Available at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ac03e3-df99-4776-be39-1917cbfc5d8e

“Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 is a new process template from Microsoft.  Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management and agile software development.  This template includes work items and reports to help your Scrum team be successful.   Click here more information about this release. 

Note:  During the beta this template was named Team Foundation Server Scrum v1.0 - Beta.  It has been renamed and is now Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0.

This template includes:

• Work Item Types
  • Sprint
  • Product Backlog Item
  • Bug
  • Task
  • Impediment
  • Test Case
• Reports
  • Release Burndown
  • Velocity
  • Sprint Burndown
  • Build Success Over Time
  • Build Summary
  • Test Case Readiness
  • Test Plan Progress
• SharePoint Project Portal

Below are screenshots of the Sprint Burndown and Release Burndown reports included with the template.”

More info http://blogs.msdn.com/b/aaronbjork/archive/2010/07/19/announcing-microsoft-visual-studio-scrum-1-0.aspx

This is great news: Microsoft have released a Hyper-V machine that contains integration between Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010. Both products are great releases and it is even better to see them working together.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=f221c660-161b-43ca-95f3-e0e4aad8d43e

“This image will expire Dec 30th, 2010. This VHD release is available in English only.
This community technical preview of Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 Integration allows teams to share data between the two servers. This virtual machine includes enterprise project plans in Project Server mapped to team projects in Team Foundation Server, along with sample data to highlight key integration scenarios. The walkthrough documents provide four scenarios that simulate the interactions between the project manager, working in Project Server, and the software development team, working in Team Foundation Server.
The value of Project Server and Team Foundation Server integration is to provide up-to-date project status and resource availability across agile and formal teams; help project managers track high-level requirements and allow the team lead to manage the details; and permit project managers to live in Project Server and manage projects across the enterprise while development team leads live in Team Foundation Server and manage their software development project. With this tool, the Project Management Office (PMO) is able to plan, collaborate and track real-time progress made by formal or agile teams.
This virtual machine is running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition R2. It contains a full installation of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Project Server 2010, with Office 2010 and all necessary prerequisites.”

The Visual Studio product teams have a very open culture, which we learned once more during the MVP week in February. Well the product teams are surrounded by MVPs and Inner Circle partners who also share their knowledge and expertise under the Rangers-flag. The Rangers provide real-world guidance for common questions and requests. These are their latest projects:

Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance 

Getting started with Team Foundation Server 2010 (contains things like capacity planning)

TFS Integration Platform

How to integrate other systems with TFS 2010

TFS Virtualization Guidance

How to virtualize TFS 2010

Requirements Management

How to do requirements management in TFS 2010

TFS Upgrade Guide

How to upgrade from older versions to TFS2010

TFS Branching Guide 2010

How to do merging and branching in TFS 2010 version control

Performance Testing Quick Reference Guide

How to do performance tests using TFS 2010

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/willy-peter_schaub/

Today is a big day for the Dutch developer community: we are launching Visual Studio 2010! Visual Studio is so much more than a developer tool today: you can create UML diagrams, visually analyze your source code, plan agile projects and iterations and reproduce complex bugs. All of this works in an enterprise environment where multiple development teams and many users share the same platform. Installation has been simplified and administration too. However, the biggest investments have gone to test and lab capabilities: the testing features are great so now your manual and functional testers get great tools too. Lab management expands the testing features in a sense that you can create virtual machines as clients for your applications and you can create snapshots of bugs and test runs, which developers can simply resume and take over for debugging.

VSTS Rangers are a team of very active MVPs and other experts, such as Inner Circle partners, that are dedicated to improve the ease of use and adoption of Visual Studio Team System. Willy-Peter frequently blogs about the projects these guys are working and their progress.

Recently they released Quick Reference Guidance for Visual Studio 2010 on codeplex, which I think is very valuable. Go check it out:

http://vs2010quickref.codeplex.com/

“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.
The artifacts include an overview document and poster that allows you to quickly focus on individual areas like testing, by providing crisp and compact guidance sheets and quick reference posters. You can take these to your 5-min coffee break discussions or use them as a stepping stone to the more detailed and in-depth guidance you will find on MSDN.
The download package consist of three ZIP files containing a number of quick reference posters and quick reference sheets in XML Paper Specification (XPS) format:

• An overview of the guidance and focus areas, contained in one index table and overview quick reference poster.
• A collection of basic guidance sheets, focusing on the “what” are the key features and “why” to consider them.
• A set of documents and quick reference posters, supporting the basic guidance sheets.”

