New Release of TFS Scorecard for TFS 2012.2

The TFS Scorecard is one of my oldest projects, starting back at the tfs2005 days and based on Microsoft TFS dogfooding queries. With each new TFS version there has been a new release of the TFS Scorecard, adopting to changes in TFS and adding features.

Dependency on the TFS database schema
The TFS Scorecard is based on the Microsoft TFS dogfooding queries against the TFS Collection database, and therefore has a dependency on the TFS database schema. As you might know the TFS database schema is not public and subject to change with every release. Historical those schema changes has been limited to the major version upgrades every second year, and Microsoft has provided us with new updated dogfooding queries for each release.

TFS2012 Update 2 schema changes
With the new release cadence of TFS releasing new features with quarterly updates, the speed of the schema changes has picked up also. Although not all schema changes affects the dogfooding queries, but the TFS 2012.2 update did. Not much, but enough to break TFS Scorecard report.
TFS Scorecard 2012.2 released
After an update on the queries was published, I’ve implemented it and pushed a new release compatible with the TFS 2012.2 release. You can find the release at http://tfsscorecard.codeplex.com
Note that the new release only works with TFS 2012.2 or later versions, if your running TFS 2012 RTM download the old TFS 2012 RTM release

New Features in the TFS Scorecard 2012.2
Apart from fixing the dogfooding queries, I’ve also managed to do some work on the Activity logging part. One of the major things is that I redone the translation of the logs to user friendly names in the report. Hopefully it will make the report easier to read for you.  I also introduced some structure to group different tools and releases together. Making it easier to spot both who on VS 2008, 2010 and 2012 and at the same time be able to drill down to the different 2012.x updates.

Future directions of the TFS ScorecardA lot have happened since 2005, new report and visualization tools, clouds and new access methods for consuming data, and the new release cadence of TFS. It got me thinking about the future for the TFS Scorecard. Perhaps it would be time to split the TFS Scorecard report into independent peace’s and even moving some of the pieces to other technical solutions. Nothing is decided yet, so If you have any thoughts or ideas on this, I would appreciate the feedback.

Minor update: Tfs Admin Toolkit 1.3.1

I just uploaded a minor update to the TFS Admin Toolkit, addressing some user feedback and fixing some minor bugs. The biggest thing would be support for multiple filename masks!

You can find the new version at Visual Studio Gallery http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/96a425aa-9ef0-4a92-b874-217d544a74bf

New release: Tfs Admin Toolkit 1.3

So it’s time again, a rainy day or two in an otherwise warm and sunny summer vacation, and a polite request in the same direction as my previous thoughts and I suddenly I had improved the Find In File feature.  I had also made some improvements to the Test Attachment Sizes feature earlier (the code for them have been available on CodePlex http://TfsAdminToolkit.codeplex.com).

Putting them both together and it's time for a new release of tfs Admin Toolkit 1.3 to Visual Studio Gallery, you can find the new version at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/96a425aa-9ef0-4a92-b874-217d544a74bf

Preview and Open File in Find In Files
I made two improvements to the Find In Files feature, the first one is adding a preview pane showing the text and the matching string marked, from the selected file in the search result table , as shown on this picture.

The second improvement is perhaps a bit harder to notice, but if you right click (or double click) on a row on the search result and select open file, Visual Studio will open up the file and navigate to the line with your search match.

Splitting test attachment cleaning jobs
If you’re cleaning out large amounts of test attachments you may run into problems like performance, availability and even timeouts. To avoid those problems you may need to clean out your test attachments at small chunks, by manually editing the test cleaning config file and running the cleaner job multiple times, typically limit the date/age span for the clean, for each chunk.

I added the capability split a cleaning job into smaller chunks by age and automatically generate config files and execute statements. 


You can also select file types to include in the cleaning by selecting them in the UI.

By overriding those values, the tool will create project specific copies of the config file and modify the project specific config files for you. I also added a very basic capability to copy the content of the main grid to the clipboard.

My first book project completed - Pro Team Foundation Services

I’ve just completed one of the most fun and challenging hobby project I ever committed to. For the last 10 weeks I’ve been writing on a book on Microsoft’s hosted Team Foundation Services, together with 3 of my friends and colleagues Mattias Olausson, Joakim Rossberg and Jakob Ehn. It’s my first book project and to me it’s amazing to see the hard team work resulted in a real book – Pro Team Foundation Services, that’s now available in the stores now.

Writing a book – let’s make it challenging
Writing a book can be a challenge, but this project’s had two extra challenges. The first was a 10 weeks hard none moveable deadline. We had 10 weeks to get the Book done, turning it from a rough Table of Content to a 400 page book.
The second challenge was to write a book on a moving target like Microsoft hosted Team Foundation Service. Microsoft deploys a new version every third week, with new improvements and features. Thanks to the cooperation and support from Microsoft and hard work, we managed to align our plans and the book to Microsoft planed releases.

