There’s a new book that I was able to contribute to as a Technical Editor that was released.  Following the Silverlight 3 official RTW release, you might want to hop in quickly and start learning about all of the awesome new stuff available.  I knew each of the authors personally and you’ll enjoy reading & working through all of the examples in the book.  Have fun!

Disclaimer:  That’s my personal opinion.  I don’t receive any royalties off of the book sales.

Ed Blankenship

Just wanted to take a few seconds to post the slide deck I’m using for my Real World TFS sessions.  I’ll post a link to the recording of the MVP TV session earlier today when it’s made available!

Ed Blankenship

Also really excited about doing my first ever MVP TV set up by the Microsoft MVP program.  Hope to see you there!  We have an extra thirty minutes at the end so be sure to bring your questions.

MVP TV: Real World TFS: Tips for a Successful Team System Implementation

Wednesday, July 15^th, 2009 | 9:00am – 10:30am (PDT, Redmond time) or 12:00pm – 1:30pm (EDT, New York City time)

Targeted: This Product Group Interaction is open to  all Developer MVPs in all Technical Expertise and  public audience.

So you’ve decided that Visual Studio Team System & Team Foundation Server is going to bring your organization added value (because it will :)) but what do you do now?  Please join Ed Blankenship as he covers the 2.5 years of successful implementation of VSTS and the experience of that journey at Infragistics, the world’s leading maker of software development tools.  The session intends to cover each phase of the implementation of all affected areas for a smooth adoption:  Version Control, Builds, Work Item Tracking, global deployment, moving multiple teams, training, automated testing, migration from legacy systems, and integration with other systems and TFS.  The goal will be to go through at a high-level of what it takes to make you successful by learning from the challenges and obstacles overcome.  We’ll also look in the future with VSTS 2010 and see how strategic planning will help make a successful adoption of the new features in the upcoming 2010 release.  The session is led by a Microsoft MVP (Team System) & Champ who has been in the trenches during the whole implementation.

Prerequisites:  A healthy attitude in learning from other peoples challenges and a strong desire to make real change within your organization!

About Ed Blankenship: Ed is a Microsoft MVP, Microsoft Certified Application Developer, and works as the Release Engineering Manager at Infragistics, makers of the world's leading presentation layer tools and components. His expertise consists of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server. He is also a technical evangelist for Rich Client applications (primarily Windows Forms & Windows Presentation Foundation.) He has been a technical editor for several Silverlight books, an article author, and has spoken at various user groups, events, and conferences.

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Ed Blankenship

While I’m up in New Jersey working at the Infragistics headquarters office, I’m going to have the privilege of speaking at the New York City VSTS User Group on July 28, 2009 at 6:30 PM.  Come see me if you’re in the area!  Because of security concerns at the building, you do need to register ahead of time if you’re planning to attend.

Real World TFS: Tips for a Successful Team System Implementation

Description:
So you've decided that Visual Studio Team System & Team Foundation Server is going to bring your organization added value (because it will :)) but what do you do now? Please join Ed Blankenship as he covers the 2.5 years of successful implementation of VSTS and the experience of that journey at Infragistics, the world's leading maker of software development tools. The session intends to cover each phase of the implementation of all affected areas for a smooth adoption: Version Control, Builds, Work Item Tracking, global deployment, moving multiple teams, training, automated testing, migration from legacy systems, and integration with other systems and TFS. The goal will be to go through at a high-level of what it takes to make you successful by learning from the challenges and obstacles overcome. We'll also look in the future with VSTS 2010 and see how strategic planning will help make a successful adoption of the new features in the upcoming 2010 release. The session is led by a Microsoft MVP (Team System) & Champ who has been in the trenches during the whole implementation.

Presenter: Ed Blankenship

Bio:
Ed is a Microsoft MVP, Microsoft Certified Application Developer, and works as the Release Engineering Manager at Infragistics, makers of the world's leading presentation layer tools and components. His expertise includes Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server. He is also a technical evangelist for Rich Client applications (primarily Windows Forms & Windows Presentation Foundation.) He has been a technical editor for several Silverlight books, an article author, and has spoken at various user groups, events, radio shows, and conferences.

Date/Time:  07-28-2009 6:30 - 8:00 PM

Location: Microsoft Offices in NYC at 1290 Avenue of Americas, 6th Floor

Click here to Register

Ed Blankenship

Dear Reader,

I have decided to accept a Senior ALM Consultant position with the premier Australian consulting company, Readify.

It’s always a tough decision to move on from a company you’ve really enjoyed being at.  I’ve really enjoyed the work that I have had the opportunity to do at Infragistics.  There are so many really great people at Infragistics that I truly will miss working with and hope to see in the future.  Some of my really good personal friends have been fellow colleagues at Infragistics which just shows you the type of culture that we have.  I’ve had an amazing team that I’ve worked with as the Release Engineering Manager and they have been truly able to make a positive change for the organization.  They’ve always been there to help make miracles and put in those really really long hours at release crunch time.  So really, I need to tip my hat to each of them for just being awesome:  Brian, Geoff, Kareen, and Jason.

