One of the great new features available in the Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 Beta is the new support for both Basic and Digest authentication, all compliments of a new ISAPI filter that enables this. This was one of the features I was most looking forward to as it now allows external users to access your TFS server using Basic/Digest Auth over SSL without the need for a VPN connection.

If this is something of interest to you, check out the two new walkthroughs on the VSTS Education blog.

Walkthrough: Setting up Team Foundation Server with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and an ISAPI Filter

Walkthrough: Setting up Team Foundation Server to Require HTTPS and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

I read on Rob’s blog this morning that my good friend Boon Tiong Lim has been renewed as a Team System MVP for another year. There are five new Team System MVPs and four renewals announced for October. Rob’s Blog post has all the details.

Congratulations to all the new Team System MVPs as well as those being renewed!

One of my goals for this afternoon was to get my first look at the beta of the first service pack for both Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server. The first step was to create a new virtual client so 30 minutes later I had Windows XP Pro with SP2 installed and I was installing Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite. While Team Suite installed on the client I fired up a new virtual server instance running Windows 2003 Standard Edition and set to work on a new TFS installation. Thanks to some nice hardware and plenty of practice, this was all done in a little over an hour and I did a quick Windows Update to make sure I was full patched and up to date. I created a new team project and confirmed everything appeared to be working as planned. So far so good

Installing TFS Service Pack 1 Beta

On my TFS virtual server I kicked off the SP install with a double click on the VS80sp1-KB922996-X86-Beta-ENU.exe file. A couple of clicks on a dialog box or two followed by no more than 2 minutes and I received a message saying the service pack has successfully installed. I click on the OK button and I’m returned to my desktop. Mmmm.. Easy and a little underwhelming so far

A quick peek at the http://servername:8080/VersionControl/v1.0/Repository.asmx/GetRepositoryProperties revealed an interesting change after the service pack was applied.

 TFS 1.0

 TFS 1.0 SP1 (Beta)

 

 

Installing VS2005 Service Pack 1 Beta

On my Windows XP Pro client virtual machine, I doubled clicked the VS80sp1-KB918525-X86-Beta-ENU.exe file. Again the requisite confirmation dialog boxes and I’m faced with the multipling green blocks of a progress bar. After about 5 minutes 50 minutes, things are looking a lot better and a quick run of VSTS shows the following update. 

Well, the works done now and the service pack has been applied. You’ll need to wait for the next post to see what I get up to with it

[Update: Thanks to my good friend Martin for pointing out my incorrect install time for the VS2005 SP1 beta install. The 5 minutes should have been more like 50 minutes!!. I walked away during the install for about an hour and did the estimate based on the first progress bar only.]

 NOTE: While I have chosen to upgrade both my VSTS client and my TFS server to SP1, you should note that you do not need to upgrade these together if you do not wish to. The client and server are completely compatible in both directions.

Well there’s just one week to go until we kick off the VSTSTechBrekkie series in Brisbane. All the details can be found at www.vststechbrekkie.com but in summary…
 
Session 1: 6th Oct 2006 – “Best Practices: Driving up quality using VSTS” with Anthony Borton
Session 2: 13th Oct 2006 – “Intro to VS team edition for Database Pros” with Greg Low
Session 3: 20th Oct 2006 – “End to end build automation using Team Build” with William Bartholomew
Session 4: 27th Oct 2006 – “Best Practices: Driving up quality using VSTS (Test & Build)” with Charles Sterling
 
Breakfast is available 7:30-8:00 with the sessions running 8:00-9:00 each Friday during October. The venue is the Microsoft Theatre, level 9, WaterFront Place in Brisbane.

I’ll also provide a little advanced notice of the Hands on Lab  day planned for Friday 10th November. We haven’t finalised the exact details yet but these will be published on this blog and the VSTSTechBrekkie website as soon as things are confirmed.
 
As a community event, there is no cost for this but you will need to register on the web site to help us ensure the catering is appropriate. For anyone that can make it you’d be very welcome.

I noticed this morning that Brian Harry posted a complete list of all the bugs that have been fixed in the TFS Service Pack 1 Beta. In his post he states;

Well, I’m going to try to beat a new path here.  We’re trying to be more transparent about what we are doing, when we are doing it and why we are doing it.  The downside of that can be that we go to far and get beaten over the head with the information we provide 🙂

Let me applaud  the team for this decision and I for one won’t be beating anyone over the head for providing this extra information. Hopefully this will be a trend picked up by other teams as well.

(Sorry about the emoticon.. I’m really enjoying Windows Live Writer Beta at the moment and I have found the little plugin to add emoticons. Thanks Frank )

The first post I noticed this morning with the good news was Brian Harry’s “TFS SP1 Beta is available!!!“. As I read some more Rob and Soma had more info and now the blogosphere is abuzz with the news.

To download the new beta you will need to visit the Microsoft Connect site and register for the beta.

One thing I will point out is Brian’s words of wisdom in his post… “Remember, it is a Beta so some caution is advised.“

This morning I updated the www.vststechbrekkie.com site with details of session 4 which will be presented by non other than Charles Sterling. Here’s the outline of what he will cover during the session.

“Visual Studio Team System includes many exciting integrated tools to help drive up the quality and performance of your software applications. In this session, Microsoft DPE Charles “Chuck” Sterling will demonstrate many of these features including integrated unit testing, code coverage, web tests, load tests and much more. With any luck, we’ll also get a quick peek at some of the Team Build capabitilies as well.”

The 4th session is scheduled for Friday 27th October 2006, starting at 7:30am. Check out the website for more information.

(Session 3 details coming soon)

I read on Mitch Denny’s blog this morning about an exciting new mailing list that has been set up by his Readify colleague, Grant Holliday. A quick jump over to Grant’s blog reveals the details of a new Australian TFS community setup specifically to share Australian TFS knowledge and experience.

Great work Grant – Subscribed!

Checkout the ozTFS.com site for more details.

Rob Caron, the BlogFather of Visual Studio Team System has announced that today is his last day in his current position as Team System Content Architect in the Developer Division User Education. In this position, I am sure many will agree, he was an instrumental cog in the wheel that helped drive the adoption of Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server to where we see it today.

The good news is that Rob hasn’t gone too far away and has taken a promotion to Lead Product Manager for Developer Tools Content Strategy. In Rob’s words;

“My world view will now include content that supports the full spectrum of Microsoft developer tools that fly the Visual Studio flag, from Visual Studio Express Editions to Team System. My plan is to expand this blog to become a Visual Studio Nexus, and I'll also be blogging about topics that are pertinent to my new role.”

Well, let me say Congratulations! on your promotion and may you enjoy the challenges of your new position.

P.S. Let’s hope in this new position you can wrangle a visit or two back to Australia

[Rob Caron: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish]

One of the absolutely must have tools for Team Foundation Server administrators is the TFS Administration Tool powertoy. This powertoy allows you to easily configure security for your TFS Team Projects across the three locations (TFS/SRS&WSS) using a single convenient UI.

For those people who have used v1.0 of the tool, you won’t see any drastic change when looking at the UI but it seems a lot more reliable and it handles the occasional error much better. (Had a small issue already – caused by my environment though – not the tool). The panels are now resizable which also helps when trying to use the tool through a terminal session.

What I would really like to see added to this community-based tool? Well it’s just one thing that I really want to see…The ability to browse for a user or group rather than typing each group longhand.

Release 1.1 of the TFS Administration Tool can be download from the CodePlex site.

[Via Rob Caron]