I have downloaded and installed Safari 3 Beta on my laptop today. I am not a Browser Guru, I just want to make sure our site looks pretty :)

 

Ed K. 

I've been asked so I'll just say, "Sorry, I'm not the Ed B. in today's Daily WTF."  Although very funny, it's not me.

 

Ed B.

Ouch! Look at this map. I need to see what is happening in some of these functoids. What is a developer to do?????

A map is just complex XSL.... So to debug the functoids we need to treat it as such. First, lets Validate our map and get the location of the XSLT.

Since it validated (no errors) we have the XSLT output location in the Output Window. Copy this location to your clip board. 

Open the file with Visual Studio:

Now, right click on your XSL working area and select properties. Here you will enter the input file that will be used for the transform:

Mark your break points, just as you would a code file, and start the debug:



Now you can step through just as if it was .Net code:

Even step into the functoid code:

 

Ed K.

 The next set of Team System chats with the product group will be on July 3rd. 

Join the chat on Tuesday, July 3^rd , 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

                -and-

Join the chat on Tuesday, July 3^rd, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

Team System product group chats on July 3rd

 

Ed K.

So, if you didn't know I'm a huge fan of the Quality Indicators report in the MSF for Agile Software Development process template in Team Foundation Server.  Here at Infragistics, we're evaluating the Conchango Scrum Process Template for Team System and I don't get that wonderful report I love :-(  I've been stalling (because I haven't ever written a SQL Reporting Services custom report for TFS) but I finally did it today.  It really wasn't that bad.  Thank God I already had most of the report set up for me!  There are a TON of data and metrics you can get from the OLAP cube in the TFS Data Warehouse.

If you haven't read the Wrox Professional Team Foundation Server book, then it's a great avenue for learning TFS.  It also has a good section on how to creating custom reports with the Visual Studio Report Designer.

Really the only issue with just importing the original report to the Scrum team project is the fact that Bugs are actually Sprint Backlog Items with an Item Type of Bug (as opposed to the MSF Agile template that just has a separate bug work item type) and the status of an active bug is actually "In Progress."

Steps to Modify Report

1. You need to get a copy of the Quality Indictors RDL file.  Take a look at Customizing Reports to get more information on how to do this.  I happened to create a whole new Reporting Services Project in Visual Studio called TFS Scrum Reports because I may be creating some new ones later.
2. Be sure to add the two shared Data Sources to your new Visual Studio project.  You can use the settings of the existing shared data sources on your TFS SQL Reporting Services server.  (Usually found at http://[TFS Server Name]/Reports/ or you can right-click the Reports folder under your team project in the Team Explorer window and choose "Show Report Site...")
    
3. With the report open, navigate down to the section that gets the Active Bugs metric:
    
4. Notice what it grabs for the work item type and state:
   
   MEMBER [Measures].[Active Bugs] AS ([Measures].[Cumulative Count], [Work Item].[System_State].[Active], [Work Item].[System_WorkItemType].[Bug], STRTOMEMBER([Measures].[Build Date])) + 0
   
5. Now, change these values to the following:
   
   MEMBER [Measures].[Active Bugs] AS ([Measures].[Cumulative Count], [Work Item].[System_State].[In Progress], [Work Item].[Conchango_VSTS_Scrum_SprintBacklogItemType].[Bug], STRTOMEMBER([Measures].[Build Date])) + 0
   
6. All you have to do now is save the report and upload it to the SQL Reporting site in your team project's reports folder.
   
7. Last thing, you may run into a problem with the report finding the shared data sources.  If this happens, go into the properties of the report on the SRS site and choose the shared data sources that are being used by SRS.

Really, you can use this method to port this great report into just about any process template you might be using.  Pretty much any of the OLAP metrics can be changed.

What other kinds of reports should we have?  Do you have any interesting custom reports that you find useful for the major process templates that are available on the Internets and what not?

