Updated 4/27 because I forgot the tfpt addprojectportal and tfpt addprojectreports 

TFS Power Tools April 2010 release

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/3e8c9b68-6e39-4577-b9b7-78489b5cb1da

TFS MSSCCI Provider 2010 release

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bce06506-be38-47a1-9f29-d3937d3d88d6

TFS Build Extension Power Tool April 2010 release

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/2d7c8577-54b8-47ce-82a5-8649f579dcb6

Finally, the first RTM’d version of the TFS 2010 Power Tools are available!  It’s been a long journey and I’m glad to finally be here.  This is the largest Power Tools release we’ve done in a long time.  It’s not that we added all that many features but there was a ton to do to account for TFS 2010 changes.

Let’s start by listing all of the 2008 Power Tool features that have been removed because they are now part of the TFS 2010 core product:

  • Build Notifications – Now BuildNotification.exe in Team Explorer 2010
  • TFS Users – No longer needed because TFS now automatically handles user name changes.  More user manipulation is now shipping in “tfsconfig identities”
  • tfpt Rollback command – Now in the product as “tf rollback”.
  • tfpt History command – The ability to follow branches is now in Team Explorer 2010
  • tfpt DestroyWI command – Shipped as witadmin destroywi
  • tfpt DestroyWITD command  – Shipped as witadmin destroywitd
  • tfpt TweakUI command – Incorporated into the product
  • tfpt Destroygl – Shipped as witadmin destroygloballist
  • tfpt ChangedocUrl – Incorporated into Project/Excel addins.
  • tfpt Workspace command – Added to tf workspace

Most of the rest of the work was bug fixing and updating for TFS 2010.  We extended a few features but didn’t add any really big new stuff.  Here’s a run down:

Process Template Editor (PTE)

Probably the biggest investment was in the Process Template Editor.  There was a lot of work to add support for all of the new 2010 features like link types, etc.  Along the way we added GUI support for a few TFS process features that have been there all along.  And we took the opportunity to really try to up the quality of this tool – fixing 158 bugs. 

  • Support for defining link types
  • Support for work item type categories
  • Support for query folders
  • Support for new work item form controls: label, link labels, new links control
  • Support for adding build and lab template settings
  • Support for editing permissions on source control, build, lab, queries/query folders
  • Fixed 158 bugs

Team Members

  • Customized Instant Messaging settings – Now Team Members can work even if Active Directory doesn’t have email addresses or, as is the case for many at Microsoft, your IM address is different than your email address.  We added a tab to allow users to customize their Instant Messaging username and address. This enables greater flexibility for integrating with your preferred IM profiles and tools.
  • The ability to launch communicator by double clicking on the identity
  • More async operations (save settings)
  • Improved error handling (now in the output window).

Team Foundation Build Extensions

The Team Foundation Build Extensions provide the ability to execute Ant or Maven 2 builds from Team Foundation Server and publish the results of the build along with any associated JUnit test results back to Team Foundation Server.  This release is compatible with Team Foundation Server 2005, Team Foundation Server 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2010.

These tools came as part of the acquisition of Teamprise and were formerly part of “Teamprise Labs”.  They are now part of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools.

Alerts Editor

We made some small improvements to the Alerts Editor.

  • Moved from the team project tree in Team Explorer to a submenu item of the Team Project Collection. This change highlights the scope of the tool, which is at the project collection level, and reduces confusion between the projects alert and the old alerts node.
  • Simplified UI scheme and more default alerts around Team Build scenarios.

Portals And Reports

In TFS 2010, we made it possible to install Sharepoint but not Sharepoint portals and reports.  The obvious question is "What if I want to add them later?"  Well, we've added support in this Power Tools release to help with this.

  • tfpt addprojectportal - Create a project portal for an existing Team Project that doesn't currently have one.
  • tfpt addprojectreports - Create (or overwrite) the reports for an existing Team Project.

Best Practices Analyzer

While it won't quite feel like a lot of new "features", we've done a ton of work on the Best Practices Analyzer.  TFS 2010 brings a lot of new capabilities that really changes the breadth and depth of health checks necessary.

And, of course we fixed a lot of bugs all around.

The last big change, and a sad one for me, is that TFSServerManager is not included in this release.  This is my personal contribution to the Power Tools and with all the launch activity, I didn’t get a chance to finish it in time.  I will finish it up shortly and figure out how to make it available.  More on that in the near future.

That’s it for this release.  We are in the process of beginning planning for the next release and I’ll update you as soon as we know more.

Brian