I’ve been in the middle of a lot lately and completely forgot to mention Tulsa TechFest 2008!  This will be my third year speaking and interestingly I have the only Team System talk this year.  If you’re around the area be sure to come by to learn more about automating your build & packaging process using Team System.  I’m going to do my Team Build talk that I did earlier this year at the Dallas VSTS User Group but we won’t go into as much depth since we only have 1.5 hours.  Looks like another great year with almost.  Infragistics has been a proud & regular sponsor of this event and I’m honored to have been invited again!

[Update]

Wanted to be sure I posted my slides and then also made the link to the awesome build lifecycle poster done by our friends in South Africa.  Thanks for keeping me honest!

Ed B.

I didn't get to read my RSS feeds yet today but I got a hint to go read them and I discovered that Chuck wrote a nice blog post about volunteer work and me.  I guess the cat's out of the bag now :)  Thanks Chuck for the kudos - I really appreciate it.  I'm looking forward to making a really good use of that time.

There are so many people in the development community that spend countless hours of their volunteer time.  Especially in the VSTS community.  People are working volunteering time:

• developing and supporting open-source projects & tools,
• speaking at events and conferences (this takes a considerable amount of time to prepare for,)
• leading local user groups,
• writing blog posts, technical articles, & books,
• answering community questions in the MSDN Forums,
• giving feedback, enhancement requests, & reporting problems of Microsoft products to improve them, and
• all of the other ways people volunteer time that I can't even begin to think of.

I personally know several people (and more) who really focus on trying to make the entire development community better off with these time & knowledge contributions.  (Infragistics as a company has been really supportive in all of our efforts to help the community.) I hope you get as much out of it as I do from learning from everyone.  Microsoft has done a great job in recognizing those individuals by creating the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award.  I'm honored to have been awarded this award earlier this year.

I've really not been able to blog as much as I have liked to or participating in the MSDN Forums answering people's questions.  I have focused the volunteer time that I have had in other areas.  I had a really great time at the MVP Summit earlier this year and came back with so many different ideas.  I really love the VSTS MVP & Champs group - truly a great group of professionals!  This brings me to my idea for this year.

I feel like I haven't had time this year to really provide anything meaningful to the community.  So, I want to dedicate a work week and do something meaningful for the VSTS community.  There are plenty of places that we could all use help so I think that would be something meaningful and useful.  I'm planning on doing this time locally in Redmond so that if I need background information on a project, I can get it quickly.  I need to meet with some people about Infragistics stuff and really take some vacation time in that area (since it is so beautiful) so I think it's beneficial to be local during that week.

What should I work on?

Chuck mentioned a few ideas that we have so far but the one I personally love is being able to release the gigantic amount of work that Microsoft has done with their internal process templates & reports.  Have you seen them?  They are awesome!  Reports are so tricky to do and take a good chunk of time to be done correctly.  The Microsoft internal reports need to be scrubbed for external consumption which is my initial idea for volunteer work.

Or should I work on a productivity tool?

Don't let me taint your opinions though.  What do you want/need that would be valuable for VSTS?  Go to Chuck's blog post and give us suggestions about what you would like to see me work on.  No car washing or details though :) unless it's for a good charity organization then I'll consider it.

Ed B.

So, I came across something pretty interesting when I was making a work item query today that I've wondered for a while.  I can't believe I just came across it today.

OK - Just for some background on what I was trying to do:  I wanted to get a team query made that returned all of the bugs for my team.  The only problem is that our department supports all of our products for mainly builds & installers (among other things) and it causes the Area Paths that we look at to be pretty much all over our TFS server.  Usually you would just want all the bugs for a particular product and you can use the UNDER operator for the Area Path field.  I need to use multiple condition clauses using the UNDER operator.  I knew that the Work Item Query Language (WIQL) had a way for putting parenthesis around the conditionals in the WHERE clause.  (The WIQL syntax is very similar to T-SQL if you haven't ever seen it before.)  For example, here's part of a sample WIQL query that I was going after....

