ALM, Agile, Automation, Performance Testing, Software QA, Cloud, ...
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 backups for the following databases that your deployment of Team Foundation Server uses: the configuration database the database for each team project collection the databases that Team Foundation Server uses in conjunction with SharePoint Products, if your deployment includes integration with SharePoint ......
Introduction It 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 may have a hard dependency on the version of the SDK. For example, some of your projects may only compile with Azure 1.6 SDK. The absence of the required SDK may cause your builds to fail. I tend to use the TFS Service cloud Build Service a lot, a list of software installed on the provisioned build ......
First time you create a new project in Visual Studio 2012 the target framework is set us .NET 4.5. A lot of the fellow developers end up creating the project in .NET4.5 in accident. Figure 1 – Default target framework in the new project window is .NET Framework 4.5 In this blog post, I’ll show you how to tweak the registry to default the target framework to .NET 4 just to avoid accidently creating projects in .NET 4.5. WARNING: This solution is neither recommended nor supported by Microsoft. Editing ......
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 TFS When I was asking around for these settings in forums people questioned me why I would want to set up outlook.com as the SMTP client for my corporate TFS server. Well the simple answer is, not every TFS installation has to be a corporate set up, I am sure people install stand alone TFS severs for R & D and Test purposes, would not want ......
Have you accidently deleted files from TFS and are looking at a way to undelete the file? You don’t have to undo your previous check in to get the files back, there is a simpler way. 01 – View Deleted items in Team Explorer Have you been wondering how you can view deleted items in Team Explorer? Well, go to tools, options, Source Control. From Visual Studio Team Foundation check ‘show deleted items in the Source Control Explorer’. 02 – Undelete files from TFS Simply right click the deleted file or ......
I recently profiled some web applications using Visual Studio 2012, a vsp (Visual Studio Profile) file was generated as a result of the profiling session. I could successfully open the vsp file in Visual Studio 2012 as expected but when I tried to open the vsp file in Visual Studio 2010 the VS2010 IDE crashed. As a responsible citizen I raised bug # 762202 on Microsoft Connect site using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Feedback Client. Note – In case you didn’t already know, VSP generated in Visual ......
Switching between Team Project Collections sometimes messes up documents and reports and gives a red X next to both these artefacts in Team Explorer. I have run into this several times in the last couple of months and clearing the Visual Studio Team Explorer Cache seems to resolve the issue. If you are sure you are set up with all the right permissions then the first step troubleshooting step is tearing down the Visual Studio Team Explorer cache. Please try refresh the visual studio local cache using ......
Scribe - Test Scribe is a documentation power tool designed to construct documents directly from TFS for test plan and test run artefacts for the purpose of discussion, reporting etc. Scribe only works with Microsoft Test Manager, so if you needed to generate documentation for TFS Builds, what options do you have? You could potentially modify the Build Process template to generate report documentation as the build is executed or you could use the TFS data warehouse to extract data to create rich ......
Agile taught us to release early and release often, Agile also taught us to get the end user involved more frequently and directly. Goes without saying that release notes are an important part of any release. But what you don’t want to be doing is manually putting together the release notes with each frequent release you do. TFS lets you manage the application lifecycle with great ease & minimal administrative overhead, if your team is already checking in the code against work items and if you ......
Download Demo Solution - here In this blog post I’ll show you how to use the TFS API to get the name of the Process Template that is currently applied to the Team Project. You can also download the demo solution attached, I’ve tested this solution against TFS 2010 and TFS 2011. 1. Connecting to TFS Programmatically I have a blog post that shows you from where to download the VS 2010 SP1 SDK and how to connect to TFS programmatically. private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs; private string _selectedTeamProject; ......
Ever found your self in this helpless situation where you think you have tried every possible suggestion on the internet to bring the build server back but it just won’t work. Well some times before hunting around for a solution it is important to understand what the problem is, if the error messages in the build logs don’t seem to help you can always enable tracing on the build server to get more information on what could possibly be the root cause of failure. In this blog post today I’ll be showing ......
Welcome back once again, in Part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies, in Part 2 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I discussed the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. In part 3 I’ll ......
Welcome back, in part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies. In this blog post I’ll get into the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. Tools => Options => Test Tools Have you visited the treasures of Visual ......
Performance testing is almost always conducted to address one or more risks related to expense, opportunity costs, continuity, and/or corporate reputation. But not everyone thinks their application requires investment in performance testing. We presented few of our clients who were heavily focussed on functional requirements but did not care too much about the Non-functional requirements with a short questionnaire, User’s will be happy if the website loaded in <= ___ seconds. How many extra seconds ......
There is no one best branching strategy, the branching strategy that best fits the requirements of your enterprise is the best strategy for you. The ALM rangers have comprehensive guidelines to help you decide what might work best with your enterprise. A couple of parameters you need to consider while thinking about the branching strategy are, What is the length of the Iteration your team will be delivering in. Agile – Weeks, Waterfall – Months. Would you have multiple versions of the applications ......
Download a working demo (below): No showing off, this has been developed in VS11 using MTM11 and version controlled in TFS Azure Working Demo = Download-Testing Scorecard In this blog post I’ll be showing you how to use the TFS API to build a testing scorecard. In this testing score card, I’ll be going through each of the test plans programmatically looping through test suits (yes, the test suits can be nested) looking for test cases and querying their status and further going in at the test step ......
