Good friend and fellow Professional Scrum Trainer, Rob Maher, has been putting in all the hard work to kick off a new .NET User Group in Auckland, NZ. The first meeting of this new user group is coming up on the 24th May and it will be held in the offices of IAG in Fanshawe Street.

DATE: 24th May 2011

TIME: 5:30pm till 6:30pm

TOPIC: Behaviour Driven Development and Team Foundation Server

PRESENTER: Rob Maher

You can find out more about the upcoming meeting at http://www.dot.net.nz/Lists/Events%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=418

Don’t forget if you live or work on Auckland’s North Shore, there is also the North Shore .NET User group that Paul Salmon runs as well.

Enhance ALM’s very own, Richard Angus, has joined forces with Migration to deliver a “hands-on” workshop to teach you about pre-migration considerations for moving from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation Server 2010.

We will walk you through an end to end migration and ensure you’re well equipped to handle to task back in your workplace. Simply bring along your own laptop with Visual SourceSafe 2005 and TFS 2010 Basic installed. We’ll provide you with a VSS Database and then walk you through a complete migration during the workshop. (Don’t worry if you don’t want to bring your laptop along, you can witness every step of the migration on the big screen.)

Topics include:

• The benefits of migrating to TFS
• A demonstration of the key features of TFS Pre-migration planning
• Hands-on walk through of the migration process
• Verifying our migration and troubleshooting common issues

Dates and venues:

• Melbourne:  11th April choose 1:00pm-3:00pm or 4:00pm-6:00pm
• Sydney: 12th April choose 9:00am-11:00am or 3:00pm-5:00pm
• Brisbane: 13th April choose 9:00am-11:00am or 3:00pm-5:00pm
• Online via LiveMeeting: 21st April 12:00pm-2:00pm

Find out more about the venue and RSVP at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/visualstudio/vss-workshop

Enhance ALM recently assisted a local company implement TFS 2010 in their Dynamics AX development environment. This was made all the more difficult due to a lack of good documentation and best practise guidance on how to do this. One of our ALM Consultants, Richard Angus, spent a week working through the various challenges to come up with a great solution that has both met and exceeded the expectations of the client.

Richard has documented his experiences in a 6-part series on the Enhance ALM Blog to assist anyone else considering integrating these tools. You can read his blogs posts using the following links.

• Integrating Dynamics Ax with TFS 2010–Part 1 (Overview)
• Integrating Dynamics Ax with TFS 2010–Part 2 (Preparing TFS for Dynamics Ax)
• Integrating Dynamics Ax with TFS 2010–Part 3 (Preparing the DEV Machine)
• Integrating Dynamics Ax with TFS 2010–Part 4 (Installing a Dynamics Ax Instance)
• Integrating Dynamics Ax with TFS 2010–Part 5 (Installing a Dynamics Ax AOS Instance)
• Integrating Dynamics Ax with TFS 2010–Part 6 (Integrating with TFs 2010)

Starting next month, QuickLearn is offering some of Enhance ALM’s Visual Studio 2010 courses in the United States and Norway. These courses will be conducted in Redmond and Oslo but you can sign up and attend the courses remotely using QuickLearn’s great online delivery systems.

The following courses are being offered during February and March 2011.

Fundamentals of Team Development with Visual Studio

• March 3rd & 4th in Redmond, WA and Online /Remote  more info…

Managing Team Projects with Visual Studio

• February 14th & 15th in Redmond, WA and Online /Remote more info…
• March 7th & 8th in Oslo, Norway more info…

Testing Applications with Microsoft Test Manager

• February 16th & 17th in Redmond, WA and Online /Remote more info…
• March 9th & 10th in Oslo, Norway more info…

Early next month I have the pleasure of presenting at three of New Zealand’s .NET user groups. New Zealand has a great user group community and I always look forward to the opportunity to present there.

The topic for my presentation in all three locations is as follows:

Part One – What’s new on the Visual Studio ALM scene?

In the first part of the talk I will run through an overview of new and updated things from the past couple of months that relate to Visual Studio ALM. As a few examples, he will walk you through the following;

1. Visual Studio Feature Pack 2
   • Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta
     • TFS Admin Tool 2.1
       • TeamCompanion 4 (Beta)</ol> </ol> Part Two – Continuous Delivery can be a reality

       Continuous Delivery is the next logical step after Continuous Integration for modern software teams. In this session, I will walk through how you can automate the build, deploy and test of your applications using Visual Studio 2010. </blockquote>

       GIVEAWAY – Free ticket to the New Zealand Visual Studio ALM Conference

       One lucky attendee will also win a free ticket to the inaugural New Zealand Visual Studio ALM Conference in Wellington on the 6^th & 7^th April 2011. Sponsored by Microsoft, this conference will feature both international and local presenters in two tracks over two days. If your team builds software, this is a conference not to be missed. Keep your eye on the conference website at  www.nzalm.co.nz for more information.

       Here are the details for the three user group talks. If you are going to come along, please make sure you RSVP to let the organiser know for catering purposes.

       AUCKLAND – North Shore .NET User group

       • Date: Tuesday 1st February 2011
         • Time: 5:45 Pizza for a 6:15 presentation
           • Venue: Quadrangle B; Seminar Room 3(QB3), Massey University, Albany
             • RVSP: Please email nsug.net@live.com if you are coming along</ul>

               WELLINGTON– Team System User group

             • Date: Thursday 3rd February 2011
               • Time: 6:00pm
                 • Venue: To be confirmed
                   • RVSP:  Please let me know if you are attending so I can make sure we order enough Pizza and Drink. Click on this link to RSVP  then send the email created with the subject line unaltered; If your plans change after you have RSVP’d and you are unable to attend  Click on this Link then send the email created with the subject line unaltered;</ul>

                     CHRISTCHURCH – Christchurch .NET User group

                   • Date: Friday 4th February 2011
                     • Time: 12:30pm (NOTE: Lunch presentation)
                       • Venue: Canterbury Innovation Incubator – Powerhouse, 200 Armagh St, Christchurch
                         • RVSP: Please email simon.m.fox@gmail.com if you are coming along</ul> If you’re in New Zealand and able to come along, I look forward to seeing you there

This morning I woke to find an email from Microsoft telling me I have been presented with the Microsoft MVP award in the Visual Studio ALM competency for 2011. This will be my 6th year as an MVP and I’m honoured to be a part of such a vibrant and active community.

2011 is shaping up to be a busy year with a number of initiatives demanding my attention already including:

• New Zealand Visual Studio ALM Conference
• Australian ALM Conference
• New training partnerships to deliver my courses in overseas markets

Congratulations to all other MVP’s awarded on the 1st January 2011 and have a Happy New Year.

When you install TFS 2010, you can have the setup automatically install and configure Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 (WSS) for you. Unfortunately you can’t have it use SharePoint Foundation 2010 instead so you are faced with manually installing this if you wish to use it. This blog post walks you through installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 as part of a fresh TFS 2010 install.

NOTE: The focus of this blog post is about how you can choose to install SharePoint Foundation 2010 instead of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 for use with TFS 2010. It is not a post about best practises for installing or configuring TFS 2010.

Step 1: Install Operating System and SQL Server

1. Install and configure server with your Operating System (Eg. Windows Server 2008 R2) and SQL Server (Eg. SQL Server 2008 R2). Make sure you follow the detailed instructions in the Team Foundation Installation Guide for Visual Studio 2010

Step 2: Download SharePoint Foundation 2010

1. You can download SharePoint Foundation 2010 from the Microsoft Download site at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595&displaylang=en

Step 3: Install SharePoint Foundation 2010

1. Start the SharePoint Foundation installation by double-clicking the SharePointFoundation.exe file
   • On the SharePoint Foundation 2010 splash screen, click the “Install software prerequisites” link in the Install section.
     • On the Welcome screen, click Next
       • Accept the licensing agreement and click Next
         • Once the prerequisites have been installed, click Finish.
           • On the SharePoint Foundation 2010 splash screen, click the “Install SharePoint Foundation” link in the Install section.
             • Accept the terms of the agreement and click Continue
               • When prompted to “Choose the installation you want”, make sure you click the “Server Farm” button.
                 • Select Complete for the Server Type and click Install Now.
                   • On the Run Configuration Wizard page, leave the checkbox checked and click Close.</ol> Step 4: Configure SharePoint Foundation 2010
                   1. On the Welcome page of the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, click Next

                      • You will see the following dialog letting you know some of the services may be started or reset during the configuration. Click Yes.

                        • Click “Create a new server farm” and click Next
                          • Provide a Passphrase and click Next
                            • Specify 17012 as the SharePoint Central Administration website port and click Next
                              • Click Next on the “Completing the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard” page.
                                • Once the configuration is complete you should click “Finish” on the Configuration Successful screen.
                                  • You should now see the SharePoint Central Administration site appear in a browser on your server. Click Cancel, you do NOT want to run the Server Farm Configuration wizard.
                                    • Close your browser.</ol> Step 5: Create a Web Application

                                    Now that you have installed SharePoint Foundation 2010 and completed the initial configuration, you must create a Web Application.

                                    1. Open the SharePoint Central Administration site. (Start Menu

                                       All Programs

                                       Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products

                                       SharePoint 2010 Central Administration)

                                       • Under the Application Management heading, click Manage web applications.

                                         

                                         • In the toolbar, click the New button

                                           • In the “Create New Web Application” dialog, enter the following settings:

                                             Authentication	Classic Mode Authentication
                                             IIS Web Site	use Existing IIS web site (Default Web Site)
                                             Port	80
                                             Host header	{Blank}
                                             Path	C:inetpubwwwroot
                                             Security Configuration	Authentication Provider: NTLM Allow Anonymous: No Use Secure Socket Layer (SSL): No
                                             Public URL	http://your-server-name:80/
                                             Application pool	Create new application Pool Application Pool name: SharePoint –80 Security Account:domainwss_service account
                                             Database name	Server name: Your DB servername Database Name: WSS_Content Database Authentication: Windows Authentication
                                             Failover Server	{Blank}
                                             Search Server	{Blank}
                                             Service Application Connections	Accept {Default}
                                             Customer Experience Improvement Program	No (up to you)

                                             Click on OK

                                             • If you are prompted to change the site from Kerberos to NTLM, click OK
                                               • Once the site has been created, click OK</ol> Step 6: Configure security

                                               1. Open the SharePoint Central Administration site. (Start Menu

                                                  All Programs

                                                  Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products

                                                  SharePoint 2010 Central Administration)

                                                  • Under the Security heading, click Manage the farm administrators group.
                                                    • Click Add Users from the New drop down menu
                                                      • Enter the TFS Service account (eg domaintfs_service) into the dialog and click OK </ol>

                                                      Once you have completed these steps you can run the TFS 2010 setup.exe program and as part of the configuration phase, your SharePoint configuration will be verified.

                                                      Enjoy using SharePoint Foundation 2010 with your shiny new TFS 2010 server.

Enhance ALM is pleased to announce we have joined forces with QuickLearn to make our Visual Studio ALM courses available in the United States and Europe. Through this partnership the following courses are now available in these overseas markets.

• Configuring and Administering Team Foundation Server

• Fundamentals of Team Development with Visual Studio Developer

• Managing Team Projects with Visual Studio Project Manager

• Managing Virtual Lab Environments with Visual Studio

• Testing Applications with Microsoft Test Manager

These are all 2-day courses that are scheduled as public courses and also available as onsite closed courses for your company.

“QuickLearn is pleased to announce our new Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) curriculum. Through our partnership with Anthony Borton with Enhance ALM in Australia, we can now deliver these courses as public events and onsite training for our clients in the United States and Europe. Visual Studio ALM training is a natural addition to our successful BizTalk training courses which have been delivered to over 5000 students worldwide since 2004.” > > Greg Bulette
> President
> QuickLearn

To find out more about these Visual Studio ALM courses in the United States and Europe, visit QuickLearn’s website at http://www.quicklearn.com/alm-training/

Enhance ALM’s courses have been developed by Anthony Borton, a Microsoft Visual Studio ALM MVP and the lead ALM consultant/trainer for Enhance ALM.

Most organizations fall into the trap of optimizing a part of their development process while failing to look at the end-to-end development process. Although this low-hanging fruit approach can sometimes result in positive change, it very often misses the big gains that can be made when focusing on the entire end-to-end process. Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 provide deep visibility across the entire end-to-end process, creating real change that impacts an entire organization instead of just a single team.

Join us as Microsoft Valued Professional Anthony Borton talks about how to improve the development process throughout the application lifecycle. All registrants before December 4th will be entered for a chance to win a $25 gift card towards a lunch of their choice!

Register online now at

Streamlining your Development Process with Visual Studio

If you’re currently using the evaluation VHDs from Microsoft to try out Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010, you will know that the VM’s are due to expire in the next two weeks on or around the 15th December 2010.

Brian Keller, the Microsoft Sr. Technical Evangelist that creates and maintains these Virtual Machines has posted on his blog that the new release of the evaluation virtual machines is expected to be downloadable sometime next week. (Week commencing 6th Dec).

New VHD’s Coming Soon