UPDATE:  I've attached a modified report if you don't want to go through all the steps of customizing.  Just download it and start at Step 6.  It's much more fun doing it yourself though!

Quality Indicators.rdl (65.25 KB)

 

Ed B.

P.S. We're changing up some of our tags to better organize all of our blog posts.  May take some time...

What Does the Updated Quiescing GDR Fix?

• TFS SP1 and Hotfixes fails to install on a SQL Clustered Data Tier.
• TFS SP1 and Hotfixes may fail to install due to issues connecting to the TFS databases.
• TFS Databases may be left in Single-User mode after SP1 or Hotfix installation failure.

Source: Brain Harry Blog

Patch Download

Ed K.

There's a new Scrum process template and it looks like Microsoft has developed it this time.  You can pick it up here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55a4bde6-10a7-4c41-9938-f388c1ed15e9&displaylang=en

Overview

eScrum is a Web-based, end-to-end project management tool for Scrum built on the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server platform. It provides multiple ways to interact with your Scrum project: eScrum Web-based UI, Team Explorer, and Excel or Project, via Team Foundation Office Integration. In addition, it provides a single place for all Scrum artifacts such as product backlog, sprint backlog, task management, retrospective, and reports with built-in context sensitive help.

We'll have to evaluate it and see where it ranks among the other Scrum process templates.  For now, check out some of the other ones:  (Did I miss any?)

• Conchango:  http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/default.aspx
• CodePlex:  http://www.codeplex.com/VSTSScrum

Update:  HOLY CRAP! There is a ton of post-installation steps that you have to take and other items that you have to download.  If you don't happen to have the specific version of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit that eScrum requires, then you are going to have to do a binding redirect.  If you download it from the ASP.NET AJAX Website, it is a later version.  See the Readme after you install. This setup and install experience is probably one of the worst I have ever done!  Even rivaling the TFS Beta 3 to Beta 3 Refresh upgrade!  That's saying a lot.

Now I'm just having problems with the reports after I've rebuilt the TFS Warehouse five time!  This process template undoubtedly deserves a Colbert Wag of the Finger.

Ed B.

Several people who had attended TechEd 2007 in Orlando, Florida last week had the opportunity to see the shuttle launch.  It's pretty awesome because they don't happen all of the time.  A group of us who had stayed for the weekend decided to head out to Cape Canaveral for the event.  We made our stakeout for about five hours and played cards but I have to tell you it was totally awesome.  It was extremely bright too!  I don't have the most awesome camera in the world but got some pretty cool shots.

 

 

Oh yeah - Congrats to Ed K on passing the TFS exam!  I guess I'll have to go take it now too

Ed B.

Whatever happened to this webcast? It was kinda cool...ok, somewhat cool, but I really like how it turned coding into a reality show. If anyone knows what happened or if there are any "lost episodes" please leave a comment.

Here is the WebSite. All it has on it now is "This IP address cannot be used for browsing".

Here is a list of the only 3 episodes made (as far as I know):
Pilot Episode - December 9, 2004
Building Mobile Apps and Bluetooth Enabled Kiosks - May 19, 2005
Breaking Into Vegas - February 23, 2006

Ed K

The connector, Release 1, is available for download today from CodePlex.

This is the first release of the PS2007 VSTS Connector. We've done our best to ensure that this Connector is easy to install and well documented, but if you encounter issues, please be sure to let us know via email at tfpstalk@microsoft.com, we'll do our best to get you up and running.
For other feedback and questions, please send mail to tfpstalk@microsoft.com.

Thanks for your interest in the Connector solution!
- VSTS Rangers

Source: CodePlex

Ed K

 

Topic : BizTalk Solution Design Review
Speaker: Dustin Hicks
Date: June 13th 2007
Location: Microsoft Campus at 7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX 75039
Time : 6:30 PM

Description :
Dustin Hicks will be discussing the implementation details of an SAP integration project utilizing a custom written decorator pipeline framework.  Architecture design and production details will be presented and discussed in detail.  We will review the code for a generic decorator pattern, it’s implementation in a pipeline component, value passing context properties, DocumentProcessor classes and development patterns.  In addition, purchase order integration including RosettaNet (3A4) to SAP (ORDERS05) transformations and processing pattern will be presented.

