I’ve recently found out an interesting thing about TFS and VSTS. There are several misconception regarding TFS and VSTS, which may result in difficulties with TFS adoption. I’m convinced, that companies that plan to adopt VSTS/TFS to manage their software development lifecycle, should have a kind of TFS training, explaining these misconceptions.

One of them is about Team Foundation Server (TFS) to be just an expensive source control repository. The other, regarding both VSTS and TFS, is saying that they are hard to adopt.

Well, as for the first misconception, it is more about what you are using TFS for. Being an Integrated Process Environment, TFS provides the space for storing and managing everything regarding development initiatives, such as project planning, task status tracking, defect tracking, time tracking, source control, etc. So, in fact, using it just for source control may be expensive. But that’s only because TFS is, a kind of, misused.

Second one, is a misunderstanding that VSTS/TFS is hard to adopt, though the difficulty is mostly about improving software development process. TFS training, in this case, might help to discover how to use this framework to improve the processes, using best practices, such as test driven development, automated builds, continuous build environment, trend information about your project plan tasks,etc.

When using such huge systems as TFS when developing software, it’s essential to feel comfortable with TFS management. No doubt, the system is complex, and this complexity comes out of the amount of functionality provided by TFS.

Reporting is a part of this huge functionality. In TFS management, reporting is not the least thing, as it allows tracking and analyzing project progress, quality and a variety of other metrics.There’s a bunch of new reporting possibilities available in Team Foundation Server 2010.

These include:

A set of SharePoint Dashboards, based on Excel, which makes them easy to customize;
A set of improved SQL Reporting Services giving a view of bugs, builds, tests, etc.;
Excel Reports from Work Item Queries, the feature that eases creation of own reports, generating an Excel report based on a work item query.

What seems great to me is that there is a place for customization, which means that you can get the metrics you need.

Hi!

Did you know you can easily connect to any Project Collection of TFS 2010 from TFS 2008 server? Well, direct connection is possible. The only limitation is that the function is available for TFS 2008 SP1. So, those lucky guys who works with have the Service Pack1 o VS 2008 installed will have no problems with TFS management in terms of working with 2010th version’s Project Collections from TFS 2008.

You’ll need the full URL of the Project Collection you’re going to work with. Enter it in the connection box in the format like following: http://[tfsserver]:[port]/[vdir]/[projectCollection]

As in TFS 2010 you are able to specify a virtual directory that it will run under, so with “tfs” being a default, you can have the same ports for everything.

In other words, if your tfs server name is “tfs01.domainname.com” and you take the default vdir of “tfs”, all you need is to add the name of the Project Collection you want to work with. As a result, you get the URL looking like this: http://tfs01.domainname.com:80/tfs/MyNewCollection.

And that’s it.

Hi!
I’ve really almost missed it. However, it’s a great news regarding the improvements’ in TFS management and working with TFS.

It’s been quite for long that users asked for the possibility to integrate TFS with different data stores, or other version control & work item tracking systems, or helpdesks, etc. This possibility was partially represented by TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit, however, it was not good enough in addressing users’ needs.
Well, about a week ago the so called “alpha” release of TFS Integration Platform was announced, enriching possibilities in TFS management. There’ve been lots of changes applied to the platform, as compared to its predecessors.
Major improvements have been done to quality and robustness. Moreover, the documentation has been improved greatly to help developers better understand the platform. The steps have also been made toward better serviceability. What is more, this time the community has been involved in the project.

“Changing from “migration and synchronization” to simply “integration” was about simplifying the message about the purpose, and helping to disambiguate from upgrade scenarios which are often confused with migration. “ – Said Matt Mitrik, the project responsible.

Hi!

Again some new information about TFS/VSTS 2010.

According to Brian Harry, new set of Power Tools that support TFS 2010 will appear somewhat about this week.
Though this release will come with several limitations, meaning that the Power Tools will work with Visual Studio 2010 IDE exclusively, the majority of the features will work pretty good either with TFS 2010 or with earlier servers.

There’ve been changes and some improvements made about Power Tools, so TFS development is improved as well, some features were moved or replaced, some new features added. Thus, clean-up and bug fixing were added to Process Template Editor, different Command Line Interface introduced, updated Check in Policy Pack, and some more.
Team Members and TFS Server Manager don’t work yet with TFS 2010, however, the efforts to make them work are being done.

In fact, not so many of the Power Tools require updates, thanks to the great compatibility between TFS 2008 and TFS 2010, so, there’s not going to be any problems with that.

Hey!

