Beta 3, the SDK, PDC, and MVP Program
Wow, this blog has four months of lost ground to cover. There’s a lot to talk about, but I’ll start with the Beta 3 and surrounding events. Our team’s been buried for the past quarter trying to deliver all the great improvements in Beta 3, but with those bits shipped we’re really turning our attention to your feedback. If you haven’t done so already, download and install the bits. If you have, post questions in our forum and log any bugs you find at the MSDN Product Feedback Center. We’re closely monitoring these channels for Beta 3 feedback so now’s prime time to post. For some of you this is all old news, as you have already started posting questions about Beta 3 at an unprecedented rate on our forum. Our only message to you is that your excitement around the product excites us, so keep on doing what you’re doing.
For partners itching for updated API documents and samples for Beta 3, these will be available later this month on http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend/sdkdownload/, so keep your eyes peeled. This SDK refresh will address a number of recent API and assembly name changes.
Additionally, there are two other recent events worth mentioning that aren’t directly related to Beta 3: the PDC and the MVP Summit.
PDC 2005 Feedback
The PDC was the week before the Beta release and boy was I surprised at the level of public interest and knowledge around Team Foundation Server. Attendees were not only keen on extending the Team Foundation platform, but adopting the tool broadly in-house. There were a myriad of questions on topics ranging from plans around Windows Workflow to continuous integration support to ease of administration for the server. However, I’m pretty sure the most frequent questions were “what’s your release schedule?” and “how much does it cost?” J We’ve been seeing remarkably similar questions in our forum lately, so here are some helpful answers on both our schedule and licensing. As we start planning around the next release of Team Foundation Server, we’ll be posting more thoughts here that address the many “down-the-horizon” questions we heard from the PDC.
Team System MVPs
This past week, Visual Studio Team System opened up its MVP program and met with its first wave of MVPs at Microsoft’s 2005 Global MVP Summit. It was a blast getting to know some of our new MVPs and hear about the latest progress on Beta 3 adoption and partner efforts. If you are getting really involved with the community around Team Foundation Server or Team System in general, you may want to learn more about the MVP program. With the doors just opening to Team System MVPs, we’re eagerly seeking new awardees.
Well, I hope you’ve found this update useful. We look forward to hearing lots from you in the coming days so we can address your feedback as we put the finishing touches on Team Foundation Server and get the final product into your hands.
Until next time,
Ling Bao,
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
