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.

There is a new book about VSX out from Wrox called “Professional Visual Studio Extensibility” and looks pretty promising if you are first starting out to learn add-ins and VSPackages.  It's actually the first one that I've seen get released so I hope it does well.  VSX is a topic that I have a keen interest in.

• A quick overview of Visual Studio Shell and Domain-Specific Languages Tools
• Techniques for creating, debugging, testing, and deploying your add-ins
• Ways to work with user interface elements, Windows Forms, and controls via code in your add-ins
• Steps for extending Visual Studio functionality using VSPackages
• Tips for writing and managing code snippets to make your coding process easier
• Using Visual Studio templates to save time when writing code for common projects
• How to use MSBuild to write custom builds for Visual Studio and .NET applications
• New techniques for recording, developing, debugging, deploying, and running macros

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.

It's available now on MSDN Subscriber Downloads.  It's only available on the front of the Subscriptions site for right now.  It may not show up immediately so you might want to log off of your Windows Live ID and log back in while you're on the same page.

Ed B.

Brian Harry on eScrum TFS 2008 compatibility.

eScrum and TFS 2008

*Sorry folks this blog post is mainly a book mark for me so I can google my brain later.

Ed K.

I was just reminded this morning by an old colleague that Ed K. and I have been slacking tremendously since we haven't had any blog posts since November :)  I want to wish everyone a happy new year and share some news.  Last week, I moved back to Dallas and will be working remotely from home.  It's new for me so I'm still trying to get into the groove of things.  Scott Hanselman's latest posts about being a remote worker have been extremely interesting to me.

It's been a little hectic in the last few weeks.  I needed to wrap a few things up before I went on vacation at the office.  Also, we had our final NJ .NET User's Group meeting for the year which turned out to be terrific.  Since it's a new year, we also had announced a new leader - Jess Chadwick.  It has been a privilege to serve as a leader of the group for 2007.   I really want to thank Jess, Tony, Ambrose, Kathleen, and Peter for the help during the year in leading the group.  I'm looking forward to rejoining the Dallas .NET community and also the newly formed Dallas VSTS Users Group (How exciting!)

From there, there was:  packing, cleaning, movers picking up, cleaning, driving, getting the new place, movers dropping off, unpacking, getting new furniture, setting up the new office, having out-of-town guests, whew... and getting ready to host a party!

After waking up from a very long but extremely fun night on New Year's Eve (which ended up being my housewarming party as well since all of my friends were in town,) I was surprised to find an e-mail in my inbox:

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award!

Oh I was/still am pretty excited! :)  It's exciting to be working at Infragistics for many reasons.  They have been the most supportive company that I have worked for when it comes to being involved in the developer community which is one of the primary reasons I came aboard a year ago.  Describing Infragistics as "community-friendly" would be putting it mildly!  There's a total of SEVEN MVPs now at Infragistics which is a testament to the quality of people that I have the privilege to work with every day.  We really do have the best people in every department around the company.

There are so many people who really have been extremely helpful to me.  I want to specifically thank Ambrose for his mentorship as my coach for the majority of 2007.  He has been very influential in my career and cared about my professional growth.  Thank you!  So many people deserve Kudos:  Ed K., Jess, Tony, Jason B., Peter, Grant, Kathleen, Devin, Josh, Tim, Caleb, Omar, Fraser, Jason T., Chuck, Mel

I'm still working on getting my profile to get it all set up with my information so for now it's a work in progress:  My MVP Profile

All in all, I'm looking forward to the new year and what exciting things are in store both at Infragistics and with my continued involvement with the developer community.  It's going to be an awesome year!

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.

I'm excited to announce that we have finally released a free tool to help you visualize resource usage in your WPF applications.  Kudos to the team on a job well done!

Pistachio helps you by:

• Seeing what resources are being used.
• Finding unused resources.
• Displaying the types of resources being used.
• Filtering, Sorting, etc.
• Cool Visualizations of Usage

If you were at either of my talks at Boston ReMix or Tulsa Tech Fest you got a pre-release preview but now it's all ready for you to use!  Please let us know if you have any suggestions or problems while using.  There are several more features being planned so let us know what's important to you.

DOWNLOAD HERE:  Pistachio - WPF Resource Visualizer

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.

VS 2008 has added a new feature called Code Metrics (CM). Code Metrics is a way to produce actionable information on a project or solution. When you generate CM on your code it produces such things as Maintainability Index, Cyclomatic Complexity, Class Coupling, Inheritance depth and lines of code.

Here is a brief description of each:
Cyclomatic Complexity: How many paths of execution are in your code. i.e. Enter a Method, That's 1, Hit an If, That's 2, Hit an Else, That's 3. This has a Cyclomatic complexity of 3. Here is more robust definition.
Class Coupling: Indicates how many other classes relate to this class
Inheritance depth: The level of inheritance
Lines of code: Self explanatory, everyone's favorite
Maintainability Index: An aggregate of the above metrics.

Each of these are shown at the assembly level then it allows you to drill down to the namespace, class and method level.

Why is this so cool? Being able to produce and show these metrics allows you to better manage existing code and produce more manageable new code, which in turn pushes you and your team to code to better standards. These metrics are actionable, meaning they enable you to do something with your code by visually displaying the information and giving you the ability to actually assign a work item right from the Code Metrics result window and attach the information to it as well. 

This is only one tool in the suite of tools within VS 2008 that will enable and guide you to produce better, more secure and performant code. Harness the power of them all!

The Code Metrics result window; user adding a work item based off metrics:

Work item created from Metrics. Notice the how the work item has all the information attached via the "History" tab.

Ed K.

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.

I recently gave a presentation @ Microsoft on Visual Studio 2008 Team System to a crowd of about 40. The presentation was an all day event where we discussed existing and new features to Team System 2008.

Slide Deck:   Tech Briefing.rar (3.41 MB)   
Presenters:   Ed Kisinger, Sogeti  Topic: Architect/Developer 
                   Tony Mocella, Sogeti Topic: Project Management
                   Brent Lintz, Sogeti Topic: Build/Version Control

Ed K.

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.

I switched from Sprint to AT&T as my cell phone carrier recently. Why? Sprint's Customer Service Sucks!... I will leave it at that. So far AT&T is awesome. I picked up the BlackJack as my new phone. This phone is really for the working professional, I got the unlimited data plan so I am able to read email, cruise the Internet, IM, Google Map, monitor my stocks and use my phone as a modem. Life is really great with this phone.

If you are looking for a great work phone, then I would recommend the BlackJack.

Ed K.