This is one of my start pages: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/resultsForCategory.aspx?nr=50&sortOrder=Descending&sortCriteria=Date&period=30&stype=ss_nd&sterm=All+Categories 

It is a great start of the day as it prompts you all new downloads at MS Downloads. As you can see in the listing below, the Visual Studio team have updated the VSTS 2008 VMs. On top of that you can also get the 2010 Beta 2 version in a ready to go VM.  Pretty cool, right? Brian Keller posted about the latter and he also provides an easy way to download the GBs and how to get the hands-on-labs. So if you have some time to burn this week, check them out.

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 and Team Foundation Server® 2010 Beta 2 for Windows Virtual PC Image

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate simplifies solution development, lowering risk and increasing return. The virtual machine image in this download contains both Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta2 and is designed to be run under Windows Virtual PC.

12/24/2009
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and Team Foundation Server® 2010 Beta 2 Hyper-V Image

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate simplifies solution development, lowering risk and increasing return. The virtual machine image in this download contains both Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta2 and the requisite trial software. Designed to be run from Microsoft® Hyper-V

12/24/2009
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Virtual PC SP1 Image

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate simplifies solution development, lowering risk and increasing return. The virtual machine image in this download contains both Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta2 and the requisite trial software. Designed to be run from Microsoft® Virtual PC 2007 SP1.

12/24/2009
Visual Studio® Team System 2008 VSTS Hyper-V Image (Trial)

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

12/23/2009
Visual Studio® Team System 2008 VSTS VPC Image (Trial)

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

12/23/2009
Visual Studio® Team System 2008 TFS SP1 VPC Image (Trial)

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server SP1 is an integrated collaboration server for Visual Studio Team System.

12/23/2009
Visual Studio® Team System 2008 TFS Hyper-V Image (Trial)

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server is an integrated collaboration server for Visual Studio Team System.

12/23/2009

By now you must have heard about the new Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release. There are plenty of blogs and videos that demonstrate the great functionality of both Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. As of today it is available for everyone to download.

I was most curious about the TFS Basic configuration which gives you TFS version control and build on your local machine. The installation went pretty smooth: I used my sysprepped copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 and installed TFS Basic without additions. So the good thing is that you do not have to think about installing and configuring IIS or SQL Server (Express); the TFS Basic installation takes care of that. The installation is a breeze and only takes minutes and a reboot.

One error message I encountered when clicking the links in the installation summary was:

Server Error in '/tfs/web' Application.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Access\Web\web.config line 123)
Source Error:

Line 121:

Line 122:    <httpModules>

Line 123:      <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

Line 124:      <add name="TSWAAuthentication" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.TSWAAuthenticationModule"/>

Line 125:    </httpModules>

Source File: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Access\Web\web.config    Line: 123

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.4927; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.4927

It turns out that the although the installation runs smooth, you do have to install .NET Framework 3.5 additionally.

… and the end of Visual SourceSafe. Brian Harry blogged about this recently. His post explains the early days of SourceSafe and the idea of bringing easy version control to developers. In the 3rd generation of Visual Studio Team System this concept returns in the form of TFS Basic. It is Team Foundation Server without components such as Windows Sharepoint Services and SQL Reporting Services but it does provide functionality for version control, builds and simple work items. The installation is supposed to be just 2 Gb and takes 20 minutes to complete. You can even install it on your laptop if you are doing a disconnected development project solo where you want to use version control. And if your TFS Basic is to be used by the entire organization, you can simply “reconfigure” the instance and make it a full-blown Team Foundation Server.

All of this will be publicly available in TFS 2010 Beta2, which is just around the corner. And since Beta2 can go-live you can actually have this functionality in the real world very soon.

Check out Brian’s post for more information.

If you are doing a Team Foundation Implementation or if you are running one, make sure you have these guides to make your life easier:

Installation guide – How to install TFS (in single or dual server setup), TFS build, TFS proxy and team explorer.

Administration guide - Administration concepts, procedures, and walkthroughs.

Operations guidance – When you realize that your ALM solution is business critical

TFS Guide - All about using your TFS and getting the most out of it

Here it is! Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 as well as .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 have been released to the public. Soma made the announcement of the release to MSDN on Monday, but now all the goods are available to everyone too.

We have been involved in the Technical Adoption Program since early 2008 and it has been a great ride. Lots of good information has been tried and shared and earlier this year the TAP partners presented on VSTS 2010 during the APO Conference.

The VSTS installation experience is pretty straightforward: When you start the setup, select to install VSTS 2010.

Click next.

Accept the license agreement.

Select the .NET Development Environment.

Optionally click the Customize button to select components to install.

Click Next to start the installation.

The setup prompts to restart your machine after the .NET Frameworks have been installed. And so it does again after the installation is complete.