I’ve lately stumbled upon a blog post where a TFS 2010 user claimed issue with importing existing TFS 2008 database to TFS 2010 beta 2. Fortunately, he found the way out. So, I think the information could help if someone has just the same issue. TFS is a huge system and TFS management is something that may seem complex. I mean, it’s great that people share their experience in coping with difficulties.

So the issue occurred when the guy was utilizing “tfsconfig import” command and was going to execute the tfsconfig tool. He got the picture like one below:

The way he solved the issue comprised next steps:

Backup old TFS server databases, then restore them using the same SQL instance as used TFS 2010.

Then he utilized the next command:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools>tfsconfig import /sqlinstance:TFS2010 /collectionname:ImportCollection (the name of the collection may be any you want, actually)

When the import is done you should see something like this:

Today, Brian Harry has confirmed the purchase of the Teamprise Client Suite. So now, Visual Studio products and Teamprise combined will offer better ALM solutions. Surely, the main of them is the possibility to do java development within VS.

Teamprise Client Suite includes Eclipse Plug-in, Stand-alone Explorer, and Command line client. All three components are declared to work perfectly on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and several Unix versions.

Eclipse plug-in gives java developers the interaction with TFS and, actually, the possibility to participate in software development process together with NET developers within TFS but staying in the development environment they got used to.

Stand-alone Explorer is a combination of Eclipse functionalities into a stand-alone, cross-platform natively looking GUI application designed for development team members working outside of a development IDE.

Command line client is a cross-platform, non-graphical interface to TFS for scripting and build scenarios or for developers who are fond of command-line interfaces.

Below, there are some screenshots of the Eclipse plug-in. Frankly, it looks almost like the Visual Studio Team Explorer, only a bit “Eclipsized.”

Hi!

I have something to share today. It seems that TFS is going to become the ALM solution not only for NET developers.

According to the latest news, Microsoft has shared their plans on acquiring Teamprise technology to allow Eclipse-based Java development as well as building applications for Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X via Visual Studio TFS.

What that means? Most software development companies’ pet peeve with TFS was the lack of interoperability. Most of companies’ challenges and inconveniences were connected to the use of heterogeneous development environments.

Teamprise functionality will be introduced to Visual Studio 2010 IDE release on March 2010. It, actually, is going to become the answer for businesses that need multiple platforms development. Team Foundation Server, combined with the Teamprise Client Suite will become a single tool helping developer overcome the challenges they face with work-item tracking, build management, version control, etc. regardless of the platform they mainly use. This is going to result in high quality and creativeness of applications, as developers will have more time to focus on their core competencies.

Hi!

Lately, I’ve read about several issues with TFS management, considering TFS 2010 Beta 2 and SharePoint. As claimed Brian Harry, there’s been a problem with SharePoint log files reported by several users. The problem is that log files clog up memory which leads to errors. Joe Rogers, a SharePoint specialist has suggested the way to manage the issue by cleaning up the configuration cache of the server having issues. Here are the steps to follow:

• You need to stop the OWSTIMER service on ALL of the MOSS servers in the farm.
  On the Index server, navigate to:
  Server 2003 location: Drive:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID and delete all the XML files from the directory.
  Server 2008 location: Drive:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID and delete all the XML files from the directory.
• Delete all the .XML files (not the .INI files, it’s important) in the directory
• Open the cache.ini with Notepad and reset the number to 1. Save and close the file.
• Start the OWSTIMER service on the Index server and wait for XML files to begin to reappear in the directory.
• After you see XML files appearing on the Index server, repeat steps 2, 3 & 4 on each query server, waiting for XML files to appear before moving to subsequent servers.
• After all of the query servers have all been cleared and new .xml files have been generated, proceed to the WFE and Application servers in the farm, following steps 2, 3, 4 and 5 for each remaining server.

Now, we all understand, it’s a beta, and it remains beta even being “go-live”. There’ve already been lots of things improved about VSTS and TFS, and the guys seem to be eager for more improvements. Anyway, Beta 2 survey, enabled to collect feedbacks about TFS 2010 Beta 2 is available, so any user may share their opinion about the release, or pay attention to occurring issues. You may go and check at Brian Harry’s.

Hi!

It’s clear that TFS 2010 Beta 2 has undergone several significant changes and enhancements. TFS tools have been optimized, moreover, there’ve been added some new functionalities for better TFS management.

Thus, the tool for iteration planning is now available to allow taking work items directly from the product backlog and schedule them into future iterations. Also capacity limitations of the iterations are considered.

Another functionality added is the possibility of Task Board work items modifications, and checking for related work items.

Plus, there are new query/filter capabilities.

These and more new functionalities are provided by TFS Work Item Manager and TFS Project Dashboard, free TFS add-ons, as claims Brian Harry. They both provide a better use of the tools in terms of ALM.