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Advanced Continuous Delivery to Azure from TFS, Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great
The folks over on the TFS / Visual Studio team have been working hard at releasing a steady stream of new features for their new hosted Team Foundation Service in the cloud. One of the most significant...
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Team Foundation Server 2012 Build Global List Problems
My experience with the upgrade and use of TFS 2012 has been very positive. I did come across a couple of issues recently that tripped things up for a while.ISSUE 1The first issue is that 2012 prior to...
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Book “Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter” published
During the summer and fall this year, me and my colleague Jakob Ehn has worked together on a book project that has now finally hit the stores! The title of the book is Team Foundation Server 2012...
View ArticleMy collection of favourite TFS utilities
So, you’re in charge of your company or team’s Team Foundation Server. Wish it was easier to manage, administer, extend? Well, here are a few utilities that I highly recommend looking at.I’ve...
View ArticleVisual Studio 2012 Launch Winnipeg–Slides
The Winnipeg .Net User Group hosted a VS 2012 Launch Event at the Imax in Winnipeg on Thursday, Dec 6. Doing presentations on the giant Imax screen is always fun, and I did the first 2 sessions...
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How to build Visual Studio Setup projects (.vdproj) with TFS 2010 Build ?
Out of the box, Team Foundation Server 2010 Build does not support building of setup projects (.vdproj). Although, you can modify the DefaultTemplate.xaml or create your own in order to achieve this. I...
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Step-by-Step: Build a FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 Cluster for Highly Available...
Overhead at one of my recent IT Pro events:“The FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 sounds AWESOME! With the same features and scalability as the Hyper-V role in the full Windows Server 2012 OS, I could really...
View ArticleSimple TFS 2012 API Methods: List Projects in a Collection and Import WIT...
I found a lot of code to do these things, but really appreciated a more concise and simple approach. For example, this can be run as a unit test. using System;using...
View ArticleTFS / Visual Studio 2012 End To End Demo Project–Intro
I’ve been working on a hobby project for the past little while, and I wanted to blog my way through it as I go. My intent is to use a lot of new technologies, agile best practices, and some trendy...
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Microsoft Channel 9 Interviews Mei Liang to Introduce Sample Browser...
This morning, Microsoft Channel 9 interviewed Mei Liang - Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - to introduce the newest Sample Browser extension for Visual Studio 2012 &2010....
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Using Visual Studio Layer Diagrams for Fun and Profit!
One of my favorite and most underused features introduced in VS 2010 was Layer Diagrams. It’s a really simple tool to learn and use, but amazingly powerful.It’s a diagramming tool that allows you to...
View ArticleThe year 2012 in highlights!
2012 has been an overwhelming year, I had my share of up’s and down’s. The year started on a high note with Microsoft presenting me the MVP award for Visual Studio ALM. I changed my availability status...
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Presenting VS2012 at VBUG Bristol on 16 Jan 2013
Let’s start with a few interesting facts about Bristol,Bristol is located just 120 miles west of London.It is the largest city in the south west of England.Bristol is a 45 mile trip across the Bristol...
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Step-by-Step: Build a FREE SharePoint 2013 Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure
My good friend and colleague, Tommy Patterson, recently blogged about leveraging the Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) preview offering to build a FREE lab environment in the Cloud. You...
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VS12 Team Member Photos not showing in Chrome
IssueThe Team Members photo doesn’t show up in the Members section in the Team Home Page in Team Web Access when browsing using Chrome. However, the team members photo does show up as expected when...
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Configure Outlook as the TFS SMTP client
In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use Outlook.com as the SMTP client for your TFS. Figure 1 – Email Alert Settings for Outlook.com as a SMTP client for TFSWhen I was asking around for these...
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Solving the ALM puzzle using Microsoft Suite of tools
I presented a talk at the #vBug user group run by David Ringsell at Bristol. David in his day job runs his own venture known by the name of “Talk-IT” which provides training for developers. You can...
View ArticleTFS Build: Running Static Code Analysis for Specific Configuration
Moved to http://blog.ehn.nu/2013/01/20/tfs-build-running-static-code-analysis-for-specific-configuration/
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How to change Rating values in Microsoft Feedback Client
I had a customer request that they would like to change the value the Microsoft Feedback Client Rating gets translated to. Currently the stars in the Rating are mapped as follows,0 – Not Rated1 – Poor2...
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Fix - TF51011: The specified iteration path does not exist
In this blog post I’ll show you the fix for the TF51011 exception (refer to the screen shot below),Blocked Tasks TF51011: The specified iteration path does not exist. The error is caused by...
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Managing Parallel Team Development–Using NuGet
For probably over a year now I’ve been hearing lots of hype around package managers and NuGet in particular. I’ve never really “got it” – that is until last week. So what, NuGet will download the...
View ArticleTFS In the Cloud!
Late last year Microsoft launched TFS in the cloud at https://tfs.visualstudio.com. It is free for 5 users and less. Microsoft hasn’t completely worked out the pricing yet for larger teams, but that...
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TFS API - Reporting Visual Studio Solution And Project Versions
Problem DefinitionI am about to take ownership of a TFS 2005 repository that has projects for BizTalk, SharePoint, SSIS, SSAS, different flavors of .NET, to complicate things, the customer is using...
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TFS2012 QU2 - New Feature - Work Item Tagging
Microsoft has just switched the flag ON and released a whole bunch of new features in CTP1 as part of the TFS 2012 QU2 release. In this blog post I’ll be talking about some practical uses of ‘Work Item...