June Meeting - Dustin Hicks with a BizTalk Solution Design Review

 

Ed K

If you use Juice as your podcast receiver and have upgraded to Vista, here is a post that will show you how to make it work.

Running Juice on Vista

Ed K

Well, TechEd 2007 in wrapping up and boy was it fun. I met a lot of great people and listened to a bunch of awesome talks; my brain and feet are tired and ready for home. Last night I went to Universal's Island of Adventure for the TechEd Attendee's Party and met up with Ed B, along with all his Infragistics co-workers, we had a great time riding a few rides and searching for Chicken and Ribs. Listed below are all the sessions I attended.

Monday 6/4/2007

DEV11-TLC -  Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Software Factories
In this chalk talk, Jack Greenfield, co-author of the Software Factories book, talks about the current generation of factories from p&p, future directions for software factories in Visual Studio Team Architect, and integrating software factories with other parts of Visual Studio Team System. The second half of the session will be Q&A, addressing questions from the audience on these topics.

DEV231 - A Lap around Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas"(Session Repeats on 6/8)
Explore all the new Visual Studio code name “Orcas” features, from language enhancements; improved designers; Web and smart-client development tools; to Visual Studio Team System, a suite of software lifecycle management tools poised to transform how you deliver software for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web.

DEV02-TLC - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for Small Agile Teams
Everyone says that Agile approaches like Extreme Programming only work when you’ve got a small team of highly talented developers. I agree that Agile works best for small teams, but it’s not talent that really matters, it’s a willingness to adopt certain practices and values. Over the next forty minutes I want to explain how Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) supports the Agile practices and values that allow everyone in this room to create a top performing small team.

Tuesday 6/5/2007

ARC307 - Applying Service-Orientation to Your Development Process  (Session Repeats on 6/6)
When you develop a service-oriented application, it would be naive of you to expect that the only things you will do differently will be limited to design and technology. The development process itself needs to be service-oriented. You cannot “stare into the fire” of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) without a mature service-oriented development process supporting your effort. This session presents you with a service-oriented development process that you can apply to your WCF-based products to plan and track your progress, manage requirements, and ensure faster time-to-market.

DEV338 - Microsoft Visual C#: Tips and Tricks for the Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" IDE
Though the releases of Visual Studio, the Visual C# team has focused on making the IDE more “code-focused” than ever before. Join Karen Liu, C# IDE Program Manager, in building an E2E application using C# 3.0 and LINQ that leverages a number of tips and tricks in the IDE to make the Visual C# developer more efficient and productive when trying to understand and write code.

ARC316 - O-O? S-O? Workflow?: Architecture Tradeoffs in the Real World
You’ve never been faced with more application architecture technology options than today. Do you use object-oriented concepts? Service-oriented concepts? How about workflow? Is n-tier client/server the right answer, or should you use SOA? The answer, of course, is that you may need to use any or even all of these technologies. Each one is designed to solve a specific problem space, and is a weak solution for other problem spaces. Join Rockford Lhotka in an irreverent and pragmatic discussion about when to use all the technology options at your disposal.

DEV05-TLC - Managing Requirements with Team Foundation Server and TeamSpec
The ability to identify and change project requirements is critical to the success of every software project. Whether your team needs to track User Requirements, Use Cases, Business Requirements, Functional Requirements, Development Requirements, Non-functional Requirements, IT Requirements, or any other type of project guiding artifact, Team Foundation Server and TeamSpec together enable a familiar experience inside Microsoft Office Word with the benefits of the team centralized requirements management store.

BOF52 - The Need for an Agile Project Planning Tool
In the world of Agile Project management, no single tool has emerged as being the de facto standard for Agile Project Planning and Management. In this session, we discuss the need for such a tool and how such a tool can extend the value expressed in tools such as Team System.

BOF79 - HealthCare's IT Wants and Desires: All Things to All People
Join a discussion of IT’s challenges providing value and performance for today’s Healthcare facilities and staff. Have you experienced: Department leaders wanting 100% up time with unfettered Internet access. Staff not understanding why scraping EPHI into local access databases conflicts with maintaining HIPAA compliance. Their Desire to purchase a proprietary department application even though the organization already owns an application that will provide 80% of the functionality.

Wednesday 4/6/2007

DEV329 - Testing .NET 3.0 Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Test Tools
Attend this session to learn about using Visual Studio Team System tools for testing your .NET 3.0 applications. We start with Windows Communication Foundation testing, showing how to test both the client and the service parts of the system both with in-process and out-of-process calls. Next, we step into how to test Windows Workflow Foundation, including discussion of how to handle long running transactions. We close with how to use VS Team Test’s manual tests for testing WCF functionality.

BAP309 - Will SOA Replace ERP?
While there are different perspectives on SOA, there is widespread agreement that it is not a product or a technology but an approach—a style of architecture that uses the service model to enable integration across diverse systems. At its most strategic level, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables IT to meet the changing demands of businesses and to exploit new business opportunities. Microsoft Dynamics enables users to take “Real-World” approach to SOA. This session offers a deep-dive on concepts of Real-World SOA.

SOA419 - Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation Tips and Tricks from Real World Projects
In this session, we talk about real implementations of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) together, and discuss the ways you can integrate these two technologies before the “Orcas” timeline. We start with simple integration and then move on to more seamless integration with Custom ServiceHosts and custom behaviors helping to manage the integration.

Thursday 6/7/2007

SOA217R - Programming Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: A Developer's Primer (Repeated from 6/4)
How do you actually build and consume WCF-based services? At its core, the WCF programming model is simple and straightforward, requiring actually very little work on behalf of the developer. The session describes the essential WCF programming concepts: clients, services, contracts, and end points; and shows how to build, configure, and host simple services. After attending this session you will be able to start programming and exploring WCF.

DEV313 - Improving Code Performance with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
Today’s customers demand responsive applications, and improving your application’s performance is becoming a must to maintain a competitive edge. This session digs into the tips and tricks of how to find and resolve performance bottlenecks with the Code Profiler and Web Load and Stress tests. We also demonstrate how managers, testers, and developers can work together to resolve and avoid performance issues.

LNC14 - (Panel Discussion) Open Source Software in Enterprise Development
What is the role of open source software in enterprise development? Can companies effectively manage the licensing and support issues? Should companies take advantage of the open source community to advance their own software applications? This panel of leading open source developers explores these questions as well as issues that you are facing today in your organization.

DEV322 - Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Part 1 of 2): Applying Work Item Tracking and Version Control to Application Lifecycle Management
The phrase “eating your own dogfood” gets new meaning when the engineering management team for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) present how we organize the work, structure the source base and measure the progress of the upcoming release of Visual Studio Team System. This session introduces you to Team Foundation Server, showing you the decisions and solutions a large scale, distributed team, are making today to get the most of TFS.

Ed K

I took the 70-510 exam on Tuesday here @ TechEd 2007 and PASSED!. The exam came out of beta in April 07, while in beta the exam was 71-510, now, it is 70-510. The exam is still very rough, they have some work to do on cleaning up some of the questions. I saw 2 question where the options where the exact same...i.e.

A: I am Cool
B: Yes you are
C: I am Cool
D: Duh!

and oddly enough the repeat was the answer on one of them, so which one do I pick lol.

Anyway's......overall it was tough and geared more towards people that have been working extensively with the product. I think it would be hard to just pick up a book and study the material and pass, you need real world experience; I like it that way...that is the way it should be, certifications will carry more weight if people are not able to just pick up a book and pass the test with no real world experience with the technology.

