Brian Harry's Blog
Everything you want to know about Azure DevOps and Farming
Latest posts
Working with our big downloads
We've move to a model where we do pre-releases way more often than we used to. The downside is that they are still really big and it can take a lot of time to do downloads. Brian Keller recent wrote a post about how to minimize the difficulty and time spent downloading. Read here for more info... http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel/archive/2007/09/06/a-more-reliable-and-faster-download-experience-for-rosario-vs08-vpc-s.aspx Brian
Updated documentation on creating custom reports
One of the pieces of feedback we frequently get is that creating custom reports is too hard. We're taking a two pronged approach to this. We're working on new features in Rosario to make it easier and we are writing more/better docs on how to do reporting with the features you have today. Here is a post from Allen Clark on some new docs for writing TFS reports using Report Designer. Check it out... http://blogs.msdn.com/vstsue/archive/2007/08/29/new-content-available-on-creating-custom-reports.aspx Brian
Support details for TFS Beta 2
I've gotten a few questions recently about exactly what "go-live" of TFS Beta 2 means and how one goes about getting support. "Go-live" means that we believe Team Foundation Server 2008 Beta 2 (TFS Beta2) is ready for production use. Because TFS is such a mission critical application, we have arranged for Customer Support Services (CSS) to provide support during the Beta 2 timeframe for customers who deploy it in a production environment. If you are running into issues which do not cause work stoppage, one of the best places to get support is on the MSDN forums. There are ten specific...
Fixes for a couple of TFS Beta 2 install issues
We've been collecting Dr. Watson reports and user bug reports of issues encountered installing TFS Beta 2. Unfortunately, the success rate is not as high as we would like. Yesterday we released an update that will address 2 of the issues we've seen people run into. We have another set of them coming in the next couple of weeks I hope. I'll let you know when they are available. The symtoms of the two issues these fixes address are the errors: • "There is no team project named' in source control"• "TF220059: The installation process cannot continue"You can read the KB article...
All VS 2008 Beta 2 languages have now been released
If you've been waiting for French or German (or Russian .NET Framework), you can get them now! Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team SuiteJapanese: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=428C076F-E3EF-4290-9FF4-F6FD8F180B7D&displaylang=ja Chinese (Simplified): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=428C076F-E3EF-4290-9FF4-F6FD8F180B7D&displaylang=zh-cn Chinese (Traditional): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=428C076F-E3EF-4290-9FF4-F6FD8F180B7D&displaylang=zh-tw Korean: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...
Upgrading to Win2K3 SP2
We've recently been having some problems with client hangs in our dogfood TFS environment. It has taken quite a while and quite a long breadcrumb trail to diagnose the problem. I thought I'd share it with it in case you have seen similar things or want to take preventative steps against it. As I said, it usually manifests itself as a hang (most often while doing a "Get"). It can also manifest itself as a "server temporarily unavailable" error message. The problem turns out to be a couple of related bugs in IIS where connections are not properly closed during a process recycle. This c...
Orcas Beta 2 builds released for additional languages
The next set to be released are what we call CCK - Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean. Soon we will also be releasing French and German. In all, for RTM, we will be releasing support for 9 languages. CHSCHT KOR Brian
Improving our communication with the community
I got some feedback on a recent post about how annoying it can be to track down information about VSTS. The post complained about lack of "official" content and blog posts that chain to other blog posts etc. Well a few of us got together recently to talk about the problem. It's been a long standing one. Publishing "official" content through official channels is complicated and time consuming. On the other hand, publishing blog posts is easy :). The downside of blog posts is the information is distributed, sometimes of dubious quality and frequently intermixed with random stuff. With ...
TFS/Project Server 2007 Connector
I've written before about the TFS <-> Project Server 2007 Connector that the VSTS Ranger team built. Check out this new Channel 9 video with Lenny (one of the developers of it). He talks a bit about the Rangers and the projects they have undertaken. Then he talks in more depth about the Project Server Connector - what problems it solves, usage scenarios, architecture and then does a demo. https://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=334527 Brian