Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje : Training and Learning

Using TFS to develop custom SharePoint applications (revised)

neno — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:11:05 GMT

The first article is created during a real world customer engagement and answers dozens of frequently asked questions and how-tos in a real world context vs. theoretical discussions. The 2^nd package addresses very common questions around setting up and using TFS features for a MOSS development project.

VSTS Rangers - SharePoint Server Custom Application Development: Document Workflow Management Project
Read about the real-world design, construction, and deployment of a custom SharePoint Server 2007 application to a mid-market enterprise customer using Team Foundation Server as an ALM platform.

VSTS Rangers - Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications
Learn how to use TFS to support your SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles.

Additionally to the existing guidance from Patterns & Practices the two teams worked together to align these stories:

patterns & practices: SharePoint Guidance

The SharePoint Guidance contains a sample implementation of an intranet application based on SharePoint Server 2007 that demonstrates solutions to many ALM challenges.

How many users can Team System Web Access support?

neno — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:21:31 GMT

A: Microsoft posted a white paper on this.

From the whitepaper:

"Test results indicate that Web Access starts to hit the upper limits once the total number of work item objects in the memory is around 180. This translates to approximately 100 concurrent users with typical usage patterns."

"Test results indicate that Web Access can support up to approximately 500 users." (working with a minimum amount of data)

Download: Team System Web Access 2008 Scalability Limits White Paper

VSTS Whitepapers by Microsoft

neno — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:21:53 GMT

Planning

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Licensing White Paper (pdf/xps/docx)
Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Guide (pdf/book)
Team System Web Access 2008 Scalability Limits White Paper (pdf/xps/docx)

Installation, Configuration & Administration

Requirements Management

Requirements Management with Visual Studio Team System White Paper (pdf/xps/docx)

Version Control

TFS Branching Guide 2.0 (pdf/zip)

Using TFS to develop custom SharePoint applications

neno — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:52:24 GMT

Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications

Summary: Use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server to support SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles. (12 printed pages)

Author: Microsoft Corporation, September 2008

Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc948982.aspx

Updated: revised versino of this blog post.

Documentation: Team Foundation Server SDK (online version)

neno — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:55:34 GMT

From the contents:

Team Foundation Server Extensibility

Team Foundation Server SDK Architecture

How to: Run Team Foundation Server SDK Samples

Team Foundation Core Services

Work Item Tracking Extensibility

Source Control Extensibility

Data Warehouse Extensibility

Reference for Team Foundation Server SDK

Link: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb130146(VS.80).aspx

Whitepaper: Operations Guidance for Team Foundation Server

neno — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:25:02 GMT

Summary: You can manage your deployment of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server more effectively if you create your own operations plan. As you create your plan, you should understand key elements of the architecture of Team Foundation Server and how your deployment topology affects operations. This white paper explains those elements in detail, so that you can avoid common problems with your deployment.

Contents

Overview

Understanding Your Team Foundation Server Topology

Managing Service Accounts

Managing Groups, Users, and Permissions

Managing Backup and Recovery

Managing Configuration Information

Monitoring Team Foundation Server

Creating an Operations Plan

Conclusion

Author Bio

Additional Information

Link: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb663036(VS.80).aspx

Links from the Team System interactive sesssion at Basta

neno — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:53:46 GMT

Documentation

Team Foundation Installation Guide
https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E54BF6FF-026B-43A4-ADE4-A690388F310E
Team Foundation Administrators Guide
https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2AED0ECC-1552-49F1-ABE7-4905155E210A
Branching Guidance
http://www.codeplex.com/BranchingGuidance
TFS Guide
http://www.codeplex.com/TFSGuide
VSTS Guidance
(including Managing Source Control Dependencies in Visual Studio Team System )
http://www.codeplex.com/VSTSGuidance

Tools

Team Foundation Power Tools
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718351.aspx
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider
(for VB6, VC6, etc.)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=87e1ffbd-a484-4c3a-8776-d560ab1e6198&DisplayLang=en

Videos on how to improve the quality and integrity of your software solutions

neno — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 09:44:01 GMT

are available on the ASP.NET site:

#1 | Introduction to Unit Testing with Team System

(10 minutes, 54 seconds)

#2 | Introduction to Testing Web Applications with Team System

(9 minutes, 43 seconds)

#3 | Introduction to Load Testing Web Applications with Team System

(9 minutes, 8 seconds)

#4 | Introduction to Manual Testing with Team System

(8 minutes, 56 seconds)

#5 | Introduction to Managing and Running Tests with Team System

(8 minutes, 37 seconds)

#6 | Measuring the Business Value of AJAX

(10 minutes, 27 seconds)

#7 | Code Coverage of Automated Tests

(6 minutes, 49 seconds)

#8 | Custom Extraction Rules and Coded Web Tests

(12 minutes, 39 seconds)

#9 | The Effects of Caching

(15 minutes, 36 seconds)

#10 | Using the Load Test Agent

(5 minutes, 43 seconds)

#11 | The Effects of ViewState

(10 minutes, 4 seconds)

#12 | How Do I: Integrate Defect Tracking with Testing?