I’m really excited about this new opportunity.  I never would have thought in my wildest dreams that I’d be living abroad but the idea grew more and more on me as this opportunity came up.  I hear Australia is a beautiful country with an amazing culture.  I’m not currently planning for this to be a permanent move whatsoever but everyone I talk to about it says that I’m not going to want to come back! :) 

I’ve heard about Readify for several years now as a Visual Studio Team System professional any time I hear about Australia & TFS/VSTS/ALM.  I’m really looking forward being able to visit multiple customer sites again and coming up with solutions to their ALM problems.  It’s been a while since I’ve been an ALM consultant so I’m looking forward to the variety.  Even more, as an MVP I’m looking forward to a whole new set of venues to get involved with the community on a new continent.  I think I’m going to have a busy schedule!

There are tons of different things for me to solve as an American citizen living abroad.  It’s interesting that Grant Holliday just made the opposite move almost a year ago and I plan on doing the same thing as he has and try to write about the differences between the two countries.  Hopefully you’ll find it as interesting as I did with Grant’s story.

I’m planning a really simple move:  packing up a few suitcases of clothes and jumping on a plane.  Hoping that works out well for me! :)

I have decided to continue working with Infragistics until the beginning of August to wrap things up and hopefully train my replacement.  I guess the cat is out of the bag with the official job opening announcement on our website listed under Research & Development.  That position is listed to be the back-fill headcount for my current position.  Finally – I’d like to ask you to help us out:  If you’ve heard about our TFS instance and VSTS implementation from some of my user group talks or the Radio TFS episode and are interested (or know someone awesome who might be) in continuing this exciting work, please let me know!  You can send me a quick note to ed at infragistics dot com or use any of the contact links from my blog website.

Take care!

Ed Blankenship

I’m up really early this morning.  I’m about to head to the airport to spend my Independence Day weekend in the Carolinas for some much needed beach vacation and visit with friends.  Thankfully, I didn’t miss Martin Woodward letting me know that the latest Radio TFS episode was made available just a few moments ago that includes my interview about our use of TFS and Visual Studio Team System at Infragistics.  It’s a longer episode than normal so it’s perfect if you’re going to be spending some time at the beach like me and listen to a fun talk.  We both really enjoyed chatting for this episode so we hope you enjoy it as well!

Using TFS with Ed Blankenship

In this episode we sit down and chat with Ed Blankenship about the use of Team Foundation Server at Infragistics. Ed has had some interesting challenges and experiences in running their TFS instance.  Additionally they have done some fairly advanced integration work which we discuss in detail.  This is a double-length show, so hopefully plenty of stuff to enjoy if you are sunning yourself on a beach somewhere.

Ed is the Release Engineering Manager at Infragistics, makers of the world's leading presentation layer tools and components.  He is also a Microsoft MVP in Visual Studio Team System.

     Play Now: Using TFS with Ed Blankenship

As the Release Engineering Manager, he leads the Release Engineering Department which is responsible for automated builds, creating product installers, packaging source code for customers, source configuration management/version control, metrics, release management, work item tracking, licensing enforcement, and development of internal productivity tools.  The department also is responsible for TFS Operations & Maintenance.

Ed has been a technical editor for the Wrox Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 2 Developer's Guide, and Silverlight 2 Bible books, author of numerous articles, and has spoken at various user groups, events, and conferences.

Links from the show:

• Ed's Blog
• Microsoft Process Template
• Martin's Blog Post on Check-in Policies
• How to turn on Activity Logging with TFS 2005

As usual send any feedback to radiotfs@gmail.com.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions based on the Radio TFS chat.  I’m more than happy to get them answered for you!

Take care,

Ed B.

Come join!  Here’s the website and the details.

Website:  http://www.tsug-ve.com/

JUNE EMEA Meeting
Meeting Date: Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Time: 10:00AM PDT/SLT (18:00 UTC)
Location:  Microsoft Island in Second Life

Real World TFS:  Tips for a Successful Team System Implementation

OK, you’ve decided that Visual Studio Team System & Team Foundation Server is going to bring your organization added value (because it will :)) but what do you do now?  This session will cover the 2.5 year successful implementation of VSTS and the experience of that journey at Infragistics, the world’s leading maker of software development tools.  The session intends to cover over each phase of the implementation over all of the affected areas for a smooth adoption:  Version Control, Builds, Work Item Tracking, global deployment, moving multiple teams, training, automated testing, migration from legacy systems, and integration with other systems and TFS.  The goal will be to go through at a high-level what it takes to make you successful by learning from the challenges and obstacles overcome.  We’ll also look to the future with VSTS 2010 and see how strategic planning will help make a successful adoption of the new features in the upcoming 2010 release.  The session is led by a Team System MVP & Champ who has been in the trenches during the whole implementation.

Prerequisites:  A healthy attitude from learning from other’s challenges and a strong desire to make real change at your organization!

Take care,

Ed B.

