{"id":1121,"date":"2014-07-21T19:32:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T19:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/bharry\/2014\/07\/21\/visual-studio-online-update-july-21\/"},"modified":"2024-03-19T15:13:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T22:13:02","slug":"visual-studio-online-update-july-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/visual-studio-online-update-july-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Studio Online Update \u2013 July 21"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we began deployment of our sprint 68 work.\u00a0 There\u2019s a bunch of really good stuff there.\u00a0 I say \u201cbegun\u201d because deployment is a multi day event now as we roll it out across instances.\u00a0 Everyone should have the updates by tomorrow (Tue) afternoon.\u00a0 You can read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visualstudio.com\/news\/2014-jul-21-vso\">release notes<\/a> to get details.<\/p>\n<h3>Licensing<\/h3>\n<p>You\u2019ll see that one part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/bharry\/archive\/2014\/07\/09\/upcoming-vs-online-licensing-changes.aspx\">licensing changes<\/a> I described a couple of weeks ago are now live \u2013 addition of Test Hub access to the Visual Studio Online Advanced license.\u00a0 The remaining stakeholder licensing changes are still tracking to go live in mid-August.\u00a0 Stay tuned for more.<\/p>\n<h3>Azure Active Directory support<\/h3>\n<p>The biggest thing in the announcement is the next step in our rollout of Azure Active Directory (AAD) support in VS Online.\u00a0 We started this journey back in April with the very first flicker of AAD support at the Build conference.\u00a0 We added more support at TechEd but I\u2019ve stayed pretty quiet about it because, until this week, there was no way to convert and existing account to AAD.\u00a0 With this deployment we\u2019ve enabled it.\u00a0 Officially it\u2019s in preview and you have to <a href=\"https:\/\/account.windowsazure.com\/PreviewFeatures?fid=vsocenableaadpreview\">ask to get access<\/a> to do it but we\u2019re accepting all requests so it\u2019s nothing more than a speed bump to keep too big a rush from happening all at once.\u00a0 With these last set of changes, you can:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Associate your OrgID (AAD\/AD credentials) with your MSDN subscription, if you have one, and use that to grant your VSO license<\/li>\n<li>Create a new account connected to an AAD tenant<\/li>\n<li>Connect an existing account to an AAD tenant<\/li>\n<li>Disconnect an account from an AAD tenant<\/li>\n<li>Log in with either a Microsoft Account or and OrgID (AAD only or synchronized from you on prem Active Directory) giving you single sign-on with your corporate credentials, Office 365, etc.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019m probably forgetting something but you get the point<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I encourage you to read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visualstudio.com\/get-started\/manage-organization-access-for-your-account-vs#ConnectDirectory\">docs<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/subscriptions\/dn531048.aspx\">more docs<\/a>\u00a0for details.\u00a0 One thing I\u2019ve asked be included in the docs and I\u2019m still not satisfied with the clarity is one detail about binding an existing account to AAD.\u00a0 If you have an existing account not connected to AAD then, by definition, you are using Microsoft Accounts.\u00a0 When you connect you VS Online account to AAD, your identities have to be recognized by AAD to authenticate.\u00a0 You have 3 options for each existing user of your account:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Add the Microsoft Account as an \u201cexternal identity\u201d in your AAD.\u00a0 All your data and in-progress work carries forward.\u00a0 The draw back is that external Microsoft accounts won\u2019t fully honor you AAD policies \u2013 like Two Factor Auth, Password policies, etc.\u00a0 It\u2019s still a Microsoft Account that\u2019s been associated with your AAD, giving your AAD admin central control over access.<\/li>\n<li>If you created your Microsoft Account using the same email address as your AD\/AAD identity (for instance, for me it\u2019s <a href=\"mailto:bharry@microsoft.com\">bharry@microsoft.com<\/a>) then, when you connect your VSO account to AAD, your Microsoft Account will be seamlessly rebound to your corporate identity.\u00a0 All your data and in progress work carries forward and your login get the full set of AAD governance.\u00a0 This is the \u201cbest\u201d of the 3 options but requires that you created your Microsoft Account a certain way.<\/li>\n<li>If you can\u2019t do #2 and you don\u2019t want to do #1, then you can just add your AAD identity as a \u201cnew\u201d VS Online user and remove your old Microsoft Account identity from the VS Online account.\u00a0 To VS Online this is just like adding a new user and deleting an old user.\u00a0 VS Online has no idea they are the same person.