The same day I blogged about the Visual Studio 11 ALM Hands-On-Labs being available in Brazilian Portuguese, I received a note from Tarun Arora who volunteered to translate them into Hindi as well!
He has already finished the first 4 labs which you can download here.
Tarun’s blog is definitely one to bookmark – he’s an avid user and blogger of Visual Studio ALM technologies. Keep up the great work, Tarun, and thanks for the translations.
A few months ago we released the beta of the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010. Today, I am pleased to announce that v1 of this service is now available and you can download it here.
What the heck is an OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010? I’m glad you asked. The purpose of this project is to help developers work with data from Team Foundation Server on multiple device types (such as smartphones and tablets) and operating systems. OData provides a great solution for this goal, and has been embraced by numerous developers for building great device-specific applications. OData is accessible from any device and application stack which supports HTTP requests. This OData service interacts directly with the TFS client object model.
What is OData? OData exposes a way to work with data over the web. If you’re new to OData, I suggest spending a few minutes at http://www.odata.org/ reading about this evolving standard. It uses interfaces similar to REST, so that you can programmatically consume and manipulate data from any device or application stack which supports HTTP requests. DPE has been working with several organizations (such as PayPal, Facebook, and Netflix) and product groups to enable OData where it makes sense to do so. Team Foundation Server was an obvious choice since it not only allows developers to extend TFS in new and interesting ways, but it also allows us to further showcase support for this evolving standard with the developer community at large.
Can I see a demo? Of course! I filmed a video for Channel 9 which shows you how to get started using this service. When you’re ready to get started, just download the release which includes full documentation. The service can be easily hosted in Windows Azure to front-end your own Team Foundation Server instance, or if you want to use this with CodePlex we’ve already hosted this service for you at https://codeplexodata.cloudapp.net/. As long as you have contributor rights on any CodePlex project backed by Team Foundation Server 2010 you can start making OData calls immediately. We also have included a sample Windows Phone 7 application, and WebMatrix Helpers, which show you how to get started building applications which consume this service.
You can also find a few great projects from people in the community who have been using this during the beta to build some great applications, such as TFS on the Road (a TFS app for Windows Phone) and a few other examples here.
(this is a video I filmed during the beta so you'll hear me refer to this as a beta, but the concepts are the same for the v1 release)
What’s new in v1? Since the beta, we have invested heavily in better documentation and a better installation experience. We have also made a few bug fixes and added support for a few operations, mainly around build definitions. Everything we have done since the beta has been based on direct customer feedback. Thanks to everybody who has contributed by evaluating the beta and helping to make this a great release!
So this is v1 – what is your roadmap for future releases? Is this supported? I would like to continue to iterate on this and add value over time. I should make it clear, however, that this is not an official release from the TFS engineering team. The TFS engineering team has reviewed the service and approved of the approach we are taking, but there is no official support for this service. That said, all of the source code is provided for you, the license permits you to use it and extend it for your own purposes, and we are interested in (but not committed to) continuing to add capabilities over time. Personally, I’d love to get this working with the Team Foundation Service, but since it’s only in a “preview” mode at the moment it’s a bit too early to be building extensions for it.
If I build an application using this service, will users need client access licenses (CAL’s)? In most cases, they will. Connecting to Team Foundation Server via OData has the same licensing implications as connecting via Team Explorer, the web, or any other client. But there are a few exceptions where users working with Team Foundation Server don’t need CAL’s. Please refer to the Visual Studio 2010 licensing whitepaper for all of the details.
I hope you enjoy this – if you build something interesting please be sure to drop us a line and let us know!
The November 2011 refresh of the Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs is now available. This new version includes an extended expiration date of April 9, 2012. Please note that if you are using the last version of the virtual machine it will stop working on November 1, 2011.
Follow the instructions here to download the new virtual machine and hands-on-labs.
Muito obrigado to Arley Pádua, Carlos Ubirajara Amorim, and Marcello Andrade – these guys have generously translated the Visual Studio 11 ALM Hands-On-Labs from English into Brazilian Portuguese!
The virtual machine itself is still available in English only, but at least for people who are more comfortable with Brazilian Portuguese as their language of choice this can make it easier to learn about the application lifecycle management improvements we have coming in Visual Studio 11.
The Brazilian Portuguese labs can be downloaded here, and the original English labs can still be found here.
PS: If anybody is interested in translating any of my hands-on-labs into their own native language, please let me know!
