Hakan Eskici : TFS

Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 Available

Hakan Eskici — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:16:14 GMT

We have just announced the availability of Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 along with the Ultimate, Premium and Professional editions of Visual Studio 2010.

Download Links:

Related Resources

Where is Web Access?

Web Access is integrated into Team Foundation Server and gets installed by default when you install Team Foundation Server.

On a default configuration, Web Access is available at:

http://server:8080/tfs/web

Where is Work Item Only View (previously known as WIWA)?

WIOV now shares the same URL with full Web Access:

http://server:8080/tfs/web

There is a new permission to control access to full Web Access features. Anyone in the “Work Item Only View Users” group will have that permission denied, therefore they will see the Work Item Only View. Others will see full Web Access.

How can I install Web Access separately on its own server?

The recommended way is to install a “Application Tier Only” instance of TFS by pointing it to the same TFS database and using that instance just for Web Access. For example:

Server1: End users connect to this server from Team Explorer (Web Access is available but not used)
Server2: Web Access users connect to this server from a Web browser (TFS Application Tier is available but not used)

Enable Branch Visualization in Upgraded Team Projects (TFS 2010 Beta1)

Hakan Eskici — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:29:51 GMT

As part of the series on “enabling new features in upgraded team projects”; Jamie Cool, our Lead Program Manager on Team Foundation Server team, talks about enabling branch visualization features in upgraded team projects:

In Team Foundation Server 2010, we have significantly enhanced the concept of a branch. We have added functionality to branches such as:

Branches can now be clearly identified in the source control explorer.

You can now visualize your branch hierarchy and visually track your code changes as they move through your branches.

You can assign branch operation security. Ex. Who can create/delete a branch and who can merge a branch.

Branches now have checks in place to discourage poor branching structures.

In order to take advantage of these new features, you will need to convert your previously branched folders to fully fledged branches. The steps for doing this are as follows:

Identify the branch structure you are currently using. If you would like to change your branch structure, now may be a good time to do so, but it is not necessary.

Identify the folder in your solution explorer mapped to your parent (top level) branch.

Right click on that folder. On the context menu select “Branching and Merging” & then “Convert Folder to Branch”. This will open a dialog for doing the conversion of a folder to a branch.

At the bottom of the dialog, check the “Recursively perform this conversion for all branched child folders”.

Next click the “Convert” button. This will upgrade this folder to a branch. It will also walk the branch tree and convert all folders that have been branched from this folder.

Your branches should now be shown with the branch icon in the source control explorer tree.

If you have any folders that had their relationship established via Baseless Merge, you will need to use the “Reparent Branch” option from the “Branching & Merging” context menu to establish the parent/child relationship in the branch hierarchy.

Repeat these steps for all remaining branch trees in your solution.

Now that you have completed this step, you should be able to take advantage of the powerful new branching features in Team Foundation Server 2010. You can now view your branch structure visually by selecting “Branching and Merging” and then “View Hierarchy” from the branch context menu. You can also choose to “Track Changes” from a work item’s context menu to see how the changeset associated with that work item has moved through your various branches.

You can check out the MSDN documentation on Branch Visualization to learn more about the capabilities available to you:

How to: View the Branch Hierarchy of a Team Project

How to: View Where and When Changesets Have Been Merged

Enjoy!

Jamie Cool

Updated Team System and TFS VPCs

Hakan Eskici — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:09:00 GMT

Brian Randell has recently published a set of VSTS virtual machine images for Virtual PC, Virtual Server and Hyper-V. You can download either the TFS-only version, or the VSTS "all-up" images that contain the latest bits such as:

Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1
Team System Web Access 2008 SP1
Visual Studio Team System 2008 SP1
Power Tools October 2008
and more...

See Brian's blog post for download links.

TSWA Work Item Only View (aka WIWA) with TFS Workgroup Edition

Hakan Eskici — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:05:00 GMT

Recently, I've been seeing questions about TSWA Work Item Only View (aka WIWA) and how it works with Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition.

As a quick background, Work Item Only View is a feature of TSWA that enables accessing work items you've created without having to own a Client Access License (CAL) for TFS. This feature has been built for organizations that has users occasionally filing bugs from time to time, but don't want to buy CALs for each of them. No matter if you have 10 or 1,000 users, as long as they only use this interface, it's OK not to buy CALs.

What makes this possible is a change in TFS 2008 EULA. One important thing that's usually overlooked is that this licensing flexibility is made available for TFS 2008 Standard Edition only, as explained in section 3.a of the EULA. If you read my original blog post about Work Item Only View, or take a look at the public spec, you will probably notice that I've tried to mention this in a couple of places.

There's a common confusion when it comes to TFS Workgroup Edition and Work Item Only View together. TFS Workgroup Edition doesn't use CALs. As a technical limit, it only supports up to 5 people, and all of them must be in the "Licensed Users" security group. Using the Work Item Only View against a TFS Workgroup instance does not change this limitation. In addition, CAL flexibility does not apply to TFS Workgroup edition anyway. I agree that it sounds a bit confusing, but I wish I had a better answer :)

I hope this blog post clarifies the confusion a little bit. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

TFS 2008 SP1 Released

Hakan Eskici — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:20:36 GMT

Few days ago, Brian Harry announced the availability of Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1 along with VS, VSTS and .NET 3.5 service packs. These service packs not only come with fixes and patches, but also with a lot of new features.

What's New in SP1 for Team Foundation Server

To update your Team Foundation Server instance, download and install:

TFS 2008 SP1 (Server SP1)

To update your Team Explorer and VSTS, download and install:

VS 2008 SP1 (Client SP1)

How does this affect Team System Web Access?

If you are using Team System Web Access (TSWA), here's a few notes about these service packs:

If TSWA is on your TFS Application Tier server:

This means you also have Team Explorer installed on this machine. In this case, make sure you install both the Server and the Client service packs. Installing only one of these is likely to cause problems.

If TSWA is on its own standalone server:

Just install the Client service pack.

TSWA Compatibility

TSWA 2008 works with both RTM and SP1 versions of Team Foundation Server 2008.

Koders + TSWA Integration

Hakan Eskici — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:13:00 GMT

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