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TFS - Get List Of Software Installed On Build Agent
IntroductionIt is common for your code projects to reference Microsoft or Non Microsoft SDKs, this requires that the build agents has the SDK’s installed. It is also natural that some of your projects...
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TFS Build Custom Activity : TODO Counter
Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemottTracking the count of TODO’s in your solution can be used for the following:Use as an additional measure of code quality. Predict estimated...
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Ready for .NET Code Camp in South Florida?
Here we go again! South Florida Code Camp is about to start tomorrow, Saturday Feb 9 2013, at NOVA University in Fort Lauderdale. I have seen this event grow every year; over 900 people were registered...
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BizTalk: the Naming Conventions in Examples
See the BizTalk: BizTalk Solution Naming Conventions article.In small application we do not really care about names. When the number of objects start growing, we start pay attention to the names....
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Feature Toggles vs Feature Branches – Dylan’s $0.02
There’s been some chatter lately about an old debate between Feature Branches vs Feature Toggles. I used to be firmly in the Feature Branches camp, but about a year ago (at the ALM Summit) I became...
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BizTalk Automated Multi Server Deploy
BackgroundI’ve been working with BizTalk since 2006r1 (the one without the handy WCF adapters). Since that time I’ve tried various community offerings to improve the deployment process. In 2008 I was...
View ArticleError Cannot map server path because it is not rooted beneath a team project
What happened: I have an online TFS account (if you don’t have one please go to visual studio and subscribe, free for 5 people team). I recently bought a surface pro and started creating various test...
View ArticleMy Experience with free source control from Microsoft
Microsoft has been very generous with all the free stuff they are giving to the developer community and among that is a free source control (tfs ). It is free for 5 developers and is a very little...
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How to backup the TFS 2012 databases
Team Foundation Server Backups - You need to install the ‘Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Update xx Power Tool’ on the application-tier for Team Foundation Server. The tool can schedule...
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Upgrading to Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP3
Last week I upgraded my TFS 2012 test environment to CTP3 to try out the new features rolled out in preview as part of the Visual Studio 2012 Upgrade 2 CTP. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through...
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ALM Mag – Harnessing the cloud for Performance Testing
Recently my blog post ‘Leveraging the cloud for Performance Testing’ got featured in the ALM Mag Vol. 1 Issue 1 – January 2013. Figure 1 – Visual Studio Load Testing using Windows Azure – featured in...
View ArticleTFS GIT pull "changes in the current working directory"
If you are trying the new Visual Studio 2012 TFS Git source control and are trying to pull from master and get the error that "There are changes in the current working directory." You should add the...
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Continuous Integration-Automated Deployments And Release Management
A customer I am working with is interested in an ‘automated deployment and release management’ solution for their 160 applications scaling across 350 servers. There is a mix of Microsoft and Non...
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MVP Summit 2013 Recap
Just sitting in the Seattle airport finally returning home from my first MVP Summit (well in truth I’m flying directly to my next client, no home till next weekend).As I said this was my first time...
View ArticleMVP Summit 2013
I got back on Thursday last week from the Microsoft MVP Summit in the Seattle area. MVPs are tech community leaders who are awarded annually by Microsoft based on their contributions and leadership....
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Check Out the New Windows Azure Hub on Channel 9
Several weeks ago we launched a new hub for Windows Azure on Channel 9. This hub will serve as an index and entry point for all video content related to Windows Azure. Since the launch we have already...
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TFS Kanban Board Swim lane Customization To Better Manage The Product Backlog
Brian Harry announced the customize columns feature on the TFS Kanban board that enables you to define new swim lanes based on the work item state right from Team Web Access. This feature has...
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Using the DIR command in the TFS 2010/12 Team Build Invoke Process Activity
I found that using a loop activity to build up a filtered list clutters up the build report with repetitions of activities inside the loop. I could write a custom activity to create the list. However,...
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List of Software on TFS Service Hosted Build
A couple of weeks back I had posted a blog post on getting a list of software installed on the build agent by simply customizing the build process template. Building on top of the same solution, I have...
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Presenting at TechEd 2013-TechDays 2013 India ALM Track
I’ll be presenting at TechEd and TechDays in India, there is a lot to look forward to as the events will be hosted across India. Bangalore will be hosting TechEd on 18-19th March, Delhi will be hosting...
View Article2010 version of TF (TFS command tool) unable to determine the workspace that...
We upgraded to VS 2012 and TFS 2012 a month ago.I have a backupShelve.cmd that used to work before upgrade, but when I run it yesterday caused the errorUnable to determine the workspace. You may be...
View ArticleUsing MSBuild to publish a VS 2012 SSDT .sqlproj database project the same...
Post and code updated on March 21, 2013, and again on March 22, 2013.We recently upgraded from VS (Visual Studio) 2010 to VS 2012, and with it had to upgrade our .dbproj database project to a .sqlproj....
View ArticleVisual Studio 2012.2 Hanging When Editing Razor Pages
Since I installed the v2 update, Visual Studio has been hanging on occasion. The CPU for the process jumps to 25% and stays there and Visual Studio stops responding. I found a Microsoft Connect...
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TFS Lab Infrastructure Planning / Scaling
I’ve been working with a lot of clients over the past couple years helping them adopt TFS Lab Management. One discussion that always comes up is how to architect the infrastructure required to run TFS...
View ArticleCruise Control.net and Team Foundation Services
Recently I have been working with a customer where we wanted to migrate some source code to TFS Services for source control but we had an existing Build Server setup running on-premise with Cruise...
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