Here are some avenues of learning I recommend to prepare for the exam:
Preparation Guide for Exam 70-510
Professional Team Foundation Server (Wrox)
Notion Solutions eTraining

 

Ed K

I found this awesome site of Diagrams/Posters, all of which are free for download. You need to register. Lots of posters in JPEG or PDF format.

Here is a small list of what the site contains:

0202 Microsoft Team System FiFi TroubleShooting (New) 0202 Microsoft Team System Source Structure 0202 Microsoft Team System Branching 0070 Microsoft PowerShell Scripting 0070 Microsoft PowerShell Scripting Cmdlets 0202 Microsoft Team System Editions 0418 WF Posters - WorkflowChanges 0416 WF Posters - WebService 0414 WF Posters - Tracking 0412 WF Posters - SqlWorkflowPersistence 0410 WF Posters - Roles 0408 WF Posters - Queues 0406 WF Posters - Local Services 0404 WF Posters - Correlated Local Service 0402 WF Posters - Compensation 0400 WF Posters - Batching 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Build

0002 Architecture 0004 Best Practices Poster 0006 CSharp Poster 0008 CSharp Poster II 3100 WF Batching 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Capacity Planning 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Panning 0202 Microsoft Team System Project Source Migration 3002 SDLC smartProcess 3004 SDLC Unified Process 3006 SDLC Scrum 3010 SDLC MSF Design 0000 PosterMap 0000 System_NameSpace 0001 Modeling Poster 0206 Microsoft Indigo Attributes Poster

I believe this site is managed by a VSTS MVP from South Africa.

Ed K.

The Patterns and Practices Team has released beta 1 of the TFS Guide. This is a free download from CodePlex. Click here to download the guide.

Parts

Part I, Fundamentals
Part II, Source Control
Part III, Builds
Part IV, Large Project Considerations
Part V, Project Management
Part VI, Process Guidance
Part VII, Reporting
Part VIII, Setting Up and Maintaining the Team Environment

Chapters

• Introduction
• Ch 01 - Introducing the Team Environment
• Ch 02 - Team Foundation Server Architecture
• Ch 03 - Structuring Projects and Solutions
• Ch 04 - Structuring Projects and Solutions in Team Foundation Server
• Ch 05 - Defining Your Branching and Merging Strategy
• Ch 06 - Managing Source Control Dependencies in Visual Studio Team System
• Ch 07 - Team Build Explained
• Ch 08 - Setting Up Continuous Integration with Team Build
• Ch 09 - Setting Up Scheduled Builds with Team Build
• Ch 10 - Large Project Considerations
• Ch 11 - Project Management Explained
• Ch 12 - Work Items Explained
• Ch 13 – MSF Agile Projects
• Ch 14 - Process Templates Explained
• Ch 15 - Reporting Explained
• Ch 16 - Team Foundation Server Deployment
• Ch 17 - Providing Internet Access to Team Foundation Server

Source: Microsoft Patterns and Practices

 

Ed K.

We really apologize about the downtime for the last couple of days.  While we were changing web hosts we thought we would change blogging software and move all of the old blog posts over... Yeah that just didn't work out well.  Then the original dasBlog version we were using wouldn't work... We have had issues with some of the features in the past.

So what did I do????

I'm did the unthinkable... use a pre-ALPHA daily build dasBlog!  Naw, don't worry - it seems pretty stable (The dasBlog web site uses the version we are using: dasBlog 1.9.6315.0)

We're going to use the Akismet service to block comment/trackback spam (which if you didn't know we had turned off all trackbacks and stuff because we got so much SPAM that we still even need to clean up.)  We really HATE SPAM....

It's all turned back on now and we turned off CAPTCHA on the comment entry pages that people just hate.

Everyone is back up and going now so if you happen to find any problems please let us know!

Now, Ed K. is at TechEd 2007 right now and I'll be there later this week on Thursday.

 

Ed B.

It's out there and available:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions

MSRP:  $499.99 - OUCH!

