Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
Team System Virtual PC image, including Team Foundation Server
Someone recently asked me whether there is a VPC image available for Team System and Team Foundation. There is one available to MSDN subscribers in the download area. It’s under Developer Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 -> English -> Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Trial Edition (For Evaluation Only).Earlier versions of this VPC have been around for a while, but it's easy to forget that it exists.tags: tfs, team foundation server, team system, virtual pc
Assigning work items for failed builds
Steven St. Jean has written a nice post about how to assign to a particular person the work item that's created for a failed build. When he talks about the name for the Assigned To field, it must match the name that's displayed in work item tracking. WIT shows the display name for a user, rather than the shorter domain login (aka alias). TFS - Team Build - On failed build assign workitem to a specific user Problem: I just came across a post on the MSDN TFS forums that was asking how you go about assigning the workitem created on a failed build to a specific user. I have also been asked to do th...
Creating a new server from an old one: Beware of the InstanceId
[UPDATE 8/23/14] The MSDN topic Move Team Foundation Server has the information about cloning TFS 2013. Today, that info is in the Q&A section at the bottom of that page.[This post contains instructions for TFS 2005/2008 and TFS 2010, which is in a separate section below]Grant Holliday wrote a post called, TFS InstanceId, ServerMap.xml and havoc. In it he describes his experience with backing up a production server and restoring it to a test environment. The problem he ran into is that every server has a unique ID called an InstanceId, which is just a GUID. That GUID is the real name of a se...
Understanding port configuration for Team Build
Etienne Tremblay, a Microsoft MVP, put up a nice Visio diagram showing the ports used by Team Build and the direction that must be opened for each. Check it out! Team build the ins and outs So we learn stuff everyday... well I hope. Here is a bit of insight on Team Build, specifically the ports that need to be opened for it to work properly in a multi-machine scenario. more...tags: tfs, team foundation server, team build
Team Foundation Server Knowledge Base Articles
Neno Loje, a Microsoft MVP, posted a nice list of knowledge base articles for Team Foundation. Here's the list (copied from his post). So I thought I'd try searching the KB to see how easy it is to get this list. Well, I don't like the search interface. If I search by product for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (the only product name choice), I get the following results (click here to run the query). Needless to say, that's not a great result.If instead you search for the phrase "team foundation" you get all sorts of results (79 total, currently), some of which don't seem t...
Team Foundation Power Toys video on Channel 9
Brian Keller has put up a video on Channel 9 that has Erin Geaney, a developer on the TFS MS Office integration team, demonstrating the Team Foundation Power Toys that we updated recently. The original release of the power toys was nearly a year ago and was the work of an intern who worked for me, Philip Kelley (he also wrote a paper on how to create shadow folders). The latest power toys release has Visual Studio add-ins, VSS-style project differencing (also written by a summer intern, Taylor Lafrinere), work item tracking commands in tfpt.exe, and more.tags: tfs, team foundation server
How to use the new Custom Controls in Work Item Forms (SP1)
Naren Datha<, a dev who works on the WIT client, has written a post on how to use the new work item tracking custom controls that are introduced in SP1 beta (he previously mentioned some ideas for custom controls). He provides an overview, details on how to create custom controls, some hints for troubleshooting, and a sample in a zip file attached to the post. Check it out!How to use Custom Controls in Work Item Formtags: tfs, team foundation server, tfs api, work item tracking
Adding a path filter to a CheckinEvent subscription using bissubscribe
This week, a couple of people asked (forum post 1 and forum post 2) how to subscribe to the CheckinEvent notification when there's a checkin under a particular tree. The first person wanted to filter by path in order to kick off continuous integration. The second person wanted to filter by path for email subscriptions.Here's the command line that I used to configure an email notification for a path. I've changed the email address (someone@microsoft.com), the server name (http://MyVstfat01:8080), and the path ($/TeamProject/A) from their original values, but it's otherwise what I've used to creat...
SP1 beta is now available
For Team Build users, I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that there are no meaningful changes in Team Build itself in SP1. There are changes in other parts of the system, though, that will be of some benefit.Version control users will get a number of fixes, but most are related to scalability.Brian Harry described many of the TFS SP1 changes in a post in June. I'm sure he'll post a follow up soon now that SP1 beta has shipped.You can find out how to get the SP1 beta at Microsoft Connect. Soma's post provides a higher-level description of what's in SP1 beta.UPDATE: Rob Caron...