SELECT [System.Id], (Other Fields) FROM WorkItems WHERE [System.WorkItemType] = 'Bug'  AND  [System.State] <> 'Closed'  AND  ([System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\.NET\Installers'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\.NET\ASP.NET\Builds'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\.NET\WinForms\Builds'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\WPF\Builds'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'NetAdvantage\WPF\Installers'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\QTP\WinForms\Builds'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\QTP\WinForms\Installers'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\RFT\WinForms\Builds'  OR  [System.AreaPath] UNDER 'TestAdvantage\RFT\WinForms\Installers')

My problem was - how do I put parenthesis in the query using the Work Item Query Editor? (UI in Visual Studio)

However, I remember reading Brian's post yesterday about the new Alerts Editor (which by the way is totally awesome and immediately adds value to the product without waiting for the next major release) and thought, I wonder how they did that in the UI with the alerts XPath queries because I know you can't get very good alerts without the ability to group the XPath query conditionals.  Let me steal an image from Brian's post with a little editing showing off a grouping of condition clauses:

I thought to myself, hmmmm... that grid looks pretty similar to WIQ Editor grid that exists today in Team Explorer 2008 and started searching everywhere for the "group" tool button (since there is not a toolbar above the grid.)  I found it.  It's in the context menu whenever you select multiple rows.  Seriously, I can't believe I haven't ever seen it before.  I guess I don't usually write very complex work item queries :)

Have fun writing some useful queries for yourself and your team now!

Ed B.

Speaking of Team System, I found out last week that I have been officially inducted into the Team System MVP group.  Earlier this year, I was awarded as an MVP in the Client Application Development competency.  Don't get me wrong, I still love WPF & Silverlight development and will continue to be involved in that community in the future.  I'm even working on finishing up the technical editing of a Silverlight 2 book right this minute. Or actually I'm procrastinating writing blog posts :)

Being part of the Team System MVP group, I'm really joining one of the most awesome groups ever.  I spent all of my time earlier this year at the MVP Summit at all of the Team System sessions and they truly are one of the best product teams at Microsoft.  They truly value our feedback and the Team System MVPs really love and care for the product just as much and want to see it grow by leaps and bounds.  And when I say love and care for the product, you don't even understand! :) This is definitely a good fit and I'm honored to officially join the group.  So when do I get to learn the "secret handshake?"

Ed B.

Fellow Team System MVP Mike Azocar has announced an awesome new contest to stir up the Team System tools ecoystem.  There are some really cool prizes so far including a free license for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 w/ MSDN Premium subscription and there are more donated prizes coming...  Get the full details at his blog post:  Want to be famous- Enter the Coolest Team System Gadget Contest!

Have you created a useful gadget for Team System? Do you have one in mind? I am looking for the coolest community built tool for VSTS. It can be something for TFS, for Visual Studio, or something that is stand alone. The winner will receive a one year subscription to MSDN with Team Suite!

To enter, submit a screen cast (up to 3 minutes long) which tells everyone why your gadget is the coolest and the source code. All submissions will be released to the public as free source to use and enjoy (with you getting all the credit of course). Videos will also be made available to the public to help make you famous! This should be something new (i.e. not on Codeplex or previously released) and not something repackaged. Submissions accepted up until August 31st 2008. Winner will be announced September 15th 2008.

Judges will be Mike Azocar, Martin Woodward, and I so this is going to be a lot of fun!

Ed B.

I'll be speaking on July 1, 2008 at the Dallas Visual Studio Team System User Group. Starts at 6 PM.  This is going to be a really exciting session for me personally and I love that we have a big block of time to get into some really fun Team Build details.  I think we are meeting at the Notion Solutions office in Irving for the July meeting but I'll double-check and update if there is a change.

Here are a few topics that I'll make sure we talk about:

• New Features for Team Build 2008
• Fun Stuff around Builds at Infragistics
• Build Notification Power Tool
• Building Java applications using Team Build & TeamPrise - (This blows people's minds away)
• Building Installers using Wix
• New Changes in TFS 2008 Service Pack 1 for Team Build
• If time, Extensibility with the Team Build API

Be sure to sign up on the user group website to get updates and the RSVP link whenever it gets sent out.

Ed B.

