Brian Keller

New Translations Available for Visual Studio 11 ALM Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts

Brian Keller — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:14:35 GMT

I just received word that the Visual Studio 11 ALM Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts have been translated through community efforts into both Brazilian Portuguese and Arabic!

A huge thank you, obrigado, and شكرا to Mohamed Radwan, Arley de Padua, Helder de Padua, Willian Candido, Marcia Candido, Camila Tomaz, Pablo Coelho and Marcelo Bolzan for making this happen.

I love it when the community bonds together to develop content like this which can help make this content accessible to millions of people around the world.

PS: If you prefer Hindi, Tarun Arora posted a subset of these labs from the developer preview in Hindi. The screenshots and steps are slightly different from what’s in the beta, but the ideas are the same.

Updated Visual Studio 2010 ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 04:51:56 GMT

The Visual Studio 2010 ALM Virtual Machine has been updated with a longer expiration date. If you are using the previous version, please note that it expires on April 9, 2012. The new version will expire on September 10, 2012.

You can download the new version here.

Visual Studio 11 Beta ALM DemoMates now available

Brian Keller — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:18:25 GMT

The Visual Studio 11 DemoMates for showcasing application lifecycle management scenarios have been updated based on the beta release. You can download the DemoMates here.

DemoMates are a nice alternative to the Visual Studio 11 Virtual Machine for when you don’t have time or hardware resources to run the virtual machine.

New Videos: Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 11

Brian Keller — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:08:12 GMT

The Team Foundation Server 11 beta is available for download, including a "go live" license and support, meaning that you can start using the beta for real projects and there will be a supported upgrade path to the final release. If you are using an earlier version of Team Foundation Server, then you may want to consider upgrading to the beta.

Most scenarios will "just work" when upgrading to the new release. However, depending on the complexity of your existing Team Foundation Server deployment, the capabilities you are using, and the customizations you have made, there may be additional steps for you to consider in order to ensure the smoothest upgrade path.

To help you in this process, I just uploaded two Channel 9 videos by Ed Holloway and Ewald Hofman who are both on the Team Foundation Server product team.

The first video focuses on upgrading the core components of Team Foundation Server, including the database.

A second video focuses on how to upgrade process templates which were created using an earlier version of Team Foundation Server to take advantage of the new capabilities.

Additional Resources:

Visual Studio 11 ALM Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs/Demo Scripts updated for beta

Brian Keller — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:25:30 GMT

I’m pleased to announce that in conjunction with today’s beta release of Visual Studio 11, the Visual Studio 11 ALM Virtual Machine has also been updated, along with all of the hands-on-labs and demo scripts.

Start your downloads here!

TFS Attacher: Upload Pictures to TFS from your Windows Phone

Brian Keller — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 03:17:01 GMT

I love this new Windows Phone 7 application from my friend René van Osnabrugge in the Netherlands. The idea is simple – you want to take a picture and upload it to Team Foundation Server. Maybe you want to capture some drawings from a whiteboard, maybe it’s a picture of an error message from a user’s desktop, or that proverbial “drawing on the back of a napkin” where all good ideas are born… whatever it is, this application for Windows Phone makes it easy to snap that photo and upload it as an attachment to a work item.

This app also looks stunning. It’s clear that René didn’t just call it a day once he got the basic functionality working. He took the time to make a great looking application which is a joy to use.

Selfishly, of course, I’m thrilled that he decided to use my OData Service for Team Foundation Server to enable this solution. :-)

You can read all about the application and how to download and configure it here. Enjoy!

Visual Studio 11 ALM Hands-On-Labs: Now in Hindi!

Brian Keller — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:43:00 GMT

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.

OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 - v1

Brian Keller — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:03:22 GMT

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!

November 2011 Refresh of Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs

Brian Keller — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:19:34 GMT

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.

Brazilian Portuguese Visual Studio 11 ALM Hands-On-Labs

Brian Keller — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:22:54 GMT

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!

DemoMates for Visual Studio 11 ALM Demos

Brian Keller — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:10:43 GMT

Mar 15, 2012 Update: This post and accompanying downloads have been updated based on the Visual Studio 11 Beta.

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.

