprietary) or build on one of the standard DVC platforms. They decided to go with the latter and build upon Git. A great decision as far as I am concerned.

But, Before That…

Before we get to the Visual Studio offering, let’s take a look at CodePlex. If you’re not familiar with CodePlex, it is Microsoft’s free open source project hosting site. Here, you can create projects to share with others around the world as well as download open source software. In March, 2012, Microsoft made available the capability to create Git-based repositories within CodePlex.  With this, developers now have the capability of choosing between a centralized version control repository, a la TFS, or a distributed version control repository via Git (or Mercurial, which actually came before Git but isn’t nearly as popular).

Moving Forward

Fast forward about ten months and Microsoft announces Git support for Team Foundation Service (TFService, their hosted TFS offering). This update provides a 100% compatible Git repository option for TFService. Not only does this provide typical Visual Studio developers with a great DVC option for TFService it also makes the TFService option much more attractive for non-Visual Studio developers by providing simpler integration for tools such as Xcode.

Along with Git in TFService, Microsoft also provided the Visual Studio Tools for Git. This extension provides Git integration within Visual Studio 2012. If you plan to utilize Git-based repositories within Visual Studio 2012 then you will need to install this extension. Something to note is that this extension allows Visual Studio to work with any standard Git repository such as GitHub, not just TFService.

Still Some Confusion

One of the biggest Git-/Visual Studio-related questions I get today is, what is the difference between the Visual Studio Tools for Git and Git-tf?

The Git-tf command line tools were announced in August, 2012 with the intent of giving developers the capability of using a local Git repository for development that could then be synced up with a TFS repository. In simple terms, you can use Git-tf to clone TFS into a local repository which could then sync your local commits back into TFS. Essentially, it provided a bridge between TFS and clients and/or developers that preferred to work with (or could only work with) Git. Until now, this was essentially your only option for using TFS with tools such as Xcode.

Visual Studio Tools for Git is a Visual Studio Extension (not a set of command line tools) that provides a set of context menus exposing typical Git operations such as Clone, Push, Pull, and Fetch. If you prefer to work within the Visual Studio IDE (as opposed to the command line) then you definitely want to install this extension.

Cheat Sheet

The graphic below depicts the tools you can use to access TFVC as well as TF-Git repositories from various clients.  There are two items to note with this image:

1. As announced by Brian Harry, Git will be supported in the on-premises version of TFS 2013 starting with the preview version to be released at this years //Build/ conference.
2. Although TF-Git repositories are depicted, you can substitute any standard Git repository (e.g. GitHub).

Surface Pro as My Main Computer/Tablet

I have been developing on a Dell XPS M1530 laptop for nearly 5 years now.  It has been nothing short of a great laptop.  However, as you can guess based on its age, it is a bit dated by today’s standards.  A couple of months ago, I acquired a Microsoft Surface Pro (128BG version) and had been wondering if it might be beefy enough to replace my Dell.

Last week I had the opportunity to try my Surface Pro out in a development scenario so I thought I’d give it a try.  I installed Visual Studio 2012 w/Update 2, ReSharper (the latest version), and StyleCop.  I also included the latest suite of Telerik controls for Windows Phone 8.  I then spent two full days working on a new Windows Phone 8 application (for an internal innovation event at my place of employment).  In short, here is what I discovered:

• The Surface Pro is more than capable of running Visual Studio 2012 with various add-ins installed.  The Surface Pro was much more responsive than my current Dell XPS M1530.  Granted, it is no match for the latest, top-of-the-line laptop or workstation, but it’s better than what I’ve been used to for the past four or five years, so it’s a huge improvement for me.
• Running the Windows Phone emulator on a Surface Pro is an awesome experience.  Rather than interacting with the emulator with a mouse (as you would normally do on a laptop) you can simply use your fingers like you would on an actual phone.  In fact, I didn’t even think to try this until day 2 of my development (I had been using the mouse until then).  Once I tried it, I had no idea why I wasn’t using touch all along.
• Using a Bluetooth mouse with the Surface Pro seems natural.  I found that I used the mouse as well as touch continually as I developed.  I used touch when it made sense (such as with the phone emulator) and the mouse where it made sense (such as with Visual Studio).
• I used the Microsoft Surface Type Cover the entire time I was developing and found that I typed on it almost as quickly as I did on a full-size keyboard.  I really only slowed down when I used some of the navigational keys (e.g. Home, End, etc.) that were not located in their usual location.  I also slowed down a little with the Function keys because you have to use the “Fn” key in conjunction with them on the Type Cover keyboard.
• Although you can develop on the Surface Pro’s 10” screen, I wouldn’t want to do it full time.  Had I been sitting at my desk during this event, I likely would have hooked up to an external monitor.