Our team has been kept extremely busy lately with our new responsibilities.  What does the Release Engineering team do exactly?  Along with creating builds and installers for ALL of our products, we now have responsibility of Team Foundation Server Operations, and the entire development lifecycle of internal productivity tools that we call the "Internal Tools Suite."  So to sum it up, if it has to do with automation or the release process, it's us :)  We need some help (so I can get around to doing some blog posts again haha.)

Here's the positions we have open for the department:

• Software Engineer in Release II, Princeton, New Jersey
• Software Engineer in Release I, Sofia, Bulgaria

Come join our team! It's been extremely exciting lately with what we're doing internally at Infragistics.  Contact me if you're interested:  ed AT infragistics DOT com

Ed B.

It's finally available!  Seriously - this CTP has quite a bit of features that they have added and you can start to see that VSTS is and will continue to be a strong if not the best ALM offering.  The new features are added to Head over to Jeff Beehler's blog post to find out more details of what has been added...

I haven't picked a favorite feature just yet :)  The three I just really like the most across the whole offering:

• New Team Build System based on Windows Workflow Foundation
• Historical Debugging (this will really help with the Debug and Repro scenarios)
• Great Test Case Management System

Here's a list of all the new features!

Architecture Edition

• Exploring the existing code structure
• Designing process flow as activities
• Designing user interactions with systems
• Designing system functionality as components
• Visualizing and designing types in systems
• Visualizing and designing interaction sequences in systems

Development Edition

• Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with rule sets
• Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger
• Identify the test impact of code changes
• Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Database Edition

• Building and using an off-line representation of your operational database as a “sandbox” development environment.
• Using Data Generation to custom-build data for testing your database application.
• Making and unit-testing schema and code changes in an off-line environment.
• Performing static code analysis of your programmability objects.

Test Edition

• Planning a testing effort
• Executing manual test cases
• Verify the fix
• Automate a manual test and add validation.

Team Foundation Server

• Managing an Agile schedule
• Easier reporting from Excel
• Managing features with the CMMI Process
• A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer
• An enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window
• A new history view that shows labels applied to a file as well as how changes were merged across branches
• A new automated build system built on Windows Workflow Foundation, featuring dynamic build machine allocation from a machine pool and distributed build functionality
• Rollback for a check in (currently only available at the command line)
• Many Source Control Explorer usability enhancements

Be sure to head to their Connect site with your feedback!

Ed B.

When creating a transition between states you may want to use a "Server" level security group for the "For" and/or "Not". Taking a first stab at doing this you will probably do as the screen shot below.

When you go to validate this you will get the error shown in the screen shot below. You might even bang your head a couple times trying to figure out what the deal is. :) TF26171

The correct way to specify a SERVER security group is shown in the screen shot below

Ed K.

I'm really excited because the last three days I've been in Redmond, WA attending the TAP briefing for the next version of Visual Studio Team System code named "Rosario."  All I can say is WOW - I'm completely impressed with the work that Microsoft has done and the amount of effort they are making into making the next version of Team System be absolutely awesome.

A lot of big announcements were made and we received a lot of insight into the future.  However, I'm not allowed to say anything just yet about any of it since we were all under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)  I'm reviewing the latest bits and going to start several blog articles about the multitude of amazing features and as soon as I am able to talk about it I will.  (By the way there are early bits available in the November CTP already that you can download using the Rosario link above!)

It was great meeting with the other VSTS Champs in person and putting faces with names.  Truly a great event and I really got the impression that the VSTS product team members were genuinely interested in how we felt about the product and our opinions about what we were being shown.  That kind of commitment to receiving feedback from real end users really shows in the quality of their product.

All I can say is that I can't wait until we receive the final bits and are using it in production!

Ed B.

So here at Infragistics we're truly a global company now which makes life as a TFS Administrator very "interesting" for sure!  Everyone is working around the clock and things can go wrong pretty much 24-7.  Oh well - I'm used to it already :)

If you didn't know, last week Microsoft announced that all of the localized versions of Team System Web Access (TSWA) had been finished and available for download.  This was great because we needed a couple of them for internal use. The only problem I found was that you can't install more than one version of TSWA on the same machine.  That's no fun :(

Thankfully Hakan came to my rescue and gave me a few steps to try and they definitely worked out for me.  I did everything on a separate virtual machine, gathered all of the files I needed, and then copied them to the TSWA web server. 