Visual Studio 11 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts

Brian Keller — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:39:00 GMT

Feb 29, 2012 Update: This post and accompanying downloads have been updated based on the Visual Studio 11 Beta which was released today.

I’m very pleased to announce the availability of the Visual Studio 11 Beta 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 last year and have been talking about in greater detail since then. You can download and install the beta of Visual Studio 11 (and Team Foundation Server 11, .NET Framework 4.5, etc.) and even use it in production with our “go live” support. But if you would like a fast way to understand what is new for application lifecycle management in this release, this virtual machine is pre-configured with all of the necessary software and sample data for you.

Before I get into what’s included, there are a few quick limitations to disclose:

This is a Hyper-V virtual machine and works with Windows Server 2008 x64 (Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is recommended). If you try to load this with Virtual PC it will blue screen since Virtual PC does not support 64-bit operating systems. I have not yet had a chance to try hosting this VM with the Windows 8 consumer preview, but I was successful using the Windows 8 developer preview to host an earlier version of my virtual machine so it should work. I will update this post later once I have a chance to test that.
Windows is configured to set the system clock to February 15, 2012 every time you start this virtual machine. This is to support the project management hands-on-lab. If you want to work with this virtual machine beyond the specific hands-on-labs scenarios, you will need to disable the Set Date and Time task (Task Scheduler -> Task Scheduler Library -> Set Date and Time -> Right-Click -> Disable).
Please take a few minutes to read the attached “Working with…” document for some important instructions on properly importing and working with this virtual machine.

With the limitations out of the way, onto the fun stuff…

This virtual machine is configured with:

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Ultimate Beta
Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server Beta
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010
Microsoft Project 2010
Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
Sample users and data required to support hands-on-lab scripts which accompany this download and exercise some of the new Visual Studio 11 application lifecycle management capabilities introduced in this release.

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:

Links to 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.

There are also DemoMates available for these hands-on-labs / demo scripts as well which you can download here. DemoMates are useful for being able to “click through” the scenarios above without needing to download and run the virtual machine.

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/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part01.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part02.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part03.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part04.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part05.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part06.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part07.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part08.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part09.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part10.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part11.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part12.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part13.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part14.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/VisualStudio11ALMBeta.part15.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Working with the Visual Studio 11 ALM Beta 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 PowerPoint 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 Team 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.

Items from the backlog can be broken down into iterations and decomposed, with a view on capacity for each team member so that you avoid overcommitting people beyond what they can successfully deliver.

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 easier to work with source control, work items, and to quickly access “My Work” – bugs, tasks, code reviews, and the items you care most about on a daily basis. 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.

And of course Team Explorer Everywhere – which allows Eclipse-based developers to access Team Foundation Server – has also received a new look in this release. NOTE: Team Explorer Everywhere is not available in this virtual machine, but it can be downloaded separately.

Visual Studio 11 will enable 3^rd 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.

As features are implemented, the Fabrikam Fiber Web Team can seek feedback from stakeholders to ensure that what they built meets the expectations of end-users, privacy lawyers, the CEO, or whomever else needs to provide acceptance testing of the software. The new Feedback Client facilitates this process by capturing rich data while a stakeholder is evaluating your software. This data – which can include video recordings, text and audio annotations, and screen clippings – can all be stored in Team Foundation Server for easy access by the development team and full traceability back to the original requirements.

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. If you have suggestions for how to improve this virtual machine and set of demos / hands-on-labs please let me know.

TFS on the Road: A new Windows Phone 7 app for Team Foundation Server

Brian Keller — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:22:06 GMT

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!

Fix to May 2011 Visual Studio 2010 ALM Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:30:00 GMT

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.

3 Easy Ways to Learn About Visual Studio vNext Application Lifecycle Management

Brian Keller — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:14:13 GMT

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.

May 2011 Refresh of Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs

Brian Keller — Fri, 13 May 2011 00:51:45 GMT

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.

Follow the instructions here to download the new virtual machine and hands-on-labs.

New Book: Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010

Brian Keller — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 01:01:56 GMT

Are you using Team Foundation Server, or are you considering it?
Are you practicing Scrum-based software development (or do you want to learn how to)?

