Azure DevOps Blog
DevOps, Git, and Agile updates from the team building Azure DevOps
Latest posts
ALM Readiness Treasure Map – Release 2 available in the Windows Store
The ALM Rangers are pleased to announce the landing of the second release of the ALM Readiness Treasure Map Windows Store App, which was certified and released on August 1st and is now featured in the Windows Store. It provides a master catalogue (treasure map) of the available ALM Readiness content to guide you through the process of becoming proficient in ALM practices. Find the Windows Store application here: Download the v1 paper map or the v1 and/or v2 sample code from Please send candid feedback! Which features do you need in the next version? What do you like and dislike in the current...
Visual Studio Unit Test Generator is feature complete – v1 Release Candidate lands!
The ALM Rangers are pleased to announce the landing of the Release Candidate for the Visual Studio Unit Test Generator. Overview Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a developer to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test frameworks.We envisio...
Visual Studio 2013 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine with Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts
While i hate simply echoing other blog posts…This one was too important to not cover. The ALM Virtual Machine (which most people refer to as the “Keller VM”) is probably the single most important Microsoft ALM training tool – used both by internal and external trainers. Today Brian Keller(on his way to his honeymoon!!) just updated this virtual machine to include InRelease, getting started with GIT and a bunch of new Collaboration tools like Team Rooms, Code Lens and Code Comments. If you are considering or want to learn more about the ALM platform you can find out more about this virtual machine here: ...
Load Testing Siebel Applications using Visual Studio
One of our premier test partners Testhouse (Shivaram Patil and Roshin Jacob) has been working with Hosam Kamel(Microsoft regional technology solution professional and ALM Ranger) for performance testing one of our mutual enterprise customers. The project was focused on using Visual Studio to do a performance and load testing for Seibel application. In this blog post Hosam does a GREAT job of summarizing their key learning and challenges faced during load testing an enterprise scale Siebel CRM application. Hosam thanks for sharing this information and writing up the post! **********************************...
Get started with some basic TFBuild scripts
You want to run some of your business logic during your TFBuild process. Maybe before, or maybe after Team Foundation Build (TFBuild) compiles or tests your code. For example, before you compile, you want to set the version of your assembly files. Or after you compile, you want to control the build outputs that get dropped to your staging location. Until recently, you would have to customize your build process. Plenty has been written about how to develop a custom build process. I recently released a topic that I hope makes getting started on this kind of effort a bit easier: Create a custom build process. Regar...
Creating Fence Environments using Team Foundation Server 2013 Preview Lab Management can put Lab Environment in “Not Ready” state
This issue can occur if the guest OS is Windows 2012 R2 Preview. Workaround: Install Agents for the Lab Environment once. It should fix the problem. Cause: When the test agent is installed and configured, by default it enables firewall exception for tcp port 6910 in privateand current profiles. If the guest OS is Windows 2012 R2 Preview the firewall exception is enabled for private,domain profiles, but the current profile is public. This results in test controller not able to reach to test agent endsup in putting Lab Environment in “Not Ready” state.. This is a known bug o...
Creating Fence Environments using team foundation server 2013 Preview Lab Management can give error “The given key is not present in the dictionary..”
This issue can occur when Lab Management is configured with SCVMM 2012 R2 Preview Workaround : Repair the Lab Environment once. It should fix the problem. Cause: While creating a network isolated environment Lab creates a virtual network using SCVMM. This network creation completes successfully but SCVMM still returns a failure to Lab with the error message “The given key is not present in the dictionary.." This results in Lab operation failure and puts Lab Environment in creation failed state. Since during repair the network already exists, Lab Management doesn’t try to re-create one and thus the La...
VS ALM Lab management Frequently Asked Questions
Performance and Diagnostics Hub in Visual Studio 2013
Update: this blog post has been updated for Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 – enjoy! If you attended our Build conference or watched some of the videos, you may have seen some of the new profiling tools and our Performance and Diagnostics hub. This blog post will provide an overview of the hub and the various performance analysis tools that we have built. Since we released Visual Studio 2012 we have added new profiling tools to Visual Studio while improving the overall user experience with the introduction of the Performance and Diagnostics hub. Why introduce a Performance and Diagnostics hub We have been continu...