Disclaimer:  If you're going to follow the steps be mindful that this is completely unsupported by Microsoft.

1. Install <localized version>
2. Copy the files to C:\TSWA\<localized version code>
3. Uninstall <localized version>
4. (Repeat for all languages)
5. Manually create web sites in IIS to point to each of the different languages
• Make sure each TSWA instance uses a different IIS AppPool
• Make sure each TSWA instance points to a different cachedir

There you go!  Also, it might be helpful to use host headers to help users out with discovering their localized versions of TSWA.  This allows you to use port 80 as well instead of the usual default of 8090.  For example:

• English - tfsweb.[your domain]
• Japanese - tfsweb-jp.[your domain]
• German - tfsweb-de.[your domain]
• etc.

Ed B.

If you happen to use Dotfuscator by PreEmptive Solutions then you have probably wondered how to integrate this into your automated Team Builds.  They happen to include an MSBuild task for calling the proper command-line functions but don't have much documentation about this feature.

Background Obfuscation Information:  In general, obfuscation prevents reverse engineering of your software by using different techniques to make the MSIL of your .NET compiled application less understandable.  Several different companies use many techniques for doing this including: string encryption, renaming of symbols, control flow manipulation, etc.  If you've ever used Reflector for .NET you know how easy it is to look at reverse-engineered "source code" for a .NET application.

• Start by putting your Dotfuscator configuration file in the folder that contains your team build script (i.e. TFSBuild.proj) and it to source control.
• Open up your team build script and edit it.  (Be sure to check it out first.)
• Start by adding a reference to the proper custom targets file that is provided.  You should have a Dotfuscator Build Machine license installed on the TFS Build Server(s.)  If you got the wrong license version, just ask them for upgrade pricing.
  
  <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\PreEmptive\Dotfuscator\4.0\PreEmptive.Dotfuscator.Targets" />

• Next, add a section for the Dotfuscator Properties you will need.  You'll notice we have a keys directory that gets pulled down from source control during the build process.  We keep our strong name key in this direcotry and the keydir directory property is for resigning the assemblies after the obfuscation is complete.
  
    <!-- Properties for Dotfuscate Task-->
    <PropertyGroup>
      <ConfigPath>$(SolutionRoot)\..\BuildType\Dotfuscator.Configuration.xml</ConfigPath>
      <InputPath>$(SolutionRoot)\..\Binaries\Release</InputPath>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup>
      <DotfuscatorProperties>
        <targetdir>$(InputPath)</targetdir>
        <keydir>$(SolutionRoot)\Keys</keydir>
      </DotfuscatorProperties>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <ItemGroup>
      <InputAssembly Include="$(InputPath)\*.dll;$(InputPath)\*.exe" Exclude="$(InputPath)\*.vshost.exe"/>
    </ItemGroup>  

• Finally, customize the AfterCompile target by adding the Dotfuscate task with appropriate property settings.  See more information about Customizable Team Foundation Build Targets.
  
    <Target Name="AfterCompile">
      <!-- Perform obfuscation steps after assemblies are compiled.-->
      <Dotfuscate InputAssemblies="@(InputAssembly)" Properties="$(DotfuscatorProperties)" ConfigPath="$(ConfigPath)">
        <Output TaskParameter="MappingFile" ItemName="DotfuscatorMappingFile"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="ReportFiles" ItemName="DotfuscatorReportFiles"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="OutputAssemblies" ItemName="DotfuscatedAssemblies"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="SatelliteAssemblies" ItemName="DotfuscatedSatelliteAssemblies"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="DebugSymbols" ItemName="DotfuscatedDebugSymbols"/>
      </Dotfuscate>
    </Target>
  
• Next, take some time to edit your Dotfuscator configuration file.  Notice the properties I am using in my sample project below and what is being set in the Dotfuscator properties collection in the Team Build script above.  Basically, I have just cleared the property values out to make sure that the MSBuild task populates them correctly.
  
