Hakan Eskici

CTPs for Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 and Work Item Web Access Released today

We have just shipped the Community Technology Preview releases for Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Power Tool and Work Item Web Access 2008 Power Tool.

Please note that these are "preview" releases and it is not recommended to use them in a production environment, however please feel free to download and give a try, and please send us your feedback.

Team System Web Access (TSWA) 2008 SP1 (CTP)

• What's new in TSWA 2008 SP1
• Download the CTP for TSWA 2008 SP1

Work Item Web Access (WIWA) 2008 (CTP)

• What's WIWA?
• Download the CTP for WIWA 2008

The final RTW releases will be shipped at the same time with TFS 2008 SP1 RTM.

What's New in TSWA 2008 SP1

Here's a quick summary of the new features in the CTP release for Team System Web Access 2008 SP1:

Single instance with multiple languages

A single instance of TSWA now supports multiple languages. By default, the UI language is based on the user's browser settings (accept-language header). The UI language can be overwritten in profile settings. In total, 9 languages are available: ENU, CHS, CHT, DEU, ESN, FRA, ITA, JPN, KOR. Please note that the CTP release doesn’t have all the resources localized completely yet.

Direct links to new work items with initial values

Previous versions of TSWA supported the following URL syntax to create new work items:

http://<server>/wi.aspx?pname=MyProject&wit=Bug

Now it's possible to specify initial values for fields, such as:

http://<server>/wi.aspx?pname=MyProject&wit=Bug&[Title]=Bug Bash&[AssignedTo]=Hakan Eskici&[Iteration Path]=MyProject\Iteration2&[FoundIn]=9.0.30304

This will open a new work item editor window with the following initial values:

• Team Project = MyProject
• Work Item Type = Bug
• Title = Bug Bash
• Assigned To = Hakan Eskici
• Iteration Path = MyProject\Iteration2
• Found in Build = 9.0.30304

Share ad-hoc work item queries

Previous versions of TSWA enabled referencing work item queries stored on the server:

http://<server>/q.aspx?pname=MyProject&name=All Bugs

Now you can reference an ad-hoc query by providing the WIQL directly in the URL

http://<server>/q.aspx?pname=MyProject&wiql=SELECT ID, Title, State FROM WorkItems WHERE [Team Project]='MyProject' AND [Work Item Type]='Bug' AND [Found In]='9.0.30304'

Shelveset viewer

This version enables searching for shelvesets and displaying the contents of a shelveset.

Improved search support

Now it's even easier to search for work items with the advanced search syntax. Similar to Outlook search syntax, you can reference any work item field by either using the field name, or by using some shortcuts.

Here's a simple search example:

norhtwind a=@me s=resolved t=bug

Searches for resolved bugs assigned to me which contain the word "northwind" in the Title or Description.

Your feedback is greatly welcome, please let us know what you think.

What is Work Item Web Access (WIWA)?

WIWA is a Web UI that allows using some work item tracking features even if the user doesn’t have a Client Access License (CAL). It’s based on TSWA, but provided as a separate download. WIWA simply enables 3 core “file-a-bug” scenarios stated in the TFS 2008 EULA.

As a user without a TFS CAL, you can use Work Item Web Access (WIWA) to:

• Create new work items
• Edit the work item you have created
• See the list of work items you have created

However, you cannot:

• See work items created by others
• List, view, edit or run work item queries
• Add, edit or remove work item links (except attachments and hyperlinks)
• Access documents stored on the project portal
• Access project reports
• Access source control
• Access team build

No External Use

WIWA power tool is for internal use only (employees, contractors and vendors). It’s still necessary to buy an “external connector” license to enable external users (such as your customers) to connect to the server. 

You can download the CTP release for Work Item Web Access 2008 at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FAED8359-F54D-480E-8A86-F154D3DEA07E&displaylang=en

To learn more about WIWA, you can take a look at my blog post about the WIWA spec.

Anniversary of devBiz acquisition

Today marks the first anniversary of Microsoft's acquisition of devBiz - a small software company I've founded with Ahmet Akkas many years ago.

Since Ahmet, Serkan and I have joined Microsoft a year ago, we all have been working on Team System Web Access to make it a better Web front end for Team Foundation Server.

When I look back, I see that we have accomplished a lot of things, including many Web Access releases:

• 04/05/2007 - TeamPlain 2.0 CTP (devBiz branding)
• 07/30/2007 - TSWA 2005 ENU RTW
• 09/21/2007 - TSWA 2008 ENU CTP
• 11/30/2007 - TSWA 2008 ENU RTW
• 02/06/2007 - TSWA 2008 in 8 more languages (JPN, CHS, CHT, KOR, DEU, FRA, ESN, ITA)
• Coming Soon - TSWA 2008 SP1 CTP
• Coming Soon - TFS Bug Submission Portal CTP
  

So far, being a part of TFS team have been a great experience for all of us; and we are looking forward to delivering more great stuff to our customers!

Happy anniversaries to the TSWA team :)

Spec available for "Codename TFS Bug Submission Portal"

We've published the spec for the "Codename TFS bug submission portal" power tool on Rosario Specs website (1).

Note (1): Although it appears on Rosario specs website, this is a power tool for TFS 2008 (Orcas).

Here's some background:

Team Foundation Server 2008 Standard Edition allows using some of the work item tracking features even without a Client Access License (CAL).

“You do not need a CAL to access work item tracking functionality to create new work items, or view and update work items you opened”

Even thought the EULA enables these scenarios, there's no out-of-box UI that will help customers to make sure they're in compliance with the license terms. Therefore, we have built a power tool based on TSWA that will enable these 3 core scenarios:

As a user without a CAL, I can:

• create new work items
• edit the work items I’ve created
• see the list of work items I’ve created

The codename for this power tool is "TFS Bug Submission Portal" for now, and the official name will probably be different.

