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.

Sorry this post is mainly for me again :(

I am building some tools to help manage the complexities that come along with Localizing an enterprise application. I will post the source(s) when I get a chance to clean everything up :)

Neutral and Specific codes for localization

Ed K.

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" />
  &nb