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
  <!DOCTYPE dotfuscator SYSTEM"http://www.preemptive.com/dotfuscator/dtd/dotfuscator_v2.1.dtd">
  <dotfuscator version="2.1">
    <!--This is application generated code. Do not edit manually.-->
    <propertylist>
      <property name="targetdir" value="" />
      <property name="keydir" value="" />
    </propertylist>
    <global>
      <option>verbose</option>
    </global>
    <input>
      <asmlist>
        <inputassembly>
          <option>library</option>
          <file dir="${targetdir}" name="Shared.Library.dll" />
        </inputassembly>
      </asmlist>
    </input>
    <output>
      <file dir="${targetdir}\Dotfuscated" />
    </output>
    <tempdir>
      <file dir="${targetdir}\Dotfuscated" />
    </tempdir>
    <renaming>
      <!--<mapping>
        <mapoutput overwrite="false">
          <file dir="${targetdir}\Dotfuscated" name="DotfuscatorMapFile-KeepSecure.xml" />
        </mapoutput>
      </mapping>-->
    </renaming>
    <controlflow level="high" />
    <stringencrypt>
      <includelist>
        <assembly>
          <file dir="${targetdir}" name="Shared.Library.dll" />
        </assembly>
      </includelist>
    </stringencrypt>
    <signing>
      <resign>
        <option>dontuseattributes</option>
        <key>
          <file dir="${keydir}" name="StrongName.key" />
        </key>
      </resign>
    </signing>
  </dotfuscator>
   
• That's it.  Finally, just customize it to your heart's content!

Feel free to let me know if I can improve this in any way!  I'm always looking to efficiently refactor our Team Build scripts.

Ed B.

Ever since I started at Infragistics, I had been working in the User Experience Group (under the Evangelism umbrella) primarily with WPF & WinForms.  As some of you know, I wasn't too fond with WPF at the beginning :) but now I love it.  [Shameless Plug:  Have you checked out Tangerine?  See my blog post about it.]

I have taken a new position now as what is usually referred to as the Configuration Manager (HR Title:  Configuration and Process Improvement Engineer.)

As some of you know, I have been working with Team Foundation Server since pre-beginning (is that a word?) like during the Betas.  [Strolls down memory lane... Anyone remember the Beta 2 to Beta 3 upgrade? whew... Ed K. remembers that day with the 3-hour phone call from the TFS Product Team.  Those were the days. I got a cool TFS All Stars shirt from it though!]  I digress.  Infragistics has decided to adopt TFS and planning to migrate pretty much all of our separate systems to it.  So, that's what I'm doing now in the Engineering department!  Although I'll be missing doing WPF and Evangelism work, I'm pretty excited about getting to do TFS stuff full-time.

If you were at Grant and I's talk at Boston ReMix or my talk at Tulsa Tech Fest, you got the preview of a community WPF application that we're working on to gather data from TFS and replace our Release Status Wall.  It's basically an application to visualize your release process.  As soon as we get something ready to preview, I'll definitely post up on here.  So I get to put my love of both WPF and TFS together!  Grant's a God-send when it comes to making applications look great. I'm really blessed to be working for a company that has a dedicated Visual Design team... We have 5 dedicated Visual Designers now... wow.

Another one of my goals with our new system of tracking development data is to provide more transparency to our customers in regard to feature tracking, bugs, etc.  I think it's important (as a previous customer) to be able to have that kind of transparency.  I'm thinking something along the line of Microsoft's Connect website.

So I look forward to being able to talk more about TFS and coming out with some exciting tools and information.  Don't worry, I still do WPF development too so you'll still see me from time to time blogging about it and speaking.  I just finished up a WPF magazine article yesterday even :)

BTW... I'll be in DevConnections next week in Las Vegas doing some WPF Evangelism stuff so be sure to hit me up if you'll be in town!

Ed B.

I don't know how I ever missed it but I was shocked to find that I could not restrict users from branching and merging in TFS Version Control.  Ahhhhhh!!!!

