The next meeting of the QLD VSTS Users Group is scheduled for this coming Friday, 18^th April. Come along and hear Carl Rogers tell us all about Improving Team Productivity via Process Enactment with Team Foundation Server.

One of the most popular “extras” for Team Foundation Server is the Team System Web Access (TSWA) power tool. This is a power tool that provides a fantastic web interface into TFS and as a power tool, it is completely free to licensed TFS users.

Hakan and the team at Microsoft have been busy enhancing TSWA 2008 and they have released a CTP of the upcoming Service Pack 1 for TSWA 2008. Hakan has all the details of What’s new in TSWA 2008 SP1 in his blog post which is well worth a read.

You can download Team System Web Access SP1 CTP here and TSWA 2008 here if you don’t already have it.

For those people wanting to keep an eye on what the product team are doing for the next release of Visual Studio Team System, the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP) is now available for download. The “Rosario April CTP” or more offically the “Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System code name “Rosario” April 2008 CTP”, provides a fantastic opportunity to provide the product team with your feedback. The CTP comes in the form of a preinstalled and configured virtual machine that you can quickly and easily get up and running with a minimum of fuss.

Providing Feedback

Feedback in the form of bugs and suggestions can be submitted via http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio. Make sure when you submit issues through Connect that you indicate the product version as being “Visual Studio Team System Code Name “Rosario” (April 2008 CTP)

The download

The virtual machine is provided as a number of compressed files totaling a little over 8Gb so I’d suggest you use a download manager such as Free Download Manager which I’ve used for some time now without issue. You can get an FDM friendly list of the download parts from Jeff’s blog post as well as a list of the new scenarios and walkthrough available with with new CTP.

The download page is available on the Microsoft website here.

Happy downloading.

I’ve been running this blog on Community Server 2.1 for quite some time now and have never got around to upgrading to a more recent version. I notice that they have just released the Community Server 2008 RC which has some great new features. In terms of my blog this is a little overkill so I have decided to run the blog using Graffiti CMS which is also from the guys at Telligent.

I’ve migrated the blog posts across, copied the images folder to a new location and will worry abut the visual appearance a little later. Hope you like the change.

The VSTS team have publicly released another three specifications for the next version of Visual Studio Team System. These are provided to the community to allow us the opportunity to provide feedback and thereby helping shape the next release.

To have your say, check out the three new specs;

• Codename “TFS Bug Submission Portal” Power Tool for Team Foundation Server 2008
  • Send Mail from TFS
    • Core Linking Work Item Tracking</ul> There is an RSS feed available to allow you to monitor future activity and a forum specifically designated to promote discussion of these specs within the community.

    A finally a great big THANKS to the team for continuing to be so open to the community and for allowing us a voice in the future of the products we use.

Last week the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here launch rolled into Perth. The trip over from Brisbane was around 5 hours including the 20 minutes we spent on the ground at Brisbane airport while the engineers repaired one of the hubcaps on our Boeing 767!  (I didn’t know there were hubcaps on 767’s either)  To top off the flight our landing in Perth reminded me a little of the Lufthansa Airbus 320 crosswind landing on YouTube but fortunately it wasn’t quite that bad.

The Perth event was held at the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre which was a perfect venue for our launch activities. Of all the cities we have done on the launch tour, Perth had the largest number of developers actually using Team Foundation Server. This was based on the number of hands that went up when I asked the question anyway.

Here’s the Visual Studio 2008 track at work in Perth

Yesterday I was in my home town, Brisbane which meant I didn’t have to get on a plane and even had the pleasure of sleeping in my own bed! The night before the wonderful folks at Microsoft took us out to Kobuki for some great food and a little fun as well. Roger’s blog post included a few photos of the dining experience.

It’s always great to present in your home town as you recognise a lot more faces in the audience and for Brisbane I had William Bartholomew join me on stage to speak about Technology One’s adoption of Team System. This was William’s largest audience and he handled it with ease.

The photographer even found time to catch Kleefy, Kyle and myself standing around in the partner pavilion.

Next week we’re off to our nation’s capital, Canberra for the last of the big shows. It just gives me enough time to get back home, swap suitcases and then off to Redmond for the MVP Summit!

Yesterday the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here launch arrived in Adelaide to be greeted with a scorching 39.7 Celsius. Fortunately I stayed in the same hotel that the event is running so I didn’t need to go outside other than to walk to the Adelaide .NET Users Group meeting on Wednesday night. Steve Riley, Senior Security Strategist at Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computer Group, was the presenter at the user group meeting and he presented a very engaging and entertaining session on security.

My session on Application Lifecycle Management with VSTS2008 went well and I did the session without wearing my back brace which I’ve had to wear for the past 5 weeks since falling off a ladder and managing to fracture my T12 vertebra. It was so much better to have freedom of movement and not have to wear an oversized shirt to hide the brace 🙂

During the launch series, I get to join Dave Glover and Andrew Coates to deliver the Visual Studio track. Here’s a couple of photos of Dave & Andrew in action!

You can check out photos from the Adelaide event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/heroeshappen/sets/72157604062509841/

Next week we’re off to the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre on the 19th March. If you’re in Perth make sure you get along to the event and say G’Day.

Yesterday the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here launch rolled into Melbourne for what is expected to be our biggest audience on the tour.

The event was held at the Melbourne Convention Centre with the Dev track running in the Latrobe theatre. I definitely prefer the tiered style seating in Melbourne over the flat floor we had in Sydney. It certainly allows you to see a lot more faces in the crowd and I find it encourages people to ask more questions as they know they can be seen.

As part of our sessions, each of the speakers in the Dev track have invited a partner to present a 5-10 minute session on what they are doing with VSTS 2008. For most of my presentations, I have the pleasure of having Carl Rogers from Object Consulting speak about their great Process MeNtOR TeamGuide product and how it can extend the value of VSTS2008. Make sure you keep an eye on Carl’s blog for some great information including a recent post on TFS Adoption within EMEA – A Process Perspective

For the Brisbane event I have William Bartholomew from Technology One presenting a small session and in Canberra it’s fellow Team System MVP, Grant Holliday up on stage with me.

Next week we’re off to the Hilton Hotel in Adelaide for the next leg of the launch tour. Spots are still available if you are in Adelaide on Thursday 13th March. Register here.

Just a quick heads-up to let everyone know that Paul Hacker has just published the March issue of the TFS Times newsletter. This month the focus is on TFS third party tools including a great review of the Attrice Team Foundation SideKicks from Eugene Zakhareyev.

Happy reading…  www.tfstimes.com

I am about to send the latest copy of my VSTS 2008 Essentials course manual off to a commercial printer for printing and rather than do the usual FTP thing, I have decided to give Windows Live SkyDrive a whirl.

Windows Live SkyDrive gives you 5Gb of storage space for free which is plenty for the average user.

By default you have a number of private folders created automatically that you keep your own personal files in.

You can then easily create Shared Folder and limit who can access these folders. You can also choose if each person is a Reader or Editor on the folder which is of course just a “Read-only” flag. All in all, while there are other vendors offering similar services in the Internet, Windows Live SkyDrive is a convenient and easy way to store files “in the cloud”.

Check it out at Windows Live SkyDrive