Brian Harry's Blog
Everything you want to know about Azure DevOps and Farming
Latest posts
Updated GAT/GAX released
This is a great example of what we can accomplish together by partnering. The original plan for GAT and GAX was to wait and update them with VS 2008 releases later this year. After Beta 1, you gave feedback that these were very important to some of you to enable evaluating the betas. We went back to the team and they agreed to update them for Beta 2. And here they are...For those of you who don't know what GAT and GAX are, here are brief descriptions: The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) expands the capabilities of Visual Studio by allowing architects and developers...
Rosario August CTP Released!
Today we released the first CTP release for the Rosario version of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. You can download the VPC to try it our here. You can read more detail about it here. As you'll recall from previous postings, our 2 "pillars" for Rosario are "Testing & Application Quality" and "Business Alignment". This CTP delivers a mix of features supporting both scenarios - including an update MSF CMMI template, user definable links types, hierarchical work items, work item queries on links, an awesome manual testing tool and more. Over the few days, I'll be posting longer description...
SourceSafe 2005 Update CTP Available
Along with the VS2008 wave of products, we are providing an update to Visual SourceSafe 2005 called a GDR. GDR stands for something like General Distribution Release and it is very much like a service pack. The differences are subtle and I won't try to explain them right now. This GDR contains over 57 fixes and includes all customer requested hot fixes and many internally found and fixed issues. It is also designed to make sure that VSS 2005 works well with the VS 2008 wave of products. The update is available for free to all licensed VSS 2005 customers. We have just released a Commu...
Team System Web Access Overview
Someone asked me to publish a brief write up VSTS Web Access along with screen shots. It seemed like a good idea, so here you go... VSTS Web Access is a Web UI to a portion of the Team Foundation Server functionality. Over time I expect it to grow beyond what we think of as TFS today. It serves a few purposes: VSTS Web Access is not intended to be a complete solution to the needs of all people on the development team. For instance, it is particularly not intended to be a replacement for the source code control functionality that a developer would need. It also doesn't have all o...
Improvements for testing in VSTS 2008
Compared to our VSTS 2005 release, the 2008 release is a fairly modest release. Mostly it's filling gaps in the offering and adding in a few nice new features. However, I think the improvements we've made in testing are are under appreciated. IMHO, we really did some great work to improve testing. These include major advancements like: Ed has done a great blog post that indexes many detailed blog posts on the new testing features. I encourage everyone to check it out and learn about all of the great stuff! Brian
TechEd South Africa
For that subset of you for whom it is relevant, It looks like I'm going to be at TechEd South Africa this year. It's October 21st to the 24th. I'm still finalizing plans but expect to be doing a couple of talks on TFS and VSTS. I've never been to the African continent before and am really looking forward to seeing it. If you live in that part of the world, I look forward to seeing you. If you are interested, you can sign up here: http://www.tech-ed.co.za/ Brian
Team System Web Access Power Tool Available!
Today we released the first "official" power tool release of Team System Web Access. You can download it from here. Let me put this in context. When Microsoft first acquired DevBiz, we provided v1.0 of TeamPlain for download. Based on customer demand, we uploaded a preview of TeamPlain 2.0. Neither were supported by Microsoft customer support but both were available for download by all Team Foundation Server licensed users. With our release today of the Team System Web Access Power Tool, several things have changed. This new version is based on the TeamPlai...
More VSTS chats coming
With Beta 2 out the door now, we are having a new set of MSDN chats to talk about what's new and what's coming. Please join the product team! Following our recent tradition, we'll be having 2 chats at different times to accomodate people in different parts of the world. Join the chat on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones -or- Join the chat on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones Hope to see you there! ...
Help installing VS 2008 Beta 2
I suspect many of you will be trying to install VS 2008 Beta 2 in the near future. If you run into any problems, you can go to the following MSDN forums to look for help. The setup team has committed to monitoring them closely as people get over the hump of getting it installed. Visual Studio Orcas Install and Setup http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1017&SiteID=1 Visual Studio Orcas Express Editions - Installation and Setup http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1346&SiteID=1 Brian