Oct 27th, 2008
Team Foundation Server 2010: Cool New Features
Dive deep into the next version of Team Foundation Server (TFS), and learn how TFS has factored its learnings about usability, industrial scale, geographic distribution, manageability, and development process into the next version of the product. See a demonstration of build automation, policy checks, parallel development, new project planning and tracking features, such as agile planning, end to end traceability, reporting, and dashboards, administration and ops—all designed to improve transparency and velocity for teams from size 5 through 50,000.
Speakers
Brian Harry, http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry1. Build Configuration
a. Summary
i. Build Names
ii. Workflow
iii. Retention
b. Build output names can be dynamically named based on many different inputs / Mentioned Technologies
· TFS
· Visual Studio Team System
c. Build uses WF to execute tasks
d. Can use parallel WF task to build both debug and release on different servers
e. Retention policy extended in 2010—Triggered and Manual or Private
i. You can control what is deleted when a build is stopped (drops, etc…)
f. Build report now has completely new look in VS2010
i. It includes a histogram for how long build is taking
ii. Left side shows minimized index that can be used to see where you are in the file
2. Parallel Development (branching/merging)
a. Summary
i. Branches are first class citizens
1. Owner, relationships, and permissions
ii. Visualize branch relationships
iii. Track changes across branches
iv. Conflict resolution
v. Rollback
b. Annotate can allow you to see where and who made a change in a branch
c. History can be viewed by tracking changeset
i. Viewing timeline view
ii. Branch hierarchy view
iii. Can then compare items in history to see what was changed
iv. Can then rollback the changes
v. Can also drag and drop a changeset in the timeline view to automatically merge the change into another branch (Very cool!)
vi. Merge with conflicts show up now in a change list with a lot more information about the conflicting information
d. Many different views of branches that are useful
i. Full hierarchy
ii. Ancestors and descendents
iii. Parent and descendents
iv. Open it in source code explorer
3. Managing your project
a. Summary
i. Agile project Management
ii. Work item linking and hierarchy
iii. Work item usability
1. Rich text, Links control, html link controls, drag and drop
iv. Traceability queries
v. Query folders
vi. Excel and MS Project improvements
b. Folders can have security to allow others to publish queries and give them rights
c. Work Items
i. Rich text is now enabled within the work item detail box
ii. Link control (implementation, Test Cases, other links tabs by default)
1. Multi-instance the control and link them to queries
d. Now 3 types of queries in drop down
i. Tree of work items
1. Hierarchical work items are shown in results
2. Can easily drag and drop work items from parent to child and back
3. Right-click to add new child work items
e. Can also use Excel to create hierarchal work items and sync back to TFS
f. Excel
i. Excel also supports saving the conditional formatting
ii. Can add own columns and TFS will save them
iii. Since creating reports in TFS is hard so have enhanced Excel to accommodate
1. Right click on reports to create a report in Excel based on existing report selected
2. Creates workbook to allow you to iteratively customize the report after is has been rendered.
g. Add/Edit Query
i. Now have "linking filters" options for the query to accommodate hierarchal relationships
ii. Filter on values and links is very powerful
iii. Add query defaults to common fields that are most likely to be used
iv. New operators called "In Group" or "Not in Group" are now available
4. Coordinate Across Platforms
a. Eclipse plug-in for Java based teams
i. Can see java build results in team build and can view build report with test results
ii. Can create a bug against the unit test
iii. Can check-in against a work item and use Cl build to run build automatically
Conclusion
The Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team System 2010 is a major release and has many requested improvements in the following areas:· TFS Build management and extensibility
· Parallel Development management using branching and merging
· Managing your project using work items, queries, reports, and Excel
Mike Finley
Microsoft Consulting Services, Architect