I have received several great emails from people who have tried the Visual Studio 11 ALM Virtual Machine and the accompanying hands-on-labs / demo scripts. Thanks for all of the positive feedback!
I also know that for some people, a Hyper-V virtual machine like this one can be a bit hard to get started with. You might not have the requisite hardware and Windows Server hosting environment, or sometimes you just want to quickly demonstrate one of these capabilities to a colleague or user group without the overhead of booting into the virtual machine. For this reason, I have just published a set of DemoMates for each of the 6 ALM hands-on-labs / demo scripts I published last month.
A DemoMate is a Silverlight-based rendering of a software demo which can be used to easily learn a demo or show it to an audience (albeit in a strict, linear format). It’s not a substitute for the virtual machine and being able to go “off road” of the script, but if you plan on sticking to the script then it’s the next best thing.
While you’re using the DemoMates, you can use the options in the lower-right corner to go full screen, switch between auto-play and manual advancing modes, turn presenter scripts on or off, and so on. As you hover your mouse over these items they should become self-explanatory, so I am not going to cover all of the settings here.
You can run these DemoMates online, or if you plan on using these in an environment where you might not always have Internet access then I suggest installing the offline version.
Online: Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11 Building the Right Software - Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11 Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11 Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11 Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11 Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 - MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone
Offline: (gets installed locally on your computer) Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11 Building the Right Software - Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11 Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11 Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11 Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11 Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 - MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone
I hope you’ll enjoy these as another way of learning about the application lifecycle management scenarios that Microsoft is investing in with Visual Studio 11.
I’m very pleased to announce the availability of the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview ALM Virtual Machine along with 6 hands-on-labs / demo scripts. This marks an exciting milestone in our journey towards RTM. You can now roll up your sleeves and start learning about the many capabilities we announced at TechEd North America earlier this year and have been talking about in greater depth this week at BUILD.
Before I get into what’s included, there are a few quick limitations to disclose:
With the limitations out of the way, onto the fun stuff…
This virtual machine is configured with:
There are six hands-on-labs for you to take a scripted approach towards learning this content. These labs double as demo scripts in case you want to show off these features to others:
The files above are included in the download set below, so you don’t have to follow the individual links above if you plan on batch downloading all of the files in this set.
UPDATE: There are now also DemoMates available for these hands-on-labs / demo scripts as well. DemoMates allow you to learn or demonstrate these scenarios without needing to use the virtual machine. You can access the DemoMates here.
Downloading the virtual machine and labs: I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.
1. Download and install Free Download Manager. This utility provides: - Auto-resume support for interrupted downloads. - Multiple simultaneous download streams for (usually) a much faster download experience. - As the name implies, it's completely free. 2. Select the URL’s below and copy (CTRL+C) them to your clipboard. ###Start - Do Not Include This Line### http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11.docx http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Building the Right Software - Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11.docx http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11.docx http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11.docx http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11.docx http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 - MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone.docx http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part01.exe http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part02.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part03.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part04.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part05.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part06.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part07.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part08.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part09.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part10.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part11.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part12.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part13.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMDeveloperPreview.part14.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Working with the Visual Studio 11 ALM Developer Preview Virtual Machine.docx ###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection### 3. Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running). 4. Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard. 5. When prompted for a download group, accept the default and click OK. 6. You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads. 7. Expand the files and self-extracting RAR set and see the “Working with…” document for more instructions.
While you are waiting for your downloads to finish, here are some screenshots from the VM and labs to whet your appetite…
The virtual machine is based around 2 sample web applications being built by our friends at Fabrikam Fiber – a provider of cable and telecom services. They are using Visual Studio application lifecycle management tools to manage their source code, run their builds, test their web sites, and plan and track the project.
The new Storyboarding tool will make it easier to refine requirements and ensure that your team is building the right software before you write a line of code. The “Building the Right Software” lab will show off this experience.
The Fabrikam Fiber Web Team has uses the TFS Web Access portal to help them collaborate more effectively as a team.
The Fabrikam Fiber Web Team maintains a common backlog within web access to track future work and begin assigning this work to iterations.
The Fabrikam Fiber Web Team uses the new task board in web access to track work throughout the project. Check out the “Agile project management…” lab to learn all about the new project management dashboards.
Team Explorer has been completely re-imagined in this release to make it more easily to work with source control, work items, and more. You can even “suspend” what you were working on if you get interrupted and easily come back to it later. And you’re going to love the new local workspaces capability. Check out the “Making Developers More Productive…” lab for a tour of these features.