To learn more about the details, please take a look at the spec. Your feedback is very important for us, so please make sure you express your thoughts on the spec discussion forum, we're looking forward to hearing from you!

Serving all languages of TSWA from a single server

As a response to a question asked by Ed Blankenship of Infragistics, Inc., we've been exploring the possibility of serving all languages of TSWA from a single server.

The question was how to make the following possible:

• http:// tswa.example.local > TSWA English version
• http:// tswa-jpn.example.local > TSWA Japanese version
• http:// tswa-deu.example.local > TSWA German version

... and so on.

Due to the limitations of our setup application, it's not possible to install multiple instances of TSWA side by side.

However, there's an "unsupported" workaround that involves manually creating TSWA instances:

1. Install JPN
2. Copy the files to C:\TSWA\JPN
3. Uninstall JPN
4. Install DEU
5. Copy the files to C:\TSWA\DEU
6. Uninstall DEU
7. (Repeat for all languages)
8. Manually create web sites in IIS to point to different language directories (*)
   • Make sure each TSWA instance uses a different IIS AppPool
   • Make sure each TSWA instance points to a different cache directory (setting in web.config)

To avoid assigning separate ports for each web site, you can simply create a different "host header" in IIS that contains the language code, such as tswa-jpn or tswa-deu.

I admit that this is not the best way to provide multi language support, and we're considering to enable a real multi-language installation of TSWA that will contain all languages, and change its UI language based on your browser preferences in a future release.

Note:

Turns out that Ed has also posted the same thing :) Go ahead and check it out.

Team System Web Access available in 8 languages (CHS, CHT, DEU, ESN, FRA, ITA, JPN, KOR)

For the past week, we have been releasing localized versions of Team System Web Access 2008 power tool.

Today, all the languages are available to download.

You can go to the TSWA 2008 English download page and change the language, or use the direct links below:

Team System Web Access 2008 JPN - Japanese

Team System Web Access (以前の TeamPlain) は、Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server の Web インターフェイスツールです。

Team System Web Access 2008 CHS - Chinese Simplified

Team System Web Access（以前称为 TeamPlain）是 Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server 的 Web 接口。

Team System Web Access 2008 CHT - Chinese Traditional

Team System Web Access (先前稱為 TeamPlain) 為 Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server 的 Web 介面。

Team System Web Access 2008 DEU - German

Team System Web Access (früher als TeamPlain bezeichnet) ist eine Weboberfläche für Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Team System Web Access 2008 ESN - Spanish

Team System Web Access (anteriormente conocido como TeamPlain) es una interfaz Web para Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Team System Web Access 2008 FRA - French

Team System Web Access (précédemment appelée TeamPlain) est une interface Web de Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Team System Web Access 2008 ITA - Italian

Team System Web Access, denominato in precedenza TeamPlain, è un'interfaccia Web per Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Team System Web Access 2008 KOR - Korean

Team System Web Access(이전의 TeamPlain)는 Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server에 대한 웹 인터페이스입니다.

Koders + TSWA Integration

Koders is a code search tool that can index source code from many different sources, including Team Foundation Server and Visual Source Safe.

It also integrates with Visual Studio and Team System Web Access seamlessly.

• Koders and TSWA integration screencast

Team System Web Access 2008 Documentation

There's a decent amount of documentation for Team System Web Access on MSDN that includes installation, usage and getting started topics:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892990.aspx

As a reference, Web Access 2008 download is available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C568FBA9-3A62-4781-83C6-FDFE79750207&displaylang=en 

Features in this version:

• Compatible with Team Foundation Server 2008 (and also TFS 2005)
• Supports friendly URLs for the web views of various TFS artifacts. See Buck's blog post for the list of URLs.
• Work item custom control support
• Localized versions (coming soon)

A little bit about myself and Web Access

Some of you might already know that I'm the Program Manager on the Web Access team in Team Foundation Server product group.

In March 2007, Microsoft acquired the company I had founded with Ahmet Akkas back in 2001. Ahmet, Serkan (one of our senior developers) and I, along with our families, moved to beautiful North Carolina in June 2007 and started to work in Microsoft's Raleigh office.

The story starts in 2001, when my old time friend Ahmet Akkas and I had decided to start a software company in Izmir, Turkey. Our company was called devBiz.

Initially, it was just two of us. Our first product was devMail.Net, an email component to send an receive email messages. As the years passed, devBiz has grown, and we kept adding more components to our product line.

Early in 2004, we were in the early stages of prototyping our idea of a web based bug tracking application. When we heard about the upcoming Team Foundation Server, we thought that it would be a good opportunity to build a web interface to TFS, using it as a back-end store.

This is how "TeamPlain" was born - the tool that's known as "Team System Web Access" today.

We have released the first version of TeamPlain just after TFS was available in March 2005, and it was a great success. We had many happy customers and partners using TeamPlain. Many customers were looking for a web interface for TFS, and devBiz had the answer. We built relationships with the Microsoft VSTS team, and then became one of the few Visual Studio Industry Partners.

It was about mid 2006 when we started the partnership and acquisition discussions with Microsoft. Oh boy, the whole process was very challenging and a lot of fun. Everyone I had worked with was amazing in their personality, professionalism, friendliness and dedication to get this deal done.

I can't tell you the details, but everything went well and Microsoft has acquired our company in March 2007 and our team has been transferred to Microsoft's Raleigh office.

Today, the Web Access team consists of Adam Barr, Ahmet Akkas, Buck Hodges, Nick Kirchem, Peter Majernik, Serkan Inci and myself, all working hard to deliver you great features and value in Web Access.