Based on this experience, I decided it was time to switch to the Surface Pro as my full-time computer/tablet at home.  However, since I had no desire to stare at a 10” screen for hours at a time, I decided to get a USB 3 dock to connect to my other peripherals.  After some initial research, I ended up selecting the Toshiba Dynadock Docking Station (PA3927U1PRP).  This particular model had everything I was looking for: good reviews from other customers, support for USB 3, dual monitor support, and a headphone jack in the front of the unit.  A co-worker has been using a Targus USB 3 Dock for a couple of months now with good results as well.  I ended up choosing the Dynadock mainly for its form factor.

In the screenshot below, you can see the Surface Pro on the right with the Dynadock between the surface and the two monitors.  I have a wired keyboard and mouse connected to the dock along with speakers and a subwoofer (5.1 surround sound is supported) and the two monitors (one is connected via HDMI and the other DVI).

So far I have been very happy with this setup.  At one point, I had a Netflix movie playing on the left monitor and a Hulu show playing on the right monitor with no distinguishable degradation in video performance (the sound from each show was mixed as well without any noticeable “garbling”).

One other item of note… When using Windows 8 (Surface Pro or any other laptop/workstation) I highly recommend getting a copy of Stardock’s ModernMix.  This application is a must have when using multiple monitors and it’s only $4.99 (USD) so it’s very affordable.  ModernMix allows you to run Windows 8 Store apps in a “windowed” environment giving you the ability to move Windows 8 Store apps from screen to screen.  Without ModernMix, your Windows 8 Store apps are pretty much isolated to running on a single screen – and only if you’re not currently interacting with the Desktop.

It is still too early to determine if this setup will end up being ideal but, so far, I am enjoying having better performance than I was having with my previous laptop and now I’m ultra portable in that I only need to unplug the USB connector from the Surface Pro (and power plug, if it’s plugged in) and I’m ready to go.

If it doesn’t slip my mind, I will report back in about six months or so with an update on how, or if, this configuration worked out.

ALM Readiness Treasure Map Update–Tracking Progress

If you don’t follow the various ALM Rangers Solutions, you should!  If you do, then you already realize there is a lot of content put out by the various ALM Rangers project teams. In fact, there is so much information provided by the ALM Rangers that they have provided a Windows 8 app to help navigate the ever-changing waters of available content – the ALM Readiness Treasure Map.

[If you’re running Windows 8, click the above image to install the app now]

Coming Enhancements

Although version 1 of the app has seen a lot of use, there is much room for improvement.  That said, there is currently a team of ALM Ranger pirates currently hard at work on implementing many of the proposed enhancements for version 2.  One enhancement in particular is the ability to track the status of each guidance document (referred to as jewels within the app) as you make your way through the treasure map.

If you take a look at one of the proposed screen mock-ups below (click here if you’re interested in seeing the rest of the mock-ups), you’ll notice just after the title the text “1/15 completed”.  This implies that you have flagged one of the guidance documents within this section as having been read.  With this update, we plan to track three states in regards to document status, including:

1. Not Started – you have not yet viewed the document
2. Started – you have started viewing the document but have not yet completed it, depicted graphically by an open, yet empty, treasure chest (as seen below)
3. Completed – you have completed viewing the guidance document, depicted graphically by a filled treasure chest (as seen below)

QUESTION: We have gone back and forth on whether or not a guidance document should be automatically flagged as having been “Started” once you click on the link within the app to view it.  As you can see in the mock-up above, there is a context menu that allows you to manually flag a document as having been “Started” (amongst other states).  We are considering making this an app preference where you get to decide how it works.  However, we don’t want to make something that should be simple, complex.  If you have a strong opinion one way or the other, let us know in the comments below.

As a document’s status is updated, the app will utilize the built-in data roaming features of Windows 8 to synchronize the status across your Windows 8 devices.  So, if you start viewing a document on your Windows 8 laptop and move to your Windows 8 tablet, the correct document status will appear on the tablet as well (assuming you’re using the same Microsoft Account on both devices).

Design Details

The following details outline the changes to be made to the source code to support the tracking features described above.

Data Layer (Data Providers)

TreasureMapDataModel.xml

• Add ID attribute to <guidance/> element and populate with unique integers (consider grouping by category - e.g. "Prepare" = 0-999, "Quick Intro" = 1000-1999, and so on...).  The ID is currently assigned dynamically when the data structure is loaded.  However, since we'll be syncing up document Status each time the app is ran, we need to ensure the IDs don't change.  For this reason, we need to add them to the data.

DB.cs

• In LoadDB method, replace uniqueGuidanceCounter with newly added ID attribute from above.

Business Logic Layer (View Models)

Status.cs

• Create Status.cs which simply contains a new enum:

public enum Status {
     NotStarted = 0,
     Started = 1,
     Completed = 2
}

Guidance.cs

• Add a read-only Status property of type Status.  This property will be read only to force updates to go through the StatusManager (below) where the overall status values will be kept up to date.

