<\/p>\n
Benefits<\/h3>\n
Our hosted TFS Service is a quick and easy way to get started with TFS.\u00a0 In only a few minutes, you can have an account and be productive with your team regardless of where they are around the world.\u00a0 It takes away the time and hassle of arranging for hardware, installing software, providing network infrastructure, etc.\u00a0 The service takes care of all of that for you and lets you focus on your project.<\/p>\n
Although the service is pre-release at this time and is not complete, much of the TFS functionality works today.\u00a0 You can use:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
- \n
- Source control<\/li>\n
- Work item tracking<\/li>\n
- Agile project management (a new feature<\/a> in TFS 11)<\/li>\n
- Testing<\/li>\n
- Build automation (though for now you will need to set up a TFS 11 CTP build agent on your own hardware)<\/li>\n
- and more\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You can use most of the TFS clients \u2013 including VS 2010 and Test Professional 2010 (with an available client patch<\/a>), VS 11 (CTP to be available soon<\/a>), Team Explorer Everywhere (compatible update available here<\/a>), Microsoft Office integration, etc.<\/p>\n
Getting Started<\/h3>\n
To try out our TFS service yourself, browse to http:\/\/tfspreview.com<\/a>.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be greeted with this screen (though the video will have changed by then):<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/2465.image_thumb_471B12FB.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nYou can watch the video (hosted from Channel 9) to learn more and when you are ready, just click Create Account.\u00a0 You should see the sign up screen.\u00a0 Here I\u2019ve entered and account name (bharryblog) in the server url field.\u00a0 And an invitation code (bharry) to authorize me to create an account.\u00a0 If you attended the BUILD conference, please use the invitation code you received in your goodies bag.\u00a0 Accept the terms of service and then click Sign Up.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/7245.Signup_thumb_4B44EAC0.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nYou\u2019ll need to sign in with a Windows Live ID.\u00a0 Note, you can only create one account per Windows Live ID.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/6663.Login_thumb_6F89CF42.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAnd it will walk you through the steps.\u00a0 Your account is created (make sure to make note of the url to get you to your account) but you need to create your first project.\u00a0 Do that by clicking create team project.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/6242.GettingStarted_thumb_0F08F94B.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAnd that will allow you to name your Team Project and choose a process template.\u00a0 When you have filled out the form, click Create Project.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/1055.NewTP_thumb_080946C6.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nYou\u2019ll get a progress dialog:<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/8484.NewTPProgress_thumb_77419C17.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAnd a completion screen:<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/3187.NewTPComplete_thumb_744C3764.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAt this point you can go one of two directions.\u00a0 You can click \u201cMy Team home page\u201d and begin playing around with the web experience.\u00a0 Or you can click close and download the VS client patch.\u00a0 The simplest flow (and what I show below) is to go to the Team home page.\u00a0 You can download the client patch later.\u00a0 If you choose to close this and go download the client, you just need to be aware that you are left in \u201cadministration mode\u201d in the web UI and need to click the \u201cEXIT ADMINISTRATION\u201d link in the upper right to get back to \u201cnormal\u201d mode.\u00a0 Our usability studies have told us this is not intuitive and we plan to fix it for the next update.\u00a0 If you click the My Team home page, you\u2019ll see your team\u2019s home page and you are ready to explore the product.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/7701.TeamHome_thumb_2A6DAFB4.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nEnjoy and don\u2019t forget my overview post on the Agile Project Management features<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019ll write more in subsequent posts.\u00a0\u00a0 Once you\u2019ve played around, you can invite others to join your project by selecting your project in the upper left of the nav area and choosing Manage teams and project groups.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/8546.image_thumb_681A9770.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSelect your team (or or other group you want to add them to, but your team is easiest) and click add members.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/1018.image_thumb_00C9BEB4.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nType their Live ID and click Save Changes.\u00a0 Note you are in administration mode in the UI and you need to click EXIT ADMINISTRATION in the upper right to get back to \u201cnormal\u201d mode.\u00a0 Did I mention we\u2019d be improving that?\u00a0 Roughly speaking you can add as many people as you like to your account.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/3731.image_thumb_1E5B99B3.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOr if you want to invite a friend to create their own account, you can click the ADMINISTRATION link on the upper right and select ACCOUNT in the nav area.\u00a0 On the lower right, you can click on \u201cinvite others\u201d and it will generate an invitation code (good for 5 accounts).<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2011\/09\/1104.image_thumb_2E1B2EB7.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCurrent Feature Status<\/h3>\n
As I mentioned earlier, this release is a preview and the product is not yet complete.\u00a0 Most of the functionality is in place but I want to mention a few notable things that are not yet available:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
- \n
- You cannot customize your process template at this time.\u00a0 You can choose any of the 3 built in templates but you can\u2019t change them.\u00a0 For now we\u2019re trying to keep upgrade of the service simple and don\u2019t want to deal with potential conflicts between customizations and service evolution yet.<\/li>\n
- Sharepoint integration is not available.\u00a0 The on-premises product integrates with Sharepoint to provide a project portal in addition to the web UI available in TFS.\u00a0 At this point Sharepoint integration is not yet available for the service.<\/li>\n
- There is very limited reporting.\u00a0 We provide some reports (like burn down charts) as part of our Agile project management experience but many of the reports that you may be used to in the on-premises product are not yet available on the service.<\/li>\n
