December '07 Release of the TFS Power Tools for TFS 2008 are Available!

Today we released the first version of the Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools.  This new release is primarily intended for use with a VS 2008 client.  All VS integrated components with this new release will only integrate with VS 2008.  Power Tool features in this release require that the Team Explorer 2008 be installed.  Those features that do not integrate directly with Visual Studio (e.g. command line tools) can easily be used in concert with VS 2005 development.  The TFS 2005 Power Tools are still available for the VS 2005 client. 

Download URLs

Power Tools: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/tfs2008/bb980963.aspx

MSSCCI Provider update: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FAEB7636-644E-451A-90D4-7947217DA0E7&displaylang=en

There are many new features/updates in this release.  They include...

MSSCCI Provider - We've updated the MSSCCI provider (that enables TFS access from VS 2003, VS 2002, VS 6 and a host of other IDEs) to use the TFS 2008 object model.  In the process we've fixed as many bugs that have been reported as we could.

Build Notification Tray app - We're releasing our first Power Tool version of the build notification tray app.  This tool allows you to monitor the current status of automated builds easily.  You can be notified immediately when a build fails (or succeeds even) so that you can address it promptly.  A failure notification will appear like...

From which you can easily navigate to the build status window which allows you find out more info on the build.  Or you can go to the changesets/workitems that are in the build.

Process Template Editor - In addition to hosting the Process Template Editor in the VS 2008 IDE, we've made bug fixes and small improvements.  They include:

• Making it more discoverable by moving it to the VS Tools menu
• Substantially improved the performance - particularly when there are many states
• Fixes for all of the serious bugs that users have reported.

Best Practices Analyzer - The Best Practices Analyzer is a tool we first released in September that is designed to help diagnose problems with TFS installation and help you quickly correct them.  In this Power Tools release, we have updated it to support TFS 2008 and the wide array of additional configurations that TFS 2008 supports.

Status Search and Wildcard Search - By popular demand, we have added features roughly equivalent to Status Search and Wildcard Search in SourceSafe.  These features allow you to search in the Source Control Explorer to find files by wildcard and/or checkout status.  Further, you can operate on the search results, including (assuming you have the necessary permission), undoing checkouts in other people's workspaces.  You'll find the "Find in Source Control" sub menu in the File -> Source Control menu and the right click menu when looking at the Source Control Explorer.

The search dialog looks like:

The search results look like:

In addition to these new commands, we've put a menu option for the difficult to discover "Find Changeset" command on the same submenu so that all of your "find commands" in TFS are in one handy place.

In case you want to bind key combinations to them, the commands are:

• File.TfsContextSceStatusSearch
• File.TfsContextSceWildcardSearch
• File.TfsContextSceChangesetSearch

Navigate to Windows Explorer - We added a menu option in both the Find in Source Control results and in Source Control Explorer to navigate easily to the corresponding folder in your workspace using Windows Explorer.

In case you want to bind a key combination, the command is:

• File.TfsContextWindowsExplorerLaunch

Quick Label - A very simple label dialog that everyone has been asking for that enables you to easily label a file or folder and all its contents at a point in time.

In case you want to bind a key combination, the command is:

• File.TfsContextQuickLabel

Work Item & Work Item Type Destroy - We have added support to the tfpt command line to enable permanent deletion of work items and work item types.  We added server side support for it in TFS 2008 but did not have time to get the client side support done.  So until that makes it into an official release, that support will live in the Power Tools.

tfpt destroywi /server:tfsservername /workitemid:value1[,value2,...]

tfpt destroywitd /server:tfsservername /project:projname /workitemtype:witdname

New configuration command - We added a new command called tfpt tweakui to make it much easier to configure connection properties - like client certificates for HTTPS, etc.

Removed Features - A few Power Tool features have been removed because they were incorporated into the 2008 version of Team Explorer.  Examples include Annotate and Folder Difference.

I hope you are as excited about these new features as I am.  It's another great increment of features on top of the base TFS product.  We continue forward with our commitment to deliver value regularly.  Our rough target is to deliver Power Tools with new features, bug fixes, etc every 3 months.  Many of the Power Tools will be picked up into "official releases" as time allows.  Please let us know what you think of this release and anything you'd like to make sure we do soon.

Thanks,

Brian

P.S. If you are looking to the Database Professional Power Tools, they are not in this download - these are just the TFS Power Tools.  I believe the 2008 compatible Database Professional Power Tools will be available shortly.