(8 minutes, 2 seconds)

#13 | How Do I: Create My Own Bug Work Item?

(11 minutes, 23 seconds)

#14 | How Do I: Write Code More Quickly with Unit Tests?

(8 minutes, 40 seconds)

#15 | How Do I: Practice Test-Driven Development?

(8 minutes, 21 seconds)

How Do I: Customize TeamPlain? and How Do I: Create Custom Work Items in Team Foundation Server?

neno — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 20:48:31 GMT

What do both topics have in common? Well, Microsoft started to publish How-Do-I-videos for various technologies and these two were the same topics covered on Visual Studio Team System.

How Do I: Customize TeamPlain?

In this video, Scott Golightly shows you how you can customize TeamPlain Web Access to work the way that you do. You will see how to create and assign work items, create your own queries, and how to create and customize favorites to make navigation in the product easier.

How Do I: Create Custom Work Items in Team Foundation Server?

In this video, Scott Golightly shows us how to use the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Power Tools to create custom work items. He shows how to add additional fields to the bug work item type and how to display the new fields in the bug entry form.

Notification for new videos

You can also subscribe to the Team System video category by adding this feed to your favorite RSS feed reader.

Posters can make complex things easy to remember

neno — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:49:16 GMT

Willy-Peter Schaub [1], a fellow VSTS MVP [2], is our "king of Posters" when it comes to visualize complex things from Microsoft recommendation and best practices papers into nice and easy-to-remember posters!

Microsoft Team System Branching poster [3]
Microsoft Team System Security Mapping
Microsoft Team System Single Server Deployment
Microsoft Team System Source Control
Microsoft Team System
Microsoft Team System Process Overview
Microsoft Team System Source Control
Microsoft Team System Single Server Install
Microsoft Team System Security Mapping
and many more (also not VSTS/TFS-related)

You can download them under Posters at www.drp.co.za [4] and after you discover all the posters you like you probably won't have any free spot on the wall left. :-)

Happy "Wall-Filling"!

[1] http://dotnet.org.za/willy/default.aspx

[2] https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx?product=1&competency=Visual+Developer+-+Team+System

[3] http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2007/04/24/0202-microsoft-team-system-branching-poster-beta2-posted-on-www-drp-co-za.aspx

[4] http://www.drp.co.za/Media/Posters/tabid/73/Default.aspx

Rewarded as MVP for Team System and I became MCTS: TFS

neno — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:23:38 GMT

The week starts with two good things for me.

Microsoft rewarded me as MVP for Team System, which I'm very happy about because my MVP collegues are are great and smart community of TFS experts that I am always happy to talk with.

And I passed the beta exam on TFS Configuration & Deployment and may call myself now a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist.

Congratulations to all the new MVP-collegues as well as the other guys participating in the beta exam.

Barcelona - TechEd: here we come

neno — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 15:16:49 GMT

Next week the TechEd Developers 2006 [1] takes place in Barcelona [2] and I will be holding one "Demo Extravaganza" (DEMO) on ClickOnce technology and two Whiteboard Discussion (WD) sessions on Team Foundation Server best practices together with my Team System MVP colleague [3] Ognjen Bajic [4].

Demo Extravaganzas are similar to regular breakout sessions, but there is one big difference: there is only one slide allowed. The introduction slide with the name of the speaker. From that moment on the complete talk is a demo with chances for the audience to interact. Usually these kind of sessions are quite high-level, but in my case I discovered that this is not really the case for the whole 75 minutes, so I'm quite excited how the audience will react. :-)

Whiteboard Discussions you might already be familiar with. They are held in pretty small rooms (max. 60 people) to allow discussions. No one (not even the speaker) is allowed to dominate in terms of speaking time. It usually starts of by asking the audience about their questions in respect to the session title and from this the agenda gets generated on the fly and the speakers will try to make a story out of it and answer as the questions to maximize the benefit for the attendees.

Here are the session abstracts:

DEVWD17 Team System Adoption Best Practices
Neno Loje, Ognjen Bajic
Thu Nov 9 09:00 - 10:15 , Thu Nov 9 15:45 - 17:00
It's a common mistake to think that installing the Team System products is enough to get started and unleash the full power. In fact Team System gets really useful and unfolds its effectiveness by being customized and tweaked to the needs of your organization. Since this is vastly an individual task this session covers the top 10 customizations from the consulting experience of the speaker such as Continuous Integration, enabling rich formatting in the description field for work items, writing a comfortable work item quick entry tool.
Neno Loje will host this whiteboard discussion jointly with his fellow Team System MVP Ognjen Bajic.