- The service does not currently support lab management.<\/li>\n
- Email alerts are currently not delivered by the service.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
If you find anything else that seems to be missing and you want to know if it\u2019s a bug or simply an unfinished feature, let me know.<\/p>\n
Status of the Service<\/h3>\n
We\u2019ve been running the service for months now and it\u2019s been working reliably.\u00a0 I suspect now that they can talk about it, you\u2019ll be able to find some of our early adopters blogging about their experiences.\u00a0 But, like the product, the service isn\u2019t fully finished yet either and there are some things to be aware of:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The service has been very reliable but, at the moment, we are not providing any uptime guarantees.\u00a0 We are not on a 24×7 support schedule yet.\u00a0 We will do our best to keep the service running well but we\u2019re still learning everything we need to know to do this well.\u00a0 Our goal is 99.9% availability and so far we\u2019ve stayed very close to that.<\/li>\n
- Data you put into our TFS service WILL be carried forward.\u00a0 We do not plan to ever wipe the service and restart or any such thing.\u00a0 The service launched in April from our perspective and every time we upgrade it (which we\u2019ve done about 3 times so far) we bring all the customer data along with it.<\/li>\n
- For now the service is free of charge.\u00a0 At some point in the future, we will announce a pricing model.\u00a0 We\u2019re still working on it and are not ready to discuss any of the thinking yet.<\/li>\n
- Because the service is free and we\u2019ve provided a network effect for invitation codes, we don\u2019t know how many accounts people are going to create.\u00a0 We do have some overall limits on the service and if\/when we hit them, new account creation will get disabled.\u00a0 To allow room for people who really want to use the service, inactive accounts will be deleted.\u00a0 An inactive account is any account that has not been used for 60 days.\u00a0 We will not keep backups of any deleted, inactive accounts.<\/li>\n
- There is a per account storage limit.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bit of a soft limit and will depend somewhat on how you use the system but roughly speaking it should handle real world projects up to about 4GB of compressed source code.\u00a0 Assuming about a 4:1 LZW compression ratio, that\u2019s about 16GB of source and should handle the vast majority of projects.<\/li>\n
- We currently only have the TFS service in a single data center (in Chicago).\u00a0 Eventually it will be deployed to Azure data centers around the world.<\/li>\n
- This launch of the preview will likely dramatically increase the usage of the service.\u00a0 We\u2019ve worked hard to ensure that the service is ready.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been doing performance and load testing work for the past couple of months trying to simulate the load that we expect the new wave of early adopters will put on it.\u00a0 However, my experience in the past running large scale services says that any time you have a large inflection in the usage, you should be prepared for problems.\u00a0 I expect we\u2019ll see a few hiccups over the next week or two as we burn in the new load pattern but we\u2019ll be working hard to keep things healthy and happy.<\/li>\n
- We don\u2019t currently have a way to migrate project either from your local TFS instance to the cloud or from the cloud to a local TFS instance.\u00a0 Those are things we hope to provide in the future but for now you\u2019ll want to start with \u201cfresh\u201d projects that can stay in the cloud.<\/li>\n
- The service is currently only available in English.\u00a0 We\u2019ll add additional languages in future updates.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Overall, I think you\u2019ll be very pleased with the service.\u00a0 The feedback from our early adopters has been very positive.\u00a0 Most have reported very good availability and performance.<\/p>\n
Feedback and Issues<\/h3>\n
We very much want your feedback on the service.\u00a0 Feedback comes in many forms and we\u2019ve provided a number of avenues for you to provide it:<\/p>\n
Feature suggestions: http:\/\/visualstudio.uservoice.com<\/a><\/p>\n
Bug reports: http:\/\/connect.microsoft.com<\/a><\/p>\n
Support questions: http:\/\/social.msdn.microsoft.com\/Forums\/en-US\/TFService\/threads<\/a><\/p>\n
Eventually, we plan to have a nice self-service way for you to check on the status of the service and make sure everything is running smoothly (to help you determine if a problem you are seeing is service wide or specific to you).\u00a0 For now, we\u2019ll be using a blog to keep you informed about the state of the service.\u00a0 You will find it here: http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/TFService<\/a>.\u00a0 You can also use this Twitter url: https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/tfservice<\/a>.<\/p>\n
And, of course, I\u2019m always here on my blog to help you if I can.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
It\u2019s an exciting time for us.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been working hard on getting this service ready and we\u2019re thrilled to be able to offer it for you all to try it out.\u00a0 We\u2019re eagerly awaiting your feedback and, at the same time, working hard on the next update already.\u00a0 One of the things that you\u2019ll find is that a service is very different from an on-premises product from a release cadence stand point.\u00a0 Right now we are upgrading the service with new capabilities about every 2-3 months.\u00a0 We\u2019re working on further decreasing that cycle time but you should expect us to keep bringing you fresh capabilities and reacting to your feedback on a pretty regular basis.<\/p>\n
Thanks,<\/p>\n
Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today at the BUILD conference, we announced availability of our Windows Azure based Visual Studio Team Foundation Service Preview. If you\u2019ve been following my blog, then you know we\u2019ve been working on it for a while now. We\u2019ve had a private preview going for the past several months and are up to several hundred users. […]<\/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":[5,4],"class_list":["post-3721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tfs","tag-visual-studio"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Today at the BUILD conference, we announced availability of our Windows Azure based Visual Studio Team Foundation Service Preview. If you\u2019ve been following my blog, then you know we\u2019ve been working on it for a while now. We\u2019ve had a private preview going for the past several months and are up to several hundred users. […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721","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=3721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721\/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=3721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}