Visual Studio 11 will enable 3rd party unit testing providers such as NUnit and xUnit.net to work right alongside the existing MSTEST unit tests. You can even mix and match these within the same solution! Check out the “Unit Testing” lab to learn more.
Also in the “Unit Testing” lab, you will also discover the powerful new code clone capability. This allows you to find semantically similar blocks of code; this might unlock new refactoring opportunities, or indicate blocks of code which need common a common bug fix.
Microsoft Test Manager 11 provides even greater support for exploratory testing. This allows you to put your tester’s hat on, find bugs, and Microsoft Test Manager will automatically capture rich diagnostics in the background which can be surfaced to developers if a bug if found, or used to create formal test cases for subsequent test passes. Learn more in the “Exploratory Testing” lab.
Finally, we know that application lifecycle management doesn’t end when you produce a release and hand it off to the operations team. Visual Studio 11 extends the capabilities of IntelliTrace to allow you to capture rich IntelliTrace files from machines running in your production environment using low-impact PowerShell commandlets. This gives you rich, historical debugging information right at your fingertips – allowing you to see exactly why bugs are happening in your production environment.
I hope you will enjoy playing with these bits as much as I have. Since this is our first release, I am sure you will find areas of the VM and hands-on-labs / demo scripts which could benefit from enhancements and fixes. Please let me know how I can improve this to better meet your needs.
This is really cool - Pedro Castelo Branco Lourenço (PCBL) has built a new Windows Phone 7 app for connecting to Team Foundation Server. It uses the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010, but what’s most exciting is the really nice user interface he has put on this. Here are a few screenshots:
He is even providing some nice graphical reports in here based on work item query results – nice!
The app is FREE! You can download it and read all about how PCBL built it from here. Nice job, PCBL!
I just published a refreshed version of the May 2011 Visual Studio 2010 Virtual Machine. This is to address a low disk space problem which can occur if you assign a lot of RAM to this new virtual machine. Since increasing the RAM increases the default page file size in Windows, and Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (introduced in the May refresh) takes more disk space than the previous versions did, this was causing some low disk space warnings for people who assigned more than 2GB of RAM.
If you plan on assigning more than 2GB of RAM to your virtual machine, or if you plan on installing additional software to your image, I highly recommend downloading the new version here. Alternatively, you can manually increase the size of your VHD using a VHD resizing tool. After you have increased the size of the VHD you need to open disk management from within the virtual machine and expand the size of the C: partition to use this extra space.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.
As you may have noticed, last week at TechEd North America we began to unveil the application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities of Visual Studio vNext. It was an exciting week with a flurry of activity! I had the pleasure of working on our ALM demo for Jason Zander’s keynote, and co-presenting a foundational session with Cameron Skinner. Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to provide you with 3 easy ways to come up to speed on what we’ve announced so far.
I should preface this by saying that you don’t have to look at everything in here to understand the vision; these are simply three different formats for consuming what is – essentially – the same set of information, with varying levels of depth.
1. SpeakFlow: A SpeakFlow is a Silverlight-powered way of delivering rich, interactive content. This SpeakFlow allows you to follow the lifecycle – from development to operations and back again – and view short demonstrations of how Visual Studio vNext will help you embrace better application lifecycle management. I suggest starting at the “STORYBOARDING” video (at the top) and then following the circle counter-clockwise. Tip: To go up a level after drilling in, use your mouse wheel or the UP key on your keyboard. The SpeakFlow diagram can be downloaded for offline use from here. (46MB)
2. Foundational Session: This 60-minute, demo-heavy presentation by Cameron Skinner and me paints a broader picture of our ALM story than we had time for during the keynote. The demos here are almost identical to the demos from the SpeakFlow above, but with a bit of a broader story woven around them, and some nice Q&A at the end.
3. Whitepaper: Our marketing team put together a great PDF whitepaper which reinforces the value propositions for what we’re delivering in vNext. I carry a copy on my Kindle.
I hope you enjoy these materials, and more importantly, the vision they present for the future of Visual Studio application lifecycle management.
The May 2011 refresh of the Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs is now available. This new version includes Service Pack 1 (of both Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010), 5 new hands-on-labs / demo scripts, and an extended expiration date of November 1, 2011. Please note that if you are using the last version of the virtual machine it will stop working on June 1, 2011.