If the answer is YES to these questions then I can’t say enough good things about this book. Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 will provide you with everything you need to know about Team Foundation Server 2010 to really unlock the power of using it for Scrum-based software development. Team Foundation Server 2010 is especially suited to this goal since it was built with such tooling in mind, such as the ability to decompose larger workstreams into smaller child tasks, to manage a common backlog of work and break this down into iterations/sprints, to calculate the capacity of your team and of individuals, and to generate burndowns and other interesting reports in real time.

I’m personally a huge fan of Scrum. I even had the pleasure of spending the day with Ken Schwaber last week (one of the two co-developers of scrum) and we spent the day talking about Scrum, its origins, and where it’s headed. I think that the real popularity of Scrum stems from its simplicity. In order for everybody on a team to work better together, they have to first be able to understand the process whereby everybody is going to work together towards a common goal; unless everybody can understand what the process is and what the common goal is, how can you work together? Scrum addresses this issue head-on by using simple, fun terminology and clearly-defined communications channels and methods that everybody on a team can easily understand.

But you don’t have to take my word for it… I’d suggest adding this book to your backlog.

Two great uses of the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010

Brian Keller — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:27:09 GMT

It’s been less than two weeks since I released the beta of the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 and my inbox has been overwhelmed with positive feedback, suggestions for future enhancements, and people telling me how they are using this service in their own projects. Thanks to everybody who has taken time to share your experience with me!

Some of those projects are not yet public and I don’t want to steal the thunder from the teams working on them, but I did want to share two quick examples of how people are using this service.

First Windows Phone 7 app for Team Foundation Server in the marketplace
Ordina Belgium built a really nice free Windows Phone 7 app called TFS Monitor. You can install the application from here if you have a Windows Phone 7 device and the Zune software installed, but be sure to read their installation instructions for how to enable this service with your own TFS server. I’m using this app with the public OData Service we deployed for CodePlex to monitor my projects. It works great! I especially like the notifications, offline support, and really nice UI that Ordina delivered with this app.

PowerShell Commandlets
Doug Finke, a Microsoft MVP, created some really nice PowerShell commandlets which allow you to interact with your CodePlex projects via OData. Doug has published all of the source code here, so you could use this with CodePlex or even adapt it for use with your own private deployment of the OData Service.

Thanks to Ordina and to Doug for creating these great experiences. If you are working on a project which uses the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 I’d love to hear about it.

Getting started with the Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 Integration Virtual Machine

Brian Keller — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:22:00 GMT

**Update: There is a 4-part video series on Channel 9 which demonstrates each of these scenarios as a video screencast.

Last month we officially released the Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack. This integration enables the Project Management Office (PMO) to see a consolidated view of the progress and resource availability across all software development projects in Team Foundation Server 2010. Software teams using Team Foundation Server 2010 can choose to manage their projects using a formal process or an agile process and flow their status and schedule updates into Project Server and Project Managers can preview changes as they flow in, track the work at a high-level and provide live updates to their stakeholders.

To help people evaluate and demonstrate the capabilities of this integration, we have published a virtual machine which is pre-configured with this integration along with sample data and several walkthroughs (which can either be used as self-paced hands-on-labs, or demo scripts to present these capabilities to others). Unfortunately, the virtual machine download contains 20+ files weighing in at over 10GB. The good news is that once you have the virtual machine there’s not much left to configure; you can open it up in Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and begin exploring this integration using the guided walkthroughs. The following instructions should make it easier for you to batch download all of the files required for this release.

Downloading the virtual machine and associated files:
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.

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.
Select the appropriate URL’s depending on your preferred virtualization platform and copy (CTRL+C) them to your clipboard.
###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) - Do Not Include This Line###
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/Working with the Project Server 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Integration Virtual Machine.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part01.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part02.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part03.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part04.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part05.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part06.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part07.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part08.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part09.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part10.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part11.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part12.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part13.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part14.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part15.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/WS2008R2x64Ent_TFS2010_PS2010.part16.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/1 - Top-Down Planning of Business Requirements with Project Server and Team Foundation Server.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/2 - Managing Project Details in an Enterprise Project Plan Mapped to a Team Project.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/3 - Making Agile Team Progress Visible to the Project Management Office.docx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/0/640BAA77-929F-42C4-91C6-1E0597B2EEAD/4 - Managing Field Mappings for Integration of Team Foundation Server and Project Server.docx
###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###
Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).
Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.
When prompted for a download group, accept the default and click OK.
You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads.