StatusManager.cs

This is a new class used to encapsulate some of the logic necessary to set guidance status as well as return various guidance status based on categories and projects.  This class would be surfaced through the DB class because a) it is always in scope (via the App class) and b) this would allow the StatusManager class to be provided with a reference to the DB class which has references to the categories and projects needed for status counts.

Properties:
These properties would be calculated once (via the private methods below), during the initialization of the StatusManager class.  After initialization, they would be kept up to date as the SetStatus method is called.  This alleviates the need to continually walk the data hierarchy as the counts are displayed via data binding.

• int CompletedProjectCount
• int CompletedDocumentCount
• int ProjectDocumentCount
• int TotalCompletedCount

Methods:
[-] = Private; [+] = Public  

• -GetCompletedProjectCount(int category) - gets the total number of projects, for a given category, where all guidance documents have a Status of Complete (2).  Used for displaying completed ratio on the "category" page.
• -GetCompletedDocumentCount(int project) - gets the total number of guidance documents, for a given project, that have a Status of Complete (2).  Used for displaying completed ratio on "projects" page.
• -GetProjectDocumentCount(int project) - gets the total number of guidance documents for a given project.  Used for displaying completed ratio on "projects" page.
• -GetTotalCompletedCount() - gets the total number of guidance documents, across all categories and projects, that have a Status of Complete (2).  Used for displaying overall percentage (on tile).
• +SetStatus(int guidance, Status status) - sets the current status for the specified guidance ID.  Used by the "Mark as" menu for "Not started", "In progress", and "Completed".
• -Save() - saves the current state of the various document Status values to "roaming" storage.  This would be simply serializing a List<Dictionary<GuidanceID, Status>> for simplicity.  This method would be called, asynchronously, each time the SetStatus method is called.
• -Load() - loads the current state of the various document Status values from "roaming" storage.  This would happen during initialization of the StatusManager class.

UI (Views)

Projects.xaml

• Capture Tapped event for "jewel" hyperlinks and set Status for selected guidance document to Started (1) unless it's already been marked as completed.  Question - do we want to automatically mark something as Started the first time it is opened or do we want to purely rely on the user to mark it via the menu option?

More Information

• Visual Studio ALM Rangers Solutions
• Visual Studio ALM Rangers Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers
• ALM Readiness Treasure Map – Table of Contents
• Willy’s Reflections – All Things ALM Rangers

TFS Live app for Windows Phone

If you happen to 1) work with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Service (TFService) or another publically accessible TFS server and 2) own a Windows 8 Phone, then you will want to check out the tfs live app for Windows Phone. The tfs live app provides quick, at-a-glance totals for the various types of work items you’re most interested in.

When you install the app and run it for the first time, you will have to configure the app to connect to your TFS server:

Although a template has been provided for the server URL (as shown in the above image), it is not the best template to follow if you’re connecting to a TFService instance.  In this case, use the following template:

     https://{account}.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection – replacing {account} with your specific TFService account name.

Once you have successfully logged on, you will need to select a project name, role, and a couple of other options:

The selected role determines which queries will show up on the main screen. The roles that can be selected from include:

• Developer – provides: “bugs assigned to me” and “tasks assigned to me”
• Tester – provides: “bugs assigned to me”, “test cases assigned to me”, and “tasks assigned to me”
• Dev Lead – “bugs assigned to me”, “tasks assigned to me”, and “overall bug summary”
• Test Lead – “bugs assigned to me”, “tasks assigned to me”, “overall bug summary”, and “overall test summary”
• Manager – “overall task summary”, “overall bug summary”, and “overall test summary”

The image below shows the screen for a Developer role:

Tapping on any of the query icons (on the screen above) will open a custom query (based on the specific type of query being ran) in the web browser displaying the appropriate work items.  This experience is less than ideal but it does work.  I would really like to see the query results come back to the phone and displayed in a list that, when tapped, would then open the web-based query to view the full details.

That said, I still find this app highly useful for keeping up to date on newly assigned and/or modified work items.  Some suggestions I might offer to the app developer would include:

• Modify the server URL template to be more TFService friendly (as I’ve shown above).
• Display the project name (and possibly role) on the main screen.  Currently, you can’t tell which project you’re connected to when looking at the main screen.
• When selecting role from the settings page, “Devloper” (notice the missing ‘e’) is spelled incorrectly.  Not a major issue but detracts from the overall fit-n-finish of the app.

A PowerPoint slide deck with further details is available from the author here.

Visual Studio/TFS Update 2 Released

The latest update for Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012, Update 2, has been released.  There is a lot of new functionality included in this release and rather than duplicate all the details here, I’ll simply refer you to this post on the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog as well as this link.