And then your favorite development environment is ready to be used! Select your environment settings.

The new start page.

And the new layout for project and file types.

Oh, and I am sure you noticed the new user interface in Windows Presentation Foundation.

Except for the startup performance I love every bit of it.

Now we are looking forward to using VSTS and TFS in a managed production environment.

If you are a daily user of Team Foundation Server, I am sure you know the great TFS Power Tools that are released regularly by the product team. The latest version includes integration of Office Communicator Server in the Team Explorer. Check out the screenshot below: There is a new node in the Team Project tree that says Team Members, in which you can see groups and users that have access to a team project. Since I am logged in to Office Communicator, I can see the same availability indicators. When I right-click on a team member, I can have a video conversation or start a VOIP call and all other options that OCS offers. Great stuff!

For more info go to: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/10/01/preview-of-the-next-tfs-power-tools-release.aspx And to install the TFS Power Tools immediately you can download them from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBD14EEA-781F-45A1-8C46-9F6BA2F68BF0&displaylang=en.

Update: An entire community has started developing and sharing ideas around Team Members. The Skype extension sounds great. http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/11/13/extending-the-new-tfs-team-members-power-tool.aspx

Recently I ran into an error installing TFS2008 SP1. The environment is an upgraded TFS2005 install, had been running OK and updates went fine. This update just did not install.

Error 29106.Team Foundation Report Server Configuration: Access to the SQL Reporting Services databases could not be granted. Verify that the Team Foundation data-tier server has enough free disk space.

In the end the solution appeared in the log file, located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\Local Settings\Temp. The file stated

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: User, group, or role 'Domain\TFS_AT$' already exists in the current database.

The solution appeared to be to remove the computer account from logins and all databases in SQL Server on the Team Foundation Server Data Tier. After that SP1 created the account again and installed fine.

In three weeks the first-ever public VSX Developer Conference will kick off. At the moment I am preparing my talk on TFS extensibility, primarily focused on partners who are creating marketable additions for TFS. If you want to attend, you still can: The fee is only $100...

There is a lot of stuff to tell and to demonstrate and so little time. The release of Service Pack 1 and the corresponding SDK have brought plenty interesting stuff:

VSExtensibilitySample: This new TFS sample provides an example of creating a Visual Studio add-in that interacts with the Version Control user interface of Team Explorer.  The sample comes with a detailed Word doc that provides insight into the requirements of such an add-in.

RichClientCustomControl: This new TFS sample provides an example of creating Work Item Tracking custom controls that work within Team Explorer.  The sample comes with a detailed Word doc that provides insight into the requirements of custom controls as well as a separate document that describes how to write custom controls that can be used within the Team Server Web Access environment.

How often do you search your development machine for code you developed before? Very often, right? And how often do you look for code on the web? Also very often, I assume. Search in Vista (or Windows Server 2008) are very powerful and so are the known search engines on the web.

So what if you wanted code that other people in your organisation created? That is where you can use Microsoft Search Server!

Search Server is based on Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 and has very simple yet powerful additions to search various content sources such as websites and file shares. To get started with searching the source code in your Team Foundation Server:

• Install Search Server
• Create a file share on a server
• Get the latest version of your TFS version control to the file share
• In Search Server Central Administration create a new content source and point it to the file share
• Add new file types, of files you want to search such as .cs, to the content index
• Start a full crawl on the content source

Now you are ready to go: Open the search page and enter something to search for such as "Page_Load". On the result page you will get links to the files in which your search string was found. Nice, right?

So next there can be loads of additions: You can create an integrated search within Visual Studio, apply effective TFS permissions, make search results open in Visual Studio, etc.

Last month has seen a lot of releases following the launch of Visual Studio 2008 and Team System http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-shipped.aspx , http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffbe/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-team-system-2008-ships.aspx

The story around VS SDK and Domain Specific Languages toolkit http://blogs.msdn.com/stuart_kent/archive/2007/11/22/what-s-new-for-dsl-tools-in-vs2008-vs2008-sdk.aspx

VSTS Web Access has made access to TFS so much easier for non-technicians http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/11/30/vsts-web-access-power-tool-for-team-system-2008-released.aspx

The ASP.NET extensions provide a Model-View-Controller framework and VS2008 Silverlight support amongst others http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/09/asp-net-3-5-extensions-ctp-preview-released.aspx

And finally today the upgraded power tools for Team Foundation Server have been released http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/12/21/december-07-release-of-the-tfs-power-tools-for-tfs-2008-are-available.aspx

If you are building .NET 2.0 applications, you really should take a look at all of the above.