Bad thing though is that Expression Blend (along with the rest of Expression Studio) is only available for Team Suite with MSDN Premium subscribers.  Expression Blend and Web are the only products released in the Studio as of now.  MSDN Premium subscribers without Team Suite are still licensed for Expression Web which is already available in Subscriber Downloads.

In the words of Rob Caron:

The best deal is reserved for Team Suite customers with MSDN Premium subscriptions, who will receive the entire Expression Studio. The value of Team Suite just gets sweeter.

You can read more about the Expression Studio for MSDN subscribers announcement here:  Listening to your feedback - Expression and MSDN

 

Ed B.

 

Just a quick note:

While modifing some NANT files today for our BizTalk 2006 deployment I notice the gacutil is no longer located in the framework folder i.e C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727  as it was in the previous versions of the .Net Framework. It is now located here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\bin\gacutil.exe

Ed K.

 

Saturday, May 19th I'll be speaking in the Poconos in Pennsylvania at TECH Bash 2007.  If you'll be in the area, make sure you attend!

Session Topic:  Humanizing Software:  Creating Better User Experience with WPF

Session Description:  End Users today expect great and exciting experiences in their software that allow desirability, findability, and a high value of information presented. We will discuss Microsoft’s latest technology to enable developers to create great User Experiences by using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF.) We will also briefly cover User Experience (UX) and related topics.

Location: 

Luzerne County Community College
1333 South Prospect Street
Nanticoke, PA 18634-3899
800.377.LCCC

 

Ed B.

Announced at MIX this morning...  Microsoft is giving people the opportunity to host up to 4GB!!!! of video.  That's crazy awesome!  Go visit the site for more info:  https://silverlight.live.com

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft® Expression Studio and other 3rd party tools, Web designers and content publishers wishing to integrate Silverlight applications into their online properties can enjoy complete control of the end user experience.

While the product is in pre-release, storage and delivery is free up to 4 GB, with outbound streaming up to DVD quality (700 Kbps). As we move out of Beta, developers/designers will have continued use of the service with up to 1 million minutes of free video streaming at 700 Kpbs per site per month. Unlimited streaming will also be available for free with advertising, or with payment of a nominal fee for the service for use without advertising.

 

Ed B.

Absolutely hilarious story of a banking computer system crash... I had heard it before from someone before but didn't know if it was true or not.  Take a look:  http://www.thehumorarchives.com/joke/A_true_story_of_computer_stupidity

In March 1992 a man living in Newtown near Boston Massachusetts received a bill for his as yet unused credit card stating that he owed $0.00. He ignored it and threw it away. In April he received another and threw that one away too. The following month the credit card company sent him a very nasty note stating they were going to cancel his card if he didn*t send them $0.00 by return of post. He called them, talked to them, they said it was a computer error and told him they*d take care of it.

The following month he decided that it was about time that he tried out the troublesome credit card figuring that if there were purchases on his account it would put an end to his ridiculous predicament. However, in the first store that he produced his credit card in payment for his purchases he found that his card had been canceled. He called the credit card company who apologized for the computer error once again and said that they would take care of it. The next day he got a bill for $0.00 stating that payment was now overdue. Assuming that having spoken to the credit card company only the previous day the latest bill was yet another mistake he ignored it, trusting that the company would be as good as their word and sort the problem out. The next month he got a bill for $0.00 stating that he had 10 days to pay his account or the company would have to take steps to recover the debt.

Finally giving in he thought he would play the company at their own game and mailed them a check for $0.00. The computer duly processed his account and returned a statement to the effect that he now owed the credit card company nothing at all. A week later, the man*s bank called him asking him what he was doing writing a check for $0.00. After a lengthy explanation the bank replied that the $0.00 check had caused their check processing software to fail. The bank could not now process ANY checks from ANY of their customers that day because the check for $0.00 was causing the computer to crash. The following month the man received a letter from the credit card company claiming that his check had bounced and that he now owed them $0.00 and unless he sent a check by return of post they would be taking steps to recover the debt. The man, who had been considering buying his wife a computer for her birthday, bought her a typewriter instead.