\u00a0 This has the advantage of getting full AAD administration but the downside that in-progress work (checkouts, work items assigned to you, \u2026) and other places where your old MS Account identity was associated need to either be deleted or reassigned to your new identity.\u00a0 Work items can be reassigned.\u00a0 Workspaces, shelvesets and stuff like that can be deleted.\u00a0 History will always be associated with your \u201cold\u201d Microsoft Account identity.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So that\u2019s a good segue to what\u2019s left for us to do to really complete AAD support\u2026<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Add the ability to migrate one identity to any other identity, thereby having all references in VSO changed to the new user (to get around the issue in #3).\u00a0 This is on the backlog but is going to take a while.<\/li>\n<li>Add support for using AAD groups (to assign permissions, query work items, etc) in VS Online.\u00a0 Today you can use AAD users, but you can\u2019t yet AAD groups.\u00a0 This feature is coming fairly soon (within the next few sprints).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I\u2019m sure I\u2019m missing something else we haven\u2019t done yet but I don\u2019t think anything big.\u00a0 AAD support is ready for prime time for most user scenarios.<\/p>\n<h3>Account deletion<\/h3>\n<p>And I have to say something about account deletion.\u00a0 Until this week, VS Online account deletions could only be done by contacting support \u2013 and we had to do a delicate dance to ensure that the person requesting a deletion had the rights to.\u00a0 For the past few months, account deletion has been the #1 support request, with dozens of requests a month.\u00a0 There are all kinds of reasons \u2013<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Merging multiple accounts into one<\/li>\n<li>Moving from VS Online back to on-premises TFS<\/li>\n<li>Wanting to just wipe everything out and start over (for instance after an evaluation)<\/li>\n<li>Etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With this week\u2019s deployment, account deletion is self service (assuming you are an account administrator).\u00a0 However, it\u2019s important to understand that all account deletes are \u201csoft\u201d deletes only.\u00a0 Meaning the account is \u201cmarked for deletion\u201d and no one can access it any more but it is *not* actually deleted.\u00a0 It will be physically deleted, I believe, 90 days after you delete it in the UI.\u00a0 This gives you a window to have your \u201cOh sh%t!\u201d moment.\u00a0 If you realize that you deleted something you did not intend to, you can contact support and they can \u201cundelete\u201d your account.\u00a0 This is indicative of a general direction we are headed where all deletes are \u201csoft\u201d and you always have a time window to go back and recover it.\u00a0 It will take us quite a while to get there on everything that can be deleted but we\u2019ll make progress every chance we get.\u00a0 Of course, if there\u2019s some reason you *REALLY* need a VS Online account permanently deleted immediately, you can contact support to help you.<\/p>\n<h3>Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>Oh, and lest I manage to avoid mentioning any feature in this deployment, check out the new trend reports.\u00a0 They are very cool and make the VS online charting experience even more useful.\u00a0 And, because I know several people will ask, yes, these charting enhancements will be added Team Foundation Server (our on-premises product).\u00a0 If everything goes according to plan, they will be in TFS 2013.4 (Update 4) later this fall.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a bunch of stuff.\u00a0 Maybe you have to be a bit of a geek to appreciate all of it <a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/02\/8228.wlEmoticon-smile_58CD4724.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15586\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/02\/8228.wlEmoticon-smile_58CD4724.png\" alt=\"Image 8228 wlEmoticon smile 58CD4724\" width=\"19\" height=\"19\" \/><\/a>\u00a0 We\u2019ve been working on some of this for a good while and I\u2019m really happy to see it all available.\u00a0 Check it out and let us know what you think.<\/p>\n<p>Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we began deployment of our sprint 68 work.\u00a0 There\u2019s a bunch of really good stuff there.\u00a0 I say \u201cbegun\u201d because deployment is a multi day event now as we roll it out across instances.\u00a0 Everyone should have the updates by tomorrow (Tue) afternoon.\u00a0 You can read the release notes to get details. Licensing You\u2019ll [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":14617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-vsonline"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Today we began deployment of our sprint 68 work.\u00a0 There\u2019s a bunch of really good stuff there.\u00a0 I say \u201cbegun\u201d because deployment is a multi day event now as we roll it out across instances.\u00a0 Everyone should have the updates by tomorrow (Tue) afternoon.\u00a0 You can read the release notes to get details. Licensing You\u2019ll [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}