A book project is Team Work
As I said this was my first book project, even though I had some thoughts about writing earlier, but I can’t overstate how happy and grateful I am that I jumped aboard, and for the phenomenal team that worked together to make it happened.  Working with three other Authors with experience helped me a lot. But there is much more than just an author behind a book, there is a complete team with Book Editors, Technical Reviewers and many other people contributing -Thanks Mark, Matthew, Mary and Jonathan and the rest of the Apress team. But we also worked closely with other MVP’s and Microsoft Product Groups - Thanks Terje, Jamie, Will, Ravi, Anu, Vijay, Ed and Brian thanks for your invaluable support, input and feedback.

The book Pro Team Foundation ServicesI might as well tell you something about the book also  Pro Team Foundation Services aims to help you to implement agile and ALM practices with Microsoft Team Foundation Services. From deciding whether or not you actually should use the hosted service or not, to having your project setup, planned, developed, tested and released using agile practices.

You can read more about the book at Apress or Amazon .

I definitely learned a lot writing the book and I hope you will find the book useful.

TFS Community Branch Tool released at Visual Studio Gallery

I’ve  just released the Community Branch Tool at Visual Studio Gallery. It's is based on the ALM Rangers Quick Response Code Sample Tfs Branch Tool. And Im now converting it to an Community project to continue develop it, and make make the tools easily available and accessible for everyone.

Links and locations
You will find the Community Tfs Team Tools at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ce9651af-671c-4148-987f-a91820646031 and the source code will be published at https://tfsbranchtool.codeplex.com/

Demo Video
Willy Peter Schaub, has made a video demonstrating the feature set of the ALM Rangers Branch Tool on channel9  http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Quick-tour-of-the-TFS-Branch-Tool-VS-Extension. For an in-depth session about the architecture of the tool please refer to
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/RangersTalk-An-insight-into-the-inner-world-of-the-Quick-Response-TFS-Branch-Tool


Based on the ALM Rangers Quick Response Code sample
The TFS Community Branch Tools Project is based on the ALM Rangers Quick Response Code Sample Tfs Branch Tool. If you want to know more about the ALM Rangers or the Quick Response Sample that started it all, please read the following posts
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2012/06/22/introducing-the-visual-studio-alm-rangers.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2012/11/22/quick-response-sample-visual-studio-extension-to-support-the-alm-rangers-branching-and-merging-guidance.aspx

New release: Tfs Admin Toolkit 1.2

It’s been a while since the last update, but yesterday I released an update of the TFS Administrators Toolkit. Most of the new features was implemented months ago, and the source has been available in the CodePlex project, http://TfsAdminToolkit.codeplex.com.  Before I published a new release of the tool on the VS Gallery, I wanted to fix some bugs and try to address some of the feedback I got.
 
Find In Files integrated in source control explorer
One of the improvements I’ve made is to integrate the Find In Files feature into Source Control Explorer by adding a context menu. Now you can right click on any folder and Select Find In Files to do a recursive search in that folder. I’ve also, hopefully, fixed some bugs reported.

Improvements for Test Attachments Sizes
I made some UI improvements, like encapsulating the display of Total test attachments sizes in an expandable section. I’ve also added support for the 2012 version of TestAttachmentCleaner, as well as some other minor improvements.

Update Reports and Portals
The Update Reports features has been updated and is now called Update Reports and Portals. In the new implantation you can now select if you want to either update reports, portals or both for existing team projects. I also improved the logging features by parsing the log file for pushing new reports or portals and offers a way to easy open the logfiles.

New release of TFS 2012 Community Tfs Team Tools

One of the things I like with publishing tools and sources is that sometimes you get feedback from users who actually uses and benefits from your creations. It’s a rewarding feeling then someone takes their time to share their experiences, good or/and bad.

The one thing that’s even more rewarding in then someone not only uses it, but also get involved to make it better. 

New features added by Jesse Houwing

This is the case in the new release of the TfsTeamTools, Jesse contacted me to inform that he had extended the tool with a couple of new features he needed, and offered to help get they implement in the TfsTeamTools project. So this community project got one contributor added and a new release

This is a short description of the added features, for more details please refer to Jesse’s excellent post. 

• Set the picture for a user
  In TFS2012 the user can upload a picture to your profile The problem is that it’s all manual work required by each user. With this new feature you can now upload pictures from the command line instead, opening up for bulk operations and automation.
  http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2013/01/set-your-tfs-profile-or-team-image-from.html
  
  
• Convert security groups to a teams
  If you handle multiple teams in a team project, you probably did create a security group in TFS. Now you can use this tool to upgrade security groups to a fully supported TFS2012 teams.
  http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2013/02/converting-group-to-team-in-tfs-2012.html

New release available on CodePlex
To make is easily available we published a beta release on codeplex. Once we have done a more extended testing on it we will make a stable release and also publish the new version to Visual Studio Gallery

An amazing start of 2013

The first day of 2013 started with nice sunny weather, a good ski trip, a cold bear and a pleasant surprise in my inbox:

Congratulations 2013 Microsoft MVP!

Dear Mattias Skold,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Visual Studio ALM technical communities during the past year.

I’m both honored and proud for the recognition, but also for being a part of this friendly and open ALM community, the congratulations I got from friends, fellow ALM Rangers, MVP's and other community members is an award in itself. 2013 couldn’t have started better!!!