Download a working Demo: Working Demo Download In this blog post I'll show you how to use the TFS API to get the security groups, members, permissions and security settings of users in Team Projects in TFS. Problem I would like to see the version control permissions and security settings for each user in a Group for each Team Project. Can I see all of this in one place in a report? Solution Is the report below similar to what you are looking for? Let’s build one using the TFS SDK… if you enjoy the ......
The Team Explorer is a wonderful view of the position of your version control in the team foundation server. However, there is no one window of such truth available for the workspace. I am a very active member of the msdn community and have come across questions on, How do I see a list of all files that are not mapped to TFS but are in my workspace? (Yes, you can use the TFS power tools tfpt.exe /scorch or /treeclean to achieve this) I would like to see all pending changes in just one folder and ......
Download from here If you track your project tasks against work items, you would know the importance of Work Item History. This is one way for you to reflect on who did what and when, some organizations use it for auditing purposes as well. Using the WorkItemStore service it is possible to get the work item revisions, now depending on how creative you are, you can plot the data and visualize the changes as you like. In this blog post I'll be showing you, How to get the work item history programmatically ......
The TFS 2010 Power Tools, August 11 release shortly on its way, read more about the teaser here at Brian Harrys blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bha... What feature would you have liked to be included? Share this post : ......
Lately i have seen the below remarks coming through in the communities, Get Latest does not work in TFS I always have to use Get Specific version to get the server changes on my local Why get latest misses updating some files while get specific works I’ll be using the TFS API to show you how the “Get Latest” is suppose to work and show you how you can avoid getting in a situation where you might have to use “Get Specific” to get the latest version of your workspace. I would assume that you know the ......
I will be covering three things in this blog post Get the history i.e. all change sets of an item programmatically using the TFS API. Download the change sets programmatically using the TFS API Use WinMerge to compare those change sets programmatically 1. How do i get the history of a file using TFS API? The VersionControlServer Class exposes the QueryHistory method that gets you all changesets that have impacted a file or folder you are querying for. public IEnumerable QueryHistory( string path, ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010 Would you like to use your favourite comparison and merging tool such as KDiff3 or WinMerge in TFS. With little effort you can configure a different diff/merge tool in Team Foundation Server. In this blog post I'll be covering How to change the default compare/merge tool List of available compare/merge tools and the list of arguments Follow the steps below, Open Visual Studio 2010 and go to Tools => Options Select Source Control => Visual Studio ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,TFS SDK 2010,TFS Administration Working as a TFS Administrator maintaining the user workspaces is a very important task. Using the TFS API it is very easy to get a list of user workspaces, undo pending changes and delete workspace mappings if required. It is common to see people leave as the bell curve dips with the project delivery but some times what is left behind is a set of checked out files in workspaces. In this blog post i will show you ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,Power Tools,TF254027 Error Recently moved from TFS 2010 server to another TFS 2010 server and trying to configure a backup plan using the Backup plan wizard that comes along with the TFS Power Tools. The tool allows you to set up Team Foundation Server backups - The tool can schedule backups for the following databases that your deployment of Team Foundation Server uses: the configuration database the database for each team project collection the databases ......
Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,Team Foundation Server 2010,Technology Humour A little bit of humour would not hurt... What are your selfish reasons for upgrading to TFS 2010? Cheers, Tarun ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,TFS SDK 2010,TFS ALM Download a working solution Demo Solution Download I have seen a lot of questions in the community lately on how to use the TFS API to get a list of Team Projects, Iterations & Area Paths in that project, get a list of queries, see the wiql and execute the query programmatically. I will show you the steps on just how to do this. PDTZG6PKJYNE 1. Connect to TFS Programmatically I have a blog post that shows you from where ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,Team Foundation Utilities,TFS2010 Oh no! Did you just check in a changeset in to TFS and realized that you need to roll back the changeset because the changes were suppose to go in a different branch? Or did you just accidently merge a wrong changeset in your release branch? There are several ways to undo the damage, Manual: Yes, we all just hate this word but for the record you could manually rollback the changes. Get Specific version on the branch and ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS SDK,TFS API,TFS Merge Programmatically,TFS Work Items Programmatically,TFS Administration Console,ALM Download a working Demo: Smart Merge using TFS API The information available in the Merge window in Team Foundation Server 2010 is very important in the decision making during the merging process. However, at present the merge window shows very limited information, more than often you are interested to know the work item, files modified, code reviewer ......
Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing ......
Technorati Tags: TFS 2010 Database,TFS 2010,TFS 2010 Administration Considering you have an advanced TFS installation such that the app tier and the data and reporting tier are spread across multiple servers and the data tier goes down because of a network failure. The below error message may seem familiar, Team Foundation Services are not available from server xxx. Technical information (for administrator): Unable to connect to the remote server. Now your first reaction would be to verify whether ......
Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,TFS Power Tools,UnShelve Often i have seen fellow developer working on one branch and later realizing that they intended to check in the code in a different branch, a simple example, working on the MAIN branch and later realizing that the code needs to be checked in to the QA branch. TFS power tool comes to your rescue… when you need to unshelve to a different branch. The power tool command /> tfpt.exe unshelve can be handy for the following, Allows a shelveset to be ......
TFS Deployer is installed as an agent on your the machine you would like to deploy to. TFS Deployer service listens to the build quality change notificaions generated by TFS. TFS Deployer checks the Event Mapping file stored in TFS to validate the action that is mapped to the notification. Let’s get going… Download the latest version of TFS Deployer from => Click here TFS Deployer Installation Instructions => Click here Create a new build quality 4. Create an event mapping file 5. Add the Event ......