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

How to integrate Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) into your TFS process template

neno — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:13:00 GMT

Downloads:

Additional information:

Tip: How to shrink TeamCompanion’s ribbon commands

neno — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:20:07 GMT

TeamCompanion, the popular Outlook plug-in for TFS, adds pretty wide command icons to Outlook’s mail window ribbon bar, as you can see here:

Before:

You can control it using the following registry entry:

Key: HKCU\Software\Ekobit\TeamCompanion.Outlook

Value: DisplayButtonCaptionsInRibbon (DWORD) must be 0 (= hide captions)

After:

Download: TCO_DisableButtonCaptions.zip

Why is there no 64-bit version of Visual Studio?

neno — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:38:30 GMT

Currently Visual Studio runs as a 32-bit process on 64-bit Windows operating systems.

Rico Mariani knows why and posts why he wants to "load less, not more".

A small side note: TFS 2010 will support 32 and 64-bit Windows on the server side.

See and possibly unlock files checked out by other team members

neno — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:51:49 GMT

Ed Hintz points out that this is easily done with TFS Power Tools and wrote about it in 2007.

In the Source Control Explorer, right click on a parent folder that contains the pending change and choose, “Find in Source Control”.
Choose "Status…".
Press the Find button. (optionally you can type in a user and\or wildcards if you want to narrow the search)
You will be presented a “Find in Source Control” window.
Select the pending change and press the undo button OR right click Undo…
Done.

Customizing the folders and file extensions automatically excluded

neno — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:21:29 GMT

When adding items to source control a list of excluded folders as well as file extensions is shown. You can customize those defaults in the registry.

Matthew Mitrik has the details:

If the add operation is successfully completed, the list will be saved to the registry.

Order of finding masks to filter:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version]\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\AddOptions\ExcludeMasks
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version]\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\AddOptions\ExcludeMasks

(Thanks to Rich and Matt)

Recommendations for Virus Scanning on TFS computers

neno — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:59:39 GMT

Anti-virus software can badly impact the performance of your Team Foundation Server. Therefore make sure the following folders are excluded from scanning for viruses:

TFS Version Control Cache Folder
Team System Web Access Cache Folder
SQL database folders
SQL backup folders

Additionally Microsoft published virus scanning recommendations for:

(Thanks to Wes to pointing me at those three articles.)

Setting Remaining Work to Zero when closing a work item in TFS

neno — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:12:00 GMT

Question:

How can I make sure that the "Remaining Work" field is set to 0 when the work item is closed (for example when associating a work item during checking-in)?

Short Answer:

You can achieve this using the <COPY> rule on the transition to the "Closed" state.

Step-by-Step instructions:

For the desired transition (in this example from "Active" to "Closed").
Add a field reference to "Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork"
Add a new rule of type "COPY"
Choose From = "value" and enter value = "0"
The resulting XML should look something like
Verification: After transitioning a task work item from "Active" to the "Closed" state "Remaining Work" is set to zero.

Hotfix KB 971092 for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 install problems

neno — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:38:22 GMT

Applies to:

Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (KB971092)

Symptoms:

The update installs successfully and but will be offered again by Windows Update as a new update. This can be repeated indefinitely.

or

the standalone installer tells you that this update "does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your system".

Workaround (found here):

Download the stand-alone version of VS90SP1-KB971092-x86.exe.
Start the installation VS90SP1-KB971092-x86.exe
Wait for the error message to come up – do not close the window
Copy the temp. folder where the patch has been unpacked to a new folder, for example onto your desktop.
Close VS90SP1-KB971092-x86.exe that you started in step 2.
Navigate to {Program Files}\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools and find vsvars32.bat.
Change the permissions on the file to allow everyone to edit it.
Start VS90SP1-KB971092-x86.msp from within the saved folder and the process should complete.
You may want to reset permissions that you gave in step 7.

TSWA: Report view not showing all work items

neno — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:01:00 GMT

If you have more than 100 work items in a query and you use Tools » Report View to prepare the list for printing you might notice that not all work items are shown on the report.

Here’s what Hakan Eskici, the father of Web Access, has to say about this:

There’s a limit to the number of work items we display in the “report view” for performance reasons. By default, it’s set to 100, but you can increase this by changing the following line in the web.config file:

<maxWorkitemsInReportList count="100"/>

Enjoy!

Naming Restrictions for Team Foundation Server

neno — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:39:38 GMT

If you ever had questions like:

How long is the team project's name allowed to be?
How many levels may an work item area hierarchy have?
Which characters are allowed in build type names?
What is the maximum supported size for work item attachments?