The only security privileges (for Version Control) that are available are:

• Read
• Check out (branching, merging, and other similar pending changes fall into this category)
• Check in
• Label
• Lock
• Revise other users' changes
• Unlock other users' changes
• Administer labels
• Manipulate security settings
• Check in other users' changes

If you want more information about the specifics for Version Control privileges, check out MSDN at:  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms252587(VS.80).aspx

If you are facing this same issue and believe that it should be a feature in the product, help out by voting on the feature suggestion on Visual Studio Connect:  https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=307874

Ed B.

So there is a huge problem with uninstalling the TFS Power Tools if you have them installed on Windows Vista.  This becomes particularly a problem when you want to upgrade the TFS Power Tools (which I was trying to do to the version just released a few weeks ago.)

If you try to uninstall the regular way, you get all sorts of errors like:

Error 1722. There is a problem with this windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your...

Seriously - it sucks.  I even got fed up and finally decided to rebuild my machine at work (this particular uninstall experience wasn't the only reason for rebuilding my work laptop but definitely was the tipping point!) :)

Anyhow, just to save you a lot of problems, open up a command prompt as an Administrator and run:

msiexec /x {C802488F-CB5F-48BE-BBD2-0C0F9E290E63}

Click "Yes" to the next prompt and you should have a clean uninstall!

Ed B.

If you're using Windows SharePoint Services (which is installed with Team Foundation Server) or SharePoint Portal Server, you don't get to see the file icons for the files with Office 2007 extensions (i.e. docx, xlsx, pptx, etc.)

I'm not sure if they have updated it in the 2007 version of SharePoint Portal Server, WSS 3.0, or in TFS 2008.  If you happen to know, contact me and let me know and I'll update it here.

Anyhow, have you ever wondered how to add new file extensions with associated icons into SharePoint?  Check out the blog site that Alexander Groß manages and he has just how to do it!  It's something that has bothered me enough already and I'm ready to get it resolved!

How To:  http://www.therightstuff.de/2006/12/16/Office+2007+File+Icons+For+Windows+SharePoint+Services+20+And+SharePoint+Portal+Server+2003.aspx

Ed B.

Are you missing your process template editor submenu underneath the "Team" menu in Visual Studio?  The new process template editor that is bundled with the TFS Power Tools requires for you already have the Domain-Specific Language Tools for Visual Studio 2005 Redistributable Components installed on your machine.

After you have installed that you should be good to go.  Be sure to uninstall the Power Tools and then install them again to get it to come up.

Ed B.

Grant Hinkson (our Director of Visual Design at Infragistics) and I will be doing our talk "Meeting in the Middle - Designer/Developer Interaction in WPF."  It looks like we have the first breakout session on Tuesday, October 9 at 9:00 AM.  Take a look to see what other sessions are going on:  https://admin.viewcentral.com/events/uploads/ms_events/agenda.html

Session Details

Date:  10/9/2007

Time:  9:00am – 10:15am

Title:  Meeting in the Middle - Designer/Developer Interaction in WPF

Abstract:

In this session, Ed and Grant will highlight many of the lessons they learned when developing the enterprise-level WPF reference application, Tangerine. Tangerine is an asset browser built using the data provider model to browse the Amazon online catalog. Additionally, they will discuss the Software Release Status application currently under development. This project management tool uses the power of WPF to visually represent the status of your software projects using data from your Team Foundation Server. You'll get an inside look at the interaction between development and design, and gain insight into practical solutions for common problems.

Brad Abrams, Group Product Manager for the Microsoft .NET Framework, will be the keynote speaker and will be talking about the Rising Tide of User Experience.  Pretty awesome!  You know we like UX!

Want to Save Some Money on Registration?

Well, just because I want to make sure everyone is coming... If you use the following RSVP code, RM07EXTB, it will save you $100 of your registration.