Once you have download the release, extract it to a directory by running the EXE. The document “Working with the Project Server 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Integration Virtual Machine.docx” (included in the list of files to download above) provides more details about how to load this virtual machine within Hyper-V, and how to activate the operating system to get a full 180 days of usage from this virtual machine. After 180 days from the time you first boot the virtual machine it will expire. If you need additional time you can re-extract a fresh copy of the virtual machine, or restore to a Hyper-V snapshot if you took one at a time prior to booting it up for the first time.

After you have successfully setup this virtual machine within your Hyper-V environment you can begin using the walkthroughs to learn more about the scenarios enabled by this integration. Those walkthroughs are also included in the list of files above as Word documents, and are numbered 1-4. It is recommended, though not required, that you complete these labs in the order they are numbered. You should also consider using Hyper-V snapshots prior to following the steps in a walkthrough so that you can roll back to an earlier snapshot if you would like to complete a walkthrough multiple times, or if you make a mistake.

Known Issue with OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 (beta) Dependency Checker

Brian Keller — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 18:29:27 GMT

April 13, 2011 Update: This issue was fixed in a refresh of the beta that is now available for download.

~~If you’re using the beta of the~~ ~~OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010~~ ~~you might be hitting the following issue when you try to run the setup.cmd file for setting up your local machine with all of the components.~~

Notice the error on the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The problem is that the Azure tools were actually updated within the last few days to be version 1.4, whereas the dependency checker is checking for either of the 1.3.x versions which were published within the last few months (which are no longer available for download).

~~This is a bug which we’ll address in the next release. Meanwhile, the workaround for this is easy. You can simply ignore this error message and download the latest version of the~~ ~~Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010~~.

Keep in mind also that you only need these tools if you want to optionally deploy your own OData Service endpoint to point to your Team Foundation Server instance. If you intend to use CodePlex with this service then you can just take advantage of the OData Service endpoint we are hosting at ~~https://codeplexodata.cloudapp.net/~~.

~~Thanks to Girish Pillai and Mathias Olausson for reporting this issue. If you have feedback on the beta please send it to~~ ~~TFSOData@Microsoft.com~~.

OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010

Brian Keller — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:07:00 GMT

October 26 2011 Update: The beta has been replaced by v1 of this release. Please visit this page.

~~I’m pleased to announce the beta of the~~ ~~OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010~~ ~~is now available!~~

~~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 beta 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.

~~(ignore the blank stare on my face in the screen grab above – this is really far more exciting than the picture implies!)~~

So this is a beta – when will the official release happen?
That all depends on the type of feedback we get, but we’d like to release v1 of this service in the next few months. We are asking users to email their feedback to ~~TFSOData@Microsoft.com~~. We’ll do our best to incorporate all feedback into the final release. But the license permits you to take this now (even in beta) and begin using it for real projects. All of the source code is available so you are free to customize it and make it your own. This project is provided as-is and is not officially supported.

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!~~

Book: Professional Team Foundation Server 2010

Brian Keller — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:11:13 GMT

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about shipping the last book I worked on; I’m pleased to say that another book I worked on is now available!

Professional Team Foundation Server 2010 was written to appeal to a wide range of audiences who are interested in evaluating, adopting, or using Team Foundation Server 2010. Whether you’re a developer, a tester, a project manager, or the IT person responsible for standing up and maintaining your Team Foundation Server, this book should have something for everyone.

How does this book compare with Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010?

I’m often asked how this book compares with Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010 in the same Wrox series. Think of the Pro ALM book as a broad, intermediate-level introduction to all of the application lifecycle management capabilities across the Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 family of tooling. A lot of times I talk to people who bought this book who realized that there were valuable tools in Visual Studio that they never even knew existed! The Pro ALM book is designed to help you discover ways that Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 can help your team built great software – whether you’re a project manager, an architect, developer, or tester.

