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.

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

TFS Administrators Toolkit 1.1 for VS 2012

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.

Minor updates to TFS 2012 Community Team Tools

Two weeks ago I got great feedback in the form of an email with a screencast from a user having a hard time to get the TFS 2012 Community Team Tools to work.  Not only was we able to figure out a solution to the original problem, he also managed to help me make the Community Team Tools better, and not only the Team Tools, the improvements and fixes was quickly incorporated into other projects I’m currently working on.

A new release
The result is the release 1.0.1 of TFS 2012 Community Team Tools. It contains minor bug fixes and improvements, such as:
•    Added a /? Option
•    Added warning message if a non-recognized command was passed.
•    Help text didn’t match parameters name.
The new release can be found at http://tfsteamtools.codeplex.com and http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/36986691-931d-4e2e-bbc2-1b2f03a4eff5

TFS Adminsitrators Toolkit released for VS2012

I have recently upgraded the TFS Administrators Toolkit to Visual Studio 2012. It's now released at Visual Studio Gallery under the exiting name TFS Administrators Toolkit for VS2012.
   
Technical update 
The Visual Studio 2012 version uses the TFS 2012 object model and integrates directly into the new Team Explorer and in the "new" Team Explorer Home dropdown.
Apart from the technical modifications there is no new functionality in this release. The 2010 version remains unchanged .

You can find the different versions at

• VS 2010
  http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/11f5e313-ced1-4713-9794-d7300c7d12e0
• VS 2012
  http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/96a425aa-9ef0-4a92-b874-217d544a74bf

I also done experimental work with a stand-alone version, but I don't plan to make a public release of it to Visual Studio Gallery. 

Mockups for Test Plan Builder

Working with customers and real life projects with Microsoft Test Manager sometimes exposes you to situations where everything is not so clear and simple as you’re used to. The ALM Rangers Test Tooling and Test Release Management guidance tries to address some of those situations.

Tooling for Test Release Management
But even if there is guidance, it only tells you what you need to do , it doesn’t do it for you, and today it’s can be a lot of repetitive manual work doing Test Release Management.  Building the PoC for a UI for Deep Copy test suites I started to think about what kind of tooling would be needed to ease or remove some of the pain points and manual work related to MTM and Test Release Management


Mockups for Test Plan Builder
With some Ideas for what’s missing then building a new test plan in one hand, and a bunch of code and “tools” used in different situations in the other hand I started to think about putting them all together.  To figure out how, and what’s missing I made a mockup using the new PowerPoint mockup features of VS 2012. After trying out some ideas I ended up with something like this. If you have any feedback thoughts or comments, I would love to hear them …

TFS Test Plan Builder project 

As a first step towards realizing the Test Plan Builder I’ve started a codeplex project, TFS Test Plan Builder and started to put together the basic parts. It's still a long way to go before it will be ready for release.

Proof of Concept for a UI for Deep Copy test suites

Microsoft introduced a new feature in Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) 2012 – Deep Copy of test suites. Unfortunately it’s not accessible through the MTM user interface, instead it’s only available through a command line utility. It’s not the best of user experiences..

The new Deep Copy feature
There is a Copy Test Suite feature in MTM 2010 , but it only copies a test suite so the new test suite links to the same test cases. The new Deep Copy feature in MTM 2012 copy test suites also, but it also creates copies of every test case and re-link all links in the suite. This is a great feature if you need to preserve the state of your test cases or create a baseline.

Deep copy exposed through the TFS API
Luckily the TFS API exposes methods for the new deep copy feature. The API version is, as well as the command line implementation, asynchronous. Using the API to do a deep copy is quite simple if you have the Id’s for everything. It’s actually more work building an user Interface to present a test plan and making it possible to view and select the test suites in the test plan.

An embryo for future tooling
Building the UI for the Deep Copy PoC got me thinking. There is a lot of manual work involved then building a new test plan then moving from one sprint to another, or then moving to a new release. Building the UI for the Deep Copy PoC soon got me thinking about adding other features to improve the experience of building a Test Plan.

The source
This PoC is build against the Release Candidate of VS and TFS. As usually I’ve zipped and uploaded the PoC source to my sky drive. You will find it here: https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=5D46CAE8C0008CF0&id=5D46CAE8C0008CF0%211862