More Info

http://www.remix07boston.com

What to expect at ReMIX07 Boston …

If you’re in the web business, learn about:

• Building a better user experience to unlock new revenue opportunities
• Forging tighter, stickier customer connections
• Building innovative media experiences into your site

If you’re a web developer, build:

• Silverlight applications quickly and easily
• Sites and applications that consume Windows Live services
• Rich, interactive sites made for the next web

If you’re a web designer, learn about:

• Using Silverlight to design gorgeous and highly functional user interfaces
• How a real-world application is built and the best practices associated with it
• The suite of Expression tools that revolutionize the way designers work with developers

If you attend, regardless of your job role, check out:

• Xbox Gaming Area where you can test your skills at Halo 3 and Guitar Hero among others
• Express Yourself Design Contest where key design agencies compete to solve a real-world design problem
• Stay tuned: We may feature some cool products and demos around XNA, Popfly, Robotics Studio and Surface

It’s Happening Here

Monday-Tuesday, October 8-9, 2007

October 8:             Registration & Breakfast from 7:00-9:00 am
Keynote & Breakouts from 9:00 a.m.-5:45 pm
Welcome Reception from 6:00-9:00 pm

October 9:             Registration & Breakfast from 8:00-9:00 am

                                Keynote & Breakouts from 9:00 am-5:00 pm

Hyatt Regency Cambridge

575 Memorial Drive,
Cambridge, MA 02139

For directions click here.

Ed B.

Interesting...Great concept, especially if you have disparate teams and no TFS expertise on staff. Sure beats using VSS remotely with an expert on staff.

Off the cuff, this is way too expensive. Have a look, it might be what you are looking for.

Readify

Ed K.

Formerly known as Teamplain Web Access for Team System, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access has been released and freely available as a download to licensed customers of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.  Microsoft recently purchased devBiz and is offering their former product for free as a Power Tool.  At some point I'm sure they will bake into the main product but for now, it's a great value-add to the TFS product line.

It's really a great tool for you to use if you don't feel like installing a lightweight version of Visual Studio for users who really don't need all of it.  It reproduces pretty much everything that you could do in Team Explorer but in a nice web application.  I'd say It's nice to have even as a developer!

Ed B.

I woke up to a FAILED build report in my inbox this morning... Not the best of signs but it happens, right?

So I'm trying to figure out what in the world could have gone wrong.  What did we change since the last build that could have caused this madness?  OK, I know I'm being over-dramatic

Here's what I had in the build report:

Target ResolveKeySource: 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: The "ResolveKeySource" task failed unexpectedly. 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: System.InvalidOperationException: Showing a modal dialog box or form when the application is not running in UserInteractive mode is not a valid operation. Specify the ServiceNotification or DefaultDesktopOnly style to display a notification from a service application. 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: at System.Windows.Forms.Form.ShowDialog(IWin32Window owner) 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: at System.Windows.Forms.Form.ShowDialog() 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ResolveKeySource.ResolveManifestKey() 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ResolveKeySource.Execute() 
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(1718,7): error MSB4018: at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskEngine.ExecuteTask(ExecutionMode howToExecuteTask, Hashtable projectItemsAvailableToTask, BuildPropertyGroup projectPropertiesAvailableToTask, Boolean& taskClassWasFound) 
Done building target "ResolveKeySource" in project "untimyrm.tmp_proj" -- FAILED. 

I think I knew what happened... I had just set up the Click-Once settings in our app and I bet the build server doesn't have the key file we are using.  Sure enough, I happened to be write!  I found out this could also happen if you are signing your assemblies as well with a strong name.  MSDN Forums has the details.

Here's Nagaraju Palla's answer:

For password protected signing keys to work on build without prompting, they need to be exported into a key container crypto store on the build machine under the account that performs the build. Once exported, the build will not ask for a password anymore. The crypto store will do the signing and take care to keep private key safe.

One of the quicker ways to do this:

- Logon to the build machine using the build service account

- Run msbuild on any project that uses this signing key. It will prompt for the password and will export the key.

- Now start the TeamBuild full build.

Ed B.

This post actually applies to many different situations in which you would automate a build on a separate server.  I just happen to be familiar with Team Build.

Because of how NetAdvantage deals with licensing each build server will need a full copy of NetAdvantage installed.  Some build engineers have only copied the NetAdvantage assemblies over to their build server and will see LicenseException errors in their build reports.  Even copying them into the GAC isn't enough...  Just to save yourself a couple of headaches, take a few minutes to install using the product installer.  There is an option in the installer to install just the assemblies and licensing components.  I'd recommend deselecting all of the options if you don't need them installed on the build server.  Be sure to also apply any hot fixes that your application may use as well.

As an aside, according to Infragistics' current