Buck Hodges

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)

Work Item Tracking - Buck Hodges

How to distribute custom checkin policies and work item controls using the power tools

March 28, 2011 Mar 28, 2011 03/28/11
Buck Hodges
Custom checkin policies and custom work item controls are great ways to take advantage of the extensibility of TFS.  You can use checkin policies to enforce certain standards on checkins (even in your builds).  Custom work item controls allow you to add controls to your work item forms that present data in particular way, access...

Sorting by multiple columns in work item tracking

March 22, 2009 Mar 22, 2009 03/22/09
Buck Hodges
Recently I was showing someone the results of a bug query and sorting by more than one column in work item tracking in Team Explorer.  When the person said he didn't realize that feature existed, I decided it would be worth posting.  This also works in Team System Web Access. To sort by more the one column, simply hold the Shift key ...

Improving the performance of the work item tracking client with TFS 2008 SP1

October 18, 2008 Oct 18, 2008 10/18/08
Buck Hodges
Martin Woodward has written a great post that describes a feature that was added in TFS 2008 SP1 to reduce the amount of work item tracking metadata cached by the client.  Depending on the number of team projects on your server and the number of fields and rules used by all work item types, this could result in a nice performance gain, ...

How to set up TFS 2008 SP1 to use TSWA links in checkin notification emails

October 14, 2008 Oct 14, 2008 10/14/08
Buck Hodges
One of the new features available in TFS 2008 SP1 is that a TSWA URL can be configured in the server so that checkin notification emails will have links to the Team System Web Access page for the changeset, which allows you to see the diffs for each of the changes. You can find the documentation for this feature at How to: Configure Work Item...

July 2008 release of the power tools for TFS 2008 is now available

July 16, 2008 Jul 16, 2008 07/16/08
Buck Hodges
The download is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=00803636-1d16-4df1-8a3d-ef1ad4f4bbab&displaylang=en. Brian recently wrote a post about the new features: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/07/08/july-08-tfs-power-tool-preview.aspx. This release also includes some bug fixes to the build ...

Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 CTP and Work Item Web Access 2008 CTP are now available

April 9, 2008 Apr 9, 2008 04/9/08
Buck Hodges
Hakan has announced the availability of the new TSWA community technology preview (CTP) in his post, What's New in TSWA 2008 SP1.  Personally, I would say this release is beta quality or better, so don't let the CTP designation scare you too much. Also released is the first CTP release of what we are calling Work Item Web Access (WIWA).&...

Spec available for “Codename TFS Bug Submission Portal”

March 28, 2008 Mar 28, 2008 03/28/08
Buck Hodges
Hakan Eskici, program manager for Team System Web Access, has posted the spec for a new power tool that's based on TSWA that is designed to help customers comply with the new licensing changes in TFS 2008 while getting the most out of the product.  Please read this, as well as the other Rosario specs, and give us your feedback. Spec ...