I’ll have to admit, the Easy Assist feature is not very discoverable if you have a Live Meeting account but it’s really really really useful!  So imagine you have a coworker or a mother who needs help but they’re not where you’re at.  There are a lot of different ways for people to do remote assistance support but if you have a Live Meeting account there’s another way that I’ve been using:  Easy Assist.  It’s the same app that lots of support professionals at Microsoft Product Support & Services use to help customers remotely.

BTW:  If you’re an MVP, you have received a complimentary Live Meeting account as part of your benefits!

Downloads for End-users who need support

• Download the Microsoft Easy Assist support console for joining an Easy Assist session
• Download the Microsoft Easy Assist Safe Mode Client for troubleshooting within Windows Safe Mode

Downloads for Support Agent

• Download the Easy Assist Launchpad for setting up Easy Assist sessions
• Download the Microsoft Easy Assist support console for joining an Easy Assist session

Easy Assist Launchpad

So the first thing you should do to help create support sessions quickly as a “support agent” is get the Easy Assist Launchpad installed so it sits in your tray and waits for you.  When you launch it for the first time, it’ll ask you to put in your Live Meeting credentials.  These are the same that you would use when you setup & configure the Live Meeting client. 

After you have finished that, the Launchpad will sit in your system tray and has a few options available for you:

I’ve went ahead and chosen “Create Session” and I’m just going to put in something to let my Mom (and I) know this is for her session.

After, creating the session you’ll have the option to join the session yourself and also send the invite by e-mail (using your default e-mail application) to the person you’re trying to support.  Look at the URL… you’ll notice it’s very similar to a Live Meeting invite but instead it has the “joinEA?” inside of it.  This is important because this is what makes the end user experience better for the support agent and the person being supported because it will fire off the Easy Assist client instead of the full Live Meeting client.

Support Agent Features

Once you’ve fired off the Easy Assist support agent client, you’ll be able to see the other support agents that are attending as well as the person(s) you are trying to support.  You can request that they reboot, share their screen, share your screen, request to control their session, send files, and more.  Support agent screens:

All the end user sees is a small window that’s out of view.  After the session, it even asks the end user if they would like to uninstall the Easy Assist client since it’s not needed anymore!  How nice?!  It even works if the customer has booted in safe mode.  Very handy at times.

You can see how it’s super easy to escalate a support call from a family member, an IM/e-mail from a co-worker, or even setting up a session for you to get help from a support agent who doesn’t have remote assistance provided by their employer.  Hope this is helpful to you!

Ed B.

This has been out for a little while but wanted to make sure that you knew about it as well!

Our Director of Product Development here at Infragistics, Joe Croney, has been working on a personal side project of creating an iPhone app that will connect to Team Foundation Server.  He’s got a BETA posted in the Apple iTunes store now.  At the moment it only supports checking on Builds but I know he’s starting a backlog.

More screenshots and an FAQ are available at the website:  http://www.tfstogo.com/

Joe is looking for some feedback and any bugs so if you find some feel free to report them at support@tfstogo.com.  Congrats Joe!

FYI:  We’ve found that if you connect over VPN in the iPhone that sometimes a local DNS name isn’t resolved correctly.  You can correct this by putting in the hard-coded IP address of the TFS server instead.

Have fun and enjoy!

Ed B.

It’s been pretty quiet around this blog for quite some time now.  Just been busy traveling to TechEd North America and back to our office in New Jersey.  Lots going on!  However, no one ever has enough time to get everything done :)

I’m going to be a little more demanding on myself to get through my blog topic backlog that I’ve been keeping for a while.  I think I’m up to 19 at the moment so I need to get it flushed out!  I keep a list alongside my To-Do list in OneNote about different topics that I come across that I blog about.  Usually they are from problems that I see day to day that other people probably will want to solve at some point (I always archive the screenshots so I can use them in my blog posts later.)  Other topics that end up on the list are in response to something I’ve done while traveling.  For example, Martin Woodward and I had the chance to record a Radio TFS episode (not yet aired) where we talked about our implementation of Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team System at Infragistics.  I think it was a great session and definitely looking forward to it getting out in the wild.  There were a few topics that we talked of stumbles we’ve encountered over the last two years and how we ended up solving them.  The goal for us was to get those out in the public since others may be experiencing the same hurdles and looking for resources on how to solve them.  It’s more along the lines of “hey, here’s our story so you can learn from our mistakes.”  I hope you find them useful.  On this blog, I’ll start talking about some of those points that we brought up in more detail since the radio show has to be reduced to a reasonable amount of time :)  Some of the stuff we talked about was just down-right cool!  More details to come…

So, dear reader, I am pledging to you to get through my current blog topic backlog by the end of June.  Let me know if you would like me to write about anything in particular!

Take care,

Ed B.

P.S.  I cross-post between my Infragistics Blog and my personal blog.  Some posts don’t end up on my Infragistics Blog site so be sure to check http://www.edsquared.com/ from time to time where my long-time colleague Ed Kisinger and I blog.  If you’d like to subscribe to that feed, the RSS address is:  RSS for Posts