DEV001 DEMO: Adopting ClickOnce for Real World Applications
Neno Loje
Wed Nov 8 13:30 - 14:45
Do you think installations must result in heavy headaches? ClickOnce solves a lot of the typical problems by enabling .NET applications to be installed and transparently updated over a server. After a quick overview of what ClickOnce is and how it works we will drill down into the details and cover a number of common real world scenarios: bootstrapping, servicing updates for 5000+ users, scalability, reliability, different versions for different users (or groups) and many more. Make sure to come to this session if you have a WinForms application that you need to deploy or where you want to simplify the current deployment solution.

Additionally you can meet Ognjen [4] and me [5] at the Ask-The-Experts (ATE) booth at the following times:

Wednesday, 8 November 2006 16:30 - 17:00
Friday, 10 November 2006 10:15 - 10:45

And also make sure to step by the newtelligence AG booth in the exhibition hall if you are interested in high-quality Team System training [7] and consulting. You will find me there occasionally as well. :-)

[1] www.microsoft.com/europe/teched-developers/

[2] www.bcn.cat

[3] mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=B3883A23-2E77-4228-975D-1AB7C0925DD0

[4] ognjenbajic.com/blog/

[5] mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=05D78C24-90DB-42E9-A68A-386B3FFCE244

www.newtelligence.net

[7] www.teamsystemworkshop.com

Try it: Want to test drive Team System?

neno — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:34:55 GMT

There are three ways how you can get in touch with VSTS - ordered from the quickest to the most comprehensive:

MSDN Virtual Labs Hosted Trial: Connect remotely to a virtual system with is preinstalled with VSTS as well as some introductory exercises.
Preinstalled VPC Image (for MSDN Subscribers only):
Includes Team Suite, Team Foundation Server, MS Office and MS Project.
It’s under: Developer Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 -> English -> Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Trial Edition (For Evaluation Only).
Download the 180-day trial version of Visual Studio Team Suite (Client) and Team Foundation Server and test-drive it in your environment!
Note: You can upgrade the setup to the full version later without having to reinstall the product.

Too much work? Don't know what to try?

Visit my dedicated VSTS training site at www.teamsystemworkshop.com.

Book: Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (by Sam Guckenheimer)

neno — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:17:00 GMT

Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System

by Sam Guckenheimer with Juan Perez
Estimated Availability – 05/17/2006
ISBN – 0321278720
Amazon

Book: Managing Projects with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System

neno — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:58:00 GMT

		Author		Joel Semeniuk; Martin Danner
		Pages		400
		Disk		N/A
		Level		Advanced
		Published		08/09/2006
		ISBN		0-7356-2216-7

View on MS Press website

About the Book

An ideal guide for using Visual Studio Team System to maximize project management effectiveness

This book is a practical guide to using the integrated tools in Visual Studio Team System to manage a team-development process. Project managers typically use a wide range of tools—such as Microsoft Office Excel®, Microsoft Office Project, and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services. The Visual Studio Project Management Tools are integrated with the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE), Office, Windows SharePoint Services, and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services. This helps enable project managers to continue using the tools with which they are comfortable, yet easily share their development-oriented project data with their teams—allowing architects, developers, testers, and project managers to collaborate in a single, extensible environment. With in-depth product information and insights from early users and experienced Visual Studio Team System trainers, this guide will help you understand how to use this tightly integrated set of life-cycle development tools to help enable better planning, scheduling, collaboration, communication, reporting, and process control with development projects.

Clinic 2551: Introduction to Visual Studio Team System

neno — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 13:47:00 GMT

This clinic will provide both Business Decision Makers (BDMs) and Technical Decision Makers (TDMs), Architects, Developers, Testers, and Project Managers with an introduction to Visual Studio Team System. This introduction will explain what the product is, how it relates to the software development lifecycle and how processes such as MSF fit it.

Visit Clinic

MSDN Chat: Learning Visual Studio Team System (June 22, 2005)

neno — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 13:46:00 GMT

RobCaron_MSFT (Moderator):
Welcome to today’s chat. Our topic today is Learning Visual Studio 2005 Team System. I'm Rob Caron and I'll be the moderator for this chat.
Chat with members of the Visual Studio Team System content team to discover the resources available to you for learning Team System, and provide feedback on the content you think is missing or needs improvement. Help us help you with Help.
We are pleased to welcome our Experts for today’s chat. I will have them introduce themselves now.

View chat transcript

Book: Introducing Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System Beta Edition

neno — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 12:23:00 GMT

		Author		Richard Hundhausen
		Pages		224
		Disk		N/A
		Level		All Levels
		Published		05/25/2005
		ISBN		0-7356-2180-2

Link: MSPress | Link: Amazon.com