I would like to point out the download links:

• Visual Studio 2012 Update 2
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 with Update 2
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012 with Update 2
• IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio
• Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2012
• Agents for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
• Agents for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Language Pack

When you download the update for Visual Studio 2012 and/or TFS, you will notice the installer is quite small (1.3MB or less).  This is because the installer is just big enough to kick off the installation process which will first download only the components required to update your machine in its current state.  This saves you from having to download installation files that you do not need.

However, there are reasons where you might want to download the full installation package before updating your system – e.g. if you plan to share the installation files with other people in your organization.  Luckily, this is a relatively easy process.

To pull down the entire installation set, simply run the update with the /layout switch.  For example, the following command will kick off the download process for the Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 install files:

C:\Downloads>VS2012.2.exe /layout

When you specify the /layout switch, you will be prompted for the folder where you would like the installation files to be downloaded to:

Clicking on Download will start the download (‘Acquiring’) process:

Once downloaded, you can start the installation by running VS2012.2.exe in the download folder.

If you run across any bugs within Visual Studio 2012, TFS, or other Visual Studio products, you can submit them here on Connect.

//Build/ 2013 Announced

Yesterday, Steve Guggenheimer announced //Build/ 2013.  Here are the details known so far:

Date and Location

San Francisco, CA
June 26th (09:00 PDT) – June 28th (14:30 PDT)
The Moscone Center – Game Developers Conference 2013 is being held there as I write this.

Registration opens at 09:00am PDT, April 2, 2013
Early bird (first 500): $1,595 // Full: $2,095

If you happened to attend //Build/ 2012 (last November) then you no doubt recall the endless joy of being bussed from one side of the campus to the other (depending on which sessions you wanted to attend).  You might also fondly recall the walk back from the initial keynote in the rain and the mud :-)  This year promises to be a much better experience by hosting the conference within the much larger Moscone Center.  If you’re curious about the size of the Moscone Center, check out these stats.  You can also get some great insight from these reviews on yelp.

Tracking Home Inventory

About a month ago, I received a message from my sister informing me that her house had been robbed and that pretty much everything of value had been stolen.  Luckily, she wasn’t home when the robbery took place so she wasn’t in any danger of being harmed.  Not everything that was taken can be replaced (e.g. family heirlooms, jewelry, etc.) so we are hopeful that at least some of her valuables will be located.  However, if they are located, she will still have to prove they are hers.  Luckily, she had recorded the serial numbers of the items (e.g. camera, laptop, etc.).  Having the serial numbers recorded does not guarantee that one will get their stolen property returned to them.  However, if your stolen property is recovered, it will definitely increase the likelihood of getting your items back.

A day or two after my sister’s bad news had settled in, I started thinking about what would happen if I were in the same situation (which, obviously, I hope to never be).  I could get to a few serial numbers on-line based on when I originally registered specific items.  However, I did not have an official home inventory list of the valuables throughout our house.  So, I decided to start the list (I spaced the task of filling out the list over the course of a couple of weeks) in Excel.

Rather than create my own home inventory list in Excel, I decided to search the available templates.  Searching for “home inventory” turned up two templates:

Creating a new spreadsheet based on this template provides a great starting point for tracking the valuables throughout your house (or office or wherever you want to track an inventory).  The template is easy to use and understand.

However, not everyone has Excel installed and available.  No problem!  With Microsoft’s SkyDrive, you can get access to Microsoft’s Web Office Applications at no charge (i.e. FREE)!  If you haven’t already signed up for a SkyDrive account, I highly recommend it.  The first 7GB of storage space is complete FREE, plus, you also get access to the web versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote!

One thing to consider is that the web version of Excel does not have the same rich set of templates available that you would get in the desktop version.  All that means is that you have to come up with the spreadsheet design yourself.  To make it easier, I’ve already created a Home Inventory Excel spreadsheet (loosely based on the template shown above) and made it publically available to simplify the process.  This spreadsheet looks something like this:

Probably the biggest advantage of tracking your home inventory within a SkyDrive-based document is that if your computer is ever stolen (let’s hope that never happens!) you will still have your home inventory (and any other documents you’ve stored in SkyDrive) safe and accessible from practically any other device you have access to.

Also, along with serial numbers, descriptions, cost and value, it is a good idea to take pictures of your valuables as well.  You cannot paste images into a web-based Excel spreadsheet (you can in the desktop version) but you can create a dedicated folder within SkyDrive to store pictures of your valuables (which can be linked to from within your spreadsheet).  Just something else to consider when building out your inventory.

You can download the above Excel-based Home Inventory template from here.

*Full Disclosure: I’m a SkyDrive Insider, ask me about SkyDrive or learn more about the SkyDrive Insiders program here.