 

Ed B.

Okay... so in hindsight this is so stupid but I only post so it won't cause you as much time as it did me!

So I'm in VS 2005 after installing the Orcas Beta 1 and I needed to get something from the Team Foundation Server... BUT I COULDN'T!  All of the context menus on the files in Source Control Explorer kept telling me that there were "No Commands Available."  "I don't think so!  We're not playing this game" said me to the computer. :)

Of course my first thought was that it might have had something to do with the Orcas install.  So I did a reinstall of both VS 2005 and Team Explorer but it didn't help any.  Aggravated now I begin my quest for the answer.

I don't know how it happened but the fix is simple:  Make sure Team Foundation Server is selected as the source control plug-in.  You can go to Tools --> Options (make sure you have the "Show all settings" option is checked at the bottom of the dialog) and select this plug-in.

GRRRRRR... Okay... back to productive work now.

 

Ed B.

Right now there are limited training resources for learning WPF and pretty much a non-existence of proven patterns and practices.  All of these assets will eventually come to the developer community as more people adopt the technology.  For right now, I would recommend this book for learning and as a keeper for a decent reference book.

Title: Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed
Author(s):  Adam Nathan
ISBN-10: 0672328917
ISBN-13: 978-0672328917
Publisher: Sams

Some of the things that I really appreciated out of this book:

· This is truly a value-add, especially for a “visual” technology. There are other WPF books that don’t have a single screenshot and it is extremely helpful to have the visual side of WPF represented throughout the book.

· XAML Demystified and Important New Concepts Chapters -- I’m really happy that he did this at the beginning of the book and is where any beginner of WPF or Silverlight (formerly WPF/E) should start the learning process.

- Organized Extremely Well:  It's great if you want to read it from cover to cover or hit a particular topic.  I always give a book the "Index Test" and check to make sure I can easily find the most common WPF topics.

So, be sure to check it out!  Let me know what you think about it too.

 

Ed B.

Just a quick post to spread the word about supporting "Team Hanselman". Click the links below to help him support the "Fight Against Diabetes".

Click here to read the blog post
Click here to go donate

 

 

Ed K. and Ed B.

 

"TeamPlain is a web front end for VSTS that enables users to access the majority of TFS functionality from within a Web browser.  The focus of TeamPlain is on work item tracking but it also includes some valuable version control capabilities (like viewing history/change sets, diffing files, browsing the source base, etc.), some SharePoint integration, Reporting services integration, and some upcoming build support.  TeamPlain gives VSTS a new avenue to reach a broader array of people within the development team who don’t use Visual Studio today and don’t want to install Visual Studio clients on their machines.  It also improves reach by enabling some access from non-Windows clients.

TeamPlain has been in the market for about a year now and has been very successful.  Many of our VSTS customers use TeamPlain today and are very satisfied with it.  Our advisory council and other customers have been telling us for the past year that we need a web UI for VSTS and that TeamPlain would be a great solution for us.  We’ve listened, looked very closely at the product and concluded that they are right.  Today is the culmination of a long process and the beginning of another.

TeamPlain will become Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access.  Effective today, TeamPlain is available, at no additional charge, to users who own a Team Foundation Server and can be downloaded from here.  It will be accessible by any user properly licensed with a TFS CAL.  Support will continue to be provided by the current staff via the DevBiz online forums.

Over the next few months, we will be rebranding TeamPlain as a Microsoft product and running it through our release process.  When that is complete, we will be releasing it as a VSTS Power Tool, transitioning support to the Microsoft forums and beginning CSS (phone) support.  In the Orcas timeframe, we will be releasing Team System Web Access as an official, documented, localized, and officially supported component of Team Foundation Server.