Professional Team Foundation Server 2010 book goes deep on Team Foundation Server 2010. Whether you’re brand new to Team Foundation Server, or if you’ve been using it for years, I’d suggest having this book should be on your shelf. It covers Team Foundation Server setup, administration, work item tracking, process template customization, disaster recovery, extensibility, advanced branching and merging, high availability, build automation, migration, and even a guide for helping to acquaint SourceSafe users to Team Foundation Server 2010. I would also recommend this book to anybody studying for the Team Foundation Server 2010 Administration certification exam (Exam 70-512).

It was a labor of love, and one I was happy to work on it with my friends Martin, Grant, and Ed. I have read all of their chapters as well and I have to say I learned a lot from them – I hope you will too!

Visual Studio 2010 ALM Virtual Machine + Labs: December 2010 Refresh

Brian Keller — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:41:28 GMT

As promised, I have updated the Visual Studio 2010 ALM Virtual Machine with a new version that will expire June 1, 2011. If you are using the previous version please note that it expires December 15, 2010, so you should consider downloading this refresh.

Download instructions and details on what changed in this release can be found here.

Enjoy!

My TechEd Israel 2010 Presentations

Brian Keller — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:08:36 GMT

This week I presented 2 sessions at TechEd Israel 2010 in Eilat. This was my first time presenting at TechEd Israel and I hope to come back in the future – it was great meeting lots of people who I have been working with virtually over the last few years. The Israeli development community sure is active and is full of some very talented people.

As promised, I have uploaded the slide decks for my presentations. You can download them here.

A Lap Around Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management: This was a demo-rich session during which I highlighted some of the many enhancements we’ve made to the application lifecycle management tooling across the Visual Studio 2010 family, which includes Team Foundation Server 2010. During this session we installed Team Foundation Server 2010 (in under 5 minutes!), showed off the new support for branching and merging visualizations with TFS, dove into IntelliTrace for some historical application debugging, showcased build management (included gated check-ins), and touched on reporting and software testing (each of which were covered in depth during other presentations). I love presenting these “Lap Around” sessions since I get to touch on a lot of different technologies. The only downside is that a single session is never enough time to cover everything that I want to cover!

Agile Project Management with Team Foundation Server 2010: In this session I showed off how the MSF Agile for Software Development v5 process template and associated Agile Planning Workbooks allow you to effectively plan, manage, and track your agile software projects with Team Foundation Server 2010. This session was modeled after a session presented by Aaron Bjork and Peter Provost on the same topic. For their session they used the Visual Studio Scrum template, and for mine I used the MSF Agile process template, in order to show a comparison between the two approaches. Unfortunately this session was not recorded, but you can find Aaron and Peter’s excellent session here.

I also collaborated on the developer keynote that Jason Zander presented, and I delivered a demonstration of our new Silverlight automated testing features towards the end. You can watch the video of that presentation here. (Unfortunately neither of my other sessions were recorded this time.)

Here are some other resources that I mentioned during my session:

Visual Studio 2010 Virtual Machine and Hands-On-Labs
SpeakFlow diagram showing testing workflows and architecture
Book: Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010
Book (available for pre-order): Professional Team Foundation Server 2010

If you were at my sessions please take a moment to complete a session evaluation if you haven't already done so. Your feedback helps me fine tune my content, and if you liked it, this helps ensure that I get invited back and continue to invest my time developing content for you.

Thanks to everybody I interacted with at TechEd Israel who helped to make this a truly awesome experience!

New VHD’s Coming Soon

Brian Keller — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 21:45:26 GMT

12/9/2010 Update: These are now available!

If you use the Visual Studio ALM Sample VHD then you should know that it expires on December 15, 2010. This is because of the requirement Microsoft has to ship trial software with such virtual machines, and the fact that the shortest trial length for the suite of software on this machine is 180 days. Since I have been receiving several inquiries as to when the new VHD would be available I wanted to provide you with a window of when I expect it to be finished. Based on the list of things I need to do to the virtual machine, I expect it will be ready the week of December 6th. There is still a lot of work required to get the latest power tools, feature packs, hotfixes, and other fixes and additions done that I want to, then everything has to be bundled up (with three different virtualization stacks), tested, and uploaded to the Microsoft.com download servers. I will provide another detailed blog post when everything is ready. The new VHD – when finished – will last until approximately June of 2011.

Thanks to everybody for the strong interest in this VHD. I always enjoy hearing about how it is being used around the world.