Those are answered by the MSDN topic: Naming Restrictions for Team Foundation Server

Setup up an e-mail notification on other user's check-ins

neno — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:19:19 GMT

Open Alerts Editor (required TFS Power Tools to be installed locally).
Create new alert.
Choose “Check-In of a specific file happens”:
Enter a name for the alert subscription, the destination e-mail address, desired team project name ($/Teamproject), if applicable, as well as your account name (to be excluded).
The “Filter Expression” (2nd tab) looks now similar to:

'Artifacts/Artifact[starts-with(translate(@ServerItem, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"), "$/playground")]' <> null AND "Committer" <> 'TFS\neno'

Tool for creating direct links to TSWA

neno — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:38:55 GMT

Buck Hodges from Microsoft blogged about all the possible links you can construct to point to TSWA pages.

For example the following URL opens the Work Item Editor:

Open the existing work item with ID 1234: http://mytfs:8090/wi.aspx?id=1234

To make it simple I created a small tool that helps you construct those URLs in an easy way:

You can download the source from here:

File Attachement: WebAccessLinkCreator.zip

Security Update for TSWA 2008 SP1

neno — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:47:58 GMT

From Hakan Eskici's blog:

A security issue has been identified with Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 and we have recently published an update that fixes it.

Installation Notice

Please note that this is a full release, so you will need to uninstall any existing versions of Web Access before installing this update.

Update: Instructions to patching your installation without the need to uninstall/reinstall TSWA)

Update #2: KB article 961267 is now available.

Determining if the update is installed

Take a look at the About page (Help > About) in Web Access.
The version number will be 9.0.3275 for TSWA 2008 SP1 Update.

Download: Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Power Tool

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)

How TFSDeleteProject Works

neno — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:42:43 GMT

There are some areas where data may remain behind after you use TFSDeleteProject.

The TFS Warehouse is untouched. In order to remove the data from the warehouse, it must be rebuilt. (It is important to notice that, when the warehouse is rebuilt all the historic build data that has been trimmed from the system will be removed.) Rebuilding the warehouse is accomplished using the command SetupWarehouse. For more information, see SetupWarehouse.
The build drop locations (i.e., the location where the build binaries, build log files, and test results log files are published during the build process) are untouched. Removing the build drops must be done manually.
Any work item tracking metadata that is shared between projects will not be deleted.
The version control shelve set may not be deleted if there is code in the shelve set from multiple projects.

Read the full story by Aaron Block.

Specifying a user upfront or: How is the developer supposed to know who will be the responsible tester?

neno — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:00:00 GMT

In a small team this sounds like oversize, but in mid-sized large teams it's common that you do not know who is going to be the tester.

Looking at the Bug workflow from MSF Agile:

while "Active" the project lead decided if and when the bug is going to be fixed and assigns it to the responsible developer.
between "Active" and "Resolved" is where the developers implements the fix.
between "Resolved" and "Closed" is where the tester verifies the fix.

When the developer finishes coding he changes the state from "Active" to "Resolved", e.g. by checking in and associating the changeset with the work item.

But by doing so the work item is still assigned to him. In our scenario he doesn't know who will be the responsible tester to verify the fix. So who knows?

The project lead might have that information. So either we assign it back to the project lead to make him assign it to as tester or we make the project lead specify the tester upfront (with the ability to change it afterwards if necessary).

In this example we'll implement the second approach.

Objective

Ask for the Tester when creating the bug and automatically u.se it for the transition from "Active" to "Resolved"

Required Work Item Customization

Step 1: Add a new string field to hold the tester
In this example we will make it a required field (<required/>) and ensure that it contains a valid user (<validuser/>).

<FieldDefinition> type="String" name="Tester" refname="TeamSystemPro.Samples.Tester">
<REQUIRED />
<VALIDUSER />
</FieldDefinition>

Step 2: Add a rule to the transition from "Active" to "Resolved"
Automatically copy the value of the tester field to the Assigned to field.

<FieldReference refname="System.AssignedTo">
<COPY from="field" field="TeamSystemPro.Samples.Tester" />
</FieldReference>

Result

When creating a new bug it's now required to select a Tester before it can be saving.

When choosing "Resolved" for the state "Assigned to" will be automatically filled with the contents from the "Tester" field.

The history correctly shows the change in the "Assigned To" field from the developer (here: "Neno Loje" to the tester (in this case: "Administrator")

Happy Customizing!

Using rich HTML descriptions instead of plain text

neno — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:34:00 GMT

Objective

Allow rich HTML formatting in description fields of the MSF Agile process template.

Note: The MSF CMMI process does support HTML formatting by default. In order to use it you have to enable the formatting toolbar (see Step 6 below).

Work Item Customization

Step 1: Add a new HTML description field

Since the System.Description field is defined of type string as opposed to type HTML we need to create a new field:

Step 2: Change the work item layout

Use your own HTML field instead of System.Description

Step 3: Refresh Work Item cache

Right-click "Work Items" in Team Explorer and select "Refresh".

Step 4: Enable the formatting toolbar

Right-click on the Visual Studio toolbar, find and click "Formatting":

A new toolbar will appear:

Result

Click into the description field and use the toolbar to format your input:

Optional Step 5: Copying the old descriptions to the new HTML field

It would be a pity to loose the existing descriptions so let's write a small utility using the Team Foundation Object model to copy the "old" descriptions to the new HTML field:

static void CopyOldDescriptions()
{
    // TODO: Change these values:
    string tfsName = "servertogo";
    string tfsProjectName = "WorkItemCustomization";
    string tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName = "DescriptionHtml";
    string tfsWorkItemType = "Task";

    using (TeamFoundationServer tfs = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer(tfsName))
    {
        WorkItemStore wit = (WorkItemStore)tfs.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));
        WorkItemCollection result = wit.Query(String.Format("SELECT [System.Id] FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.TeamProject] = '{0}' AND [System.WorkItemType] = '{1}'", tfsProjectName, tfsWorkItemType));
        List<WorkItem> affectedWorkItems = new List<WorkItem>();
        foreach (WorkItem wi in result)
        {
            if (wi.Description.Length > 0)
            {
                // Set new description
                string value = (string)wi[tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName];
                if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
                {
                    wi[tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName] = wi.Description.Replace("\n", "<br>");
                }
                else
                {
                    wi[tfsHtmlDescriptionFieldName] += "<br><p>Old description:</p><p>" + wi.Description.Replace("\n", "<br>") + "</p>";
                }

                // Delete old description
                wi.Description = String.Empty;

                affectedWorkItems.Add(wi);
            }
        }

        if (affectedWorkItems.Count > 0)
        {
            wit.BatchSave(affectedWorkItems.ToArray());
            MessageBox.Show("Items updated: " + affectedWorkItems.Count);
        }
        else
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Nothing to do.");
        }
    }
}

Happy formatting. :-)

Adding TFS tools to your path environment variable

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:02:46 GMT

For easier access to the various command line tools of TFS you can add the necessary directories to your %PATH% environment variable.

Paths to add (on a TFS client)

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

Paths to add (on a TFS)

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Tools

Background

The 1^rd path contains TF.exe
The 2^nd path contains BisSubscribe.exe
The 3^rd path contains tfsadminutil.exe

Note: TFPT.exe add its itself to %PATH%

How to

Hardware Recommendations for Team Foundation Server 2008

neno — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:08:51 GMT

What hardware do I need to run TFS? Well, it depends on how much load you are going to generate. But what is a solid hardware configuration to start?

Microsoft recommends for the Single-Server installation of TFS:

Additionally they recommend switching to a Dual-Server configuration (TFS & MSSQL installed on separate machines) if you have more than 450 users (Note: this is really just a rough orientation - many other factors are important).

Sources: here and here.

We recommend the following minimum based on our experiences
(recommendations for better performance in brackets):

# Developers	Configuration	CPU	RAM*	HDD**
<= 20	single server	2 x 2.2 GHz	2.5 GB (3 GB)	80 GB
<= 100	single server	4 x 2.2 GHz	3 GB (4 GB)	250 GB
> 100***	dual server	2 x 2.6 / 4 x 2.2 GHz	4 / 8 GB (16 GB)	500 GB

Disclaimer: All values shown here do vary depending on the individual situation.

A few general notes

* Increasing the amount of memory (RAM) clearly improves performance (be aware TFS Application Tier is 32-bit only and hence limited to ~ 3.5 GB)

** Hard drive speed is very important to MSSQL and therefore for TFS. The use of fast hard drives and disk arrays is heavily recommended.

*** Splitting TFS and MSSQL is a good idea if you experience heavy load and slow response times on a single server installation. [More]
However more than just the number of developers should be considered in this case, e.g. licensing issues, existing SQL infrastructure, backups in place, etc.

A reliable network connection with a minimum bandwidth of 1 Mbps and a latency maximum of 350ms is required.

The use of virtualization technologies (Virtual Server, Hyper-V, VMware) is possible and mostly recommended by us for backup and fail-over reasons.

More official Hardware Recommendations (our recommendation in brackets):

Team Build (2 x 2.2 GhZ CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk)
Team Foundation Server Proxy (2 x 2.2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk)
Team Explorer (2.2 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB Hard disk)
Test Rigs

TFS Branching Guide 2.0

neno — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 12:12:04 GMT

Original announcement:

Since the first release, we have received lots of feedback and change requests. Most feedback indicated a desire for a more practical approach to branching compared to the first release which is more theoretical. With that in mind, we decided to reduce the conceptual part and focus on branching practices with Team Foundation Server.

What is in the package?

TFS Branching Guide - Main 2.0

This is the main article which briefly explains branching concepts and introduces 3 levels of the most common branching scenario

TFS Branching Guide - Scenarios 2.0

A collection of less common branching scenarios

TFS Branching Guide - Q&A 2.0

A set of most frequently asked questions with answers

TFS Branching Guide - Drawings 2.0

A set of branching drawings in different formats including a large branching poster

TFS Branching Guide - Labs 2.0

A couple of examples for hands on labs with step by step instruction for practicing the branching scenarios

Download: here