A look at the product

I've included a few screen shots here to give you a flavor for what TeamPlain looks like and what it can do:

Some likely questions

What version of TeamPlain are you releasing? - The initial download that is available today is TeamPlain V1.0.  After we have run it through the Microsoft release process, we will be releasing TeamPlain version 2.0 as a VSTS Power Tool.  V2 includes some cool new features, including Viewing/Managing builds, additional version control capability, AJAX support for a more responsive experience and larger project support, and much much more.  Ultimately we will be incorporating V2 (or a derivation of it) into the official product in the Orcas timeframe.

What is the Microsoft release process? - It is a long checklist of things (I think about 20 or so) that we have to do before we release any product.  It includes security reviews, scans for geo-politically incorrect terminology, test sign-off and much more.

When is "the Orcas timeframe"? - If I told you I'd have to kill you.

No, seriously, when is it? - Seriously, I can't tell you :)  What I can say is that we have been releasing CTPs for Orcas for a good while now.  We are currently working on getting ready for Beta 1.  Keep your eyes and ears open over the coming months for more news about it.  I'll have to let you draw your own conclusions about how long it will take after Beta 1 releases.  Our philosophy is to get the product to you early, in many forms, CTPs, Betas, RCs, etc and use your feedback on when you believe it is ready to help guide us.

Why do you say "the Orcas timeframe"? - Because, as I mentioned, Orcas has been in the works for a while now and we are just adding web access to the line-up.  It's going to take us some time to work out the details of how it fits into our schedule and I am expecting that it may not actually ship on the same day as the rest of Orcas but rather in the same timeframe.

How does this relate to CodePlex? - I think of them as different things, although clearly there is some overlap.  TeamPlain and CodePlex both have web UI for some overlapping areas.  Over time, we may look to see what we can share but we'll see how that evolves.

Does this mean I don't need TeamPrise any more? - No, not if you do X-Plat development and/or want Eclipse integration.  While TeamPlain can provide some cross platform access via the browser, it is not designed to provide the full set of capabilities that a developer would use: IDE and editor integration, command-line access for scripting, full version control access, etc.

Is Microsoft using TeamPlain internally? - Some groups are, yes, but it isn't broadly used yet.  The IT group probably uses it the most.  We installed a pre-release copy on the DevDiv dogfood server to experiment with it.  We are in the process of rolling it out to all of our internal users now.  I'll probably blog about the progress of this over the next couple of months.

What happens if I call Microsoft support about TeamPlain now? - We are working with our support organization to prepare them to support the product.  They are expecting to begin supporting it when we release it as a Power Tool in a few months.  I wouldn't be surprised if you run into some people in support who don't know anything about the product today.  I expect over the next couple of weeks we will educate the front line phone representatives on how to route calls for it.  Until we begin Microsoft based support in a few months, you will be directed to the DevBiz forums for answers to your questions.

In closing

This is a big step forward for Team System and I hope you are as happy about it as I am.  The future is looking brighter every day!

Brian "

Source: Microsoft Acquires TeamPlain!

 

 

Ed K.

I recently gave a talk at the Dallas BizTalk User Group on using WMI with BizTalk Server 2004/2006.

Sorry for the delay on posting the slides and links for download.

WMI Code Creator v1.0
Scriptomatic 2.0
WMI Diagnosis Utility -- Version 2.0
WMI CIM Studio

WMI.ppt (314 KB)

 

Ed K.

I ran across the issue of my "Code Snippets Manager" not being visible in my tools menu. I searched the web for an resolution to my problem but just found other people having the same problem with no answer. So I search around the IDE for a while till I found out how to get it added to the tools menu (wasted productivity).

 Here is a screen shot of the tools menu without the "Code Snippets Manager".

 

To resolve this issue go to the Customize option in the "Tools" menu. Go to the Commands tab and select "Tools" from the listbox. On the right side you will see "Code Snippets Manager", select it and drag it to your "Tool" menu and drop it in to place.

 

 

Now you are good to go.

 

If you hate having to search the IDE for options that you cannot find easily,