Dapper DevOps

Start building ASP.NET Core 1.1 with TFS

In my spare time I am looking at ASP.NET Core – it brings so much change that you can’t really ignore it even if you are not a web developer. After putting together the first...

20 Nov 2016

.NET Core support in the new Team Build with VSTS

Technology on its own is not really helpful IMHO – having an ecosystem really helps. So I noticed that VSTS now supports .NET Core in the Team Build, and obviously I wanted to give it...

12 Nov 2016

Don’t just chuck your stuff in VSTS, take advantage of the artifact repository!

If I’d get a penny for any question on this activity I would be a billionaire by today: It is a waste of time not sorting and creating proper folders for your artifacts – why...

07 Nov 2016

Track service usage data in VSTS

Every TFS admin knows about the Operational Intelligence page. It is a very important tool for managing Team Foundation Server, which provides lots of useful information about service usage. Nothing like that existed for VSTS,...

20 Oct 2016

Easy Service Endpoints ACL management in VSTS

It is amazing how quickly VSTS changes and evolves – of course you need to keep up with it as well This is todays discovery – the new Service Endpoint’s ACL management UI. In the...

11 Oct 2016

A pipeline is not just as vertical fall! Triggers in Visual Studio Release Management

It is great to see people approaching the Pipeline model, but of course the more people adopt it the more we need to go deep into the products we use to get the very best...

06 Oct 2016

Too long forgotten, the Activity field in TFS

Team Foundation Server is around since 2005, and many features seem to be forgotten despite being in the same place as usual. If I asked for a dollar/euro/pound every time I was asked this I...

29 Sep 2016

Removing Analysis Services references when moving a TFS deployment

When you need to stand up a testing environment, a DR situation or simply a new instance from existing backups you might want to forget about SSAS altogether and go ahead with just the core...

28 Sep 2016

A pragmatic look at why TFS and VSTS can be customised in a different way

If you paid attention to the latest releases of both TFS and VSTS you can see that the main path where they are diverging is on Process Template Customisation. And hey presto! I was asked...

22 Sep 2016

Simplifying TFS restores with TFSConfig OfflineDetach

Before TFS 2015 Update 3, if you want to restore an instance you need to restore all the collection databases of the instance. This might be an extremely long and time-consuming activity. Very quietly, Microsoft...

09 Sep 2016

SonarQube 6.0 and the StyleCop plugin

For one of our projects we use the StyleCop plugin for SonarQube during the analysis. As you can see it was recently deprecated. I successfully updated the instance used by this product to SonarQube 6.0,...

18 Aug 2016

SonarQube analysis of Java code with VSTS

As we know, we can use VSTS to build Java code as well as .NET code thanks to the Maven instance provided by the service. It is one of the reasons why we can forget...

12 Aug 2016

Package Management in TFS15 RC1

If there was a missing feature in TFS 2015, it was the lack of an integrated Package Management solution. Long are these days, the Package Management extension is bundled in TFS 15 RC1! You just...

10 Aug 2016

Metatasks in TFS 15 RC1

It isn’t really about TFS 15 RC1 this time, but now the UI is totally out for it so it is very prominent there is a very nice feature I usually see being overlooked when...

09 Aug 2016

Easy HTTPS with TFS 15 RC1

There are a number of changes in TFS 15 RC1, and one I really like is the HTTPS configuration. When you configure the Application Tier you can now select the bindings you want: Clicking on...

05 Aug 2016

Review – Professional Visual Studio 2015

This is a book I keep reviewing at every release, and for good reason: it is not mainly aimed at seasoned users of Visual Studio but at beginners approaching this IDE for the first time....

21 Jul 2016

A first look at TFS 15: the new Build Agent

Another big change in TFS 15 Preview is the new Build Agent. This doesn’t mean there is yet another build server (the new Team Build is here to stay ), the big news here is...

12 Jul 2016

A first look at TFS 15: pre-production upgrades

In the last post we saw how to install and configure TFS 15. What about upgrades? Well, there are some changes… Starting from the usual wizard, you will select the option for existing databases: Then...

08 Jul 2016

A first look at TFS 15: installation

Yesterday Microsoft released Team Foundation Server 15 Preview, and I could not resist installing it as soon as possible The installation process is the same: What changed is the configuration process: The configuration of TFS...

08 Jul 2016

Small but noticeable: SSH Service in TFS 2015 Update 3

One of the features introduced in TFS 2015 Update 3 is the backport from VSTS of SSH access for Git repositories. There is a very nice document on how to use it, so I am...

28 Jun 2016

A simple VSTS-based pipeline for Java Web Applications

I took the plunge last weekend about building a pipeline for a very simple Java application, and it was very, very easy to do so. The app in question is DeepSpace. It is written in...

13 Jun 2016

Moving a SonarQube installation to SQL Azure Database

There might be a tons of reasons behind it – you might want to take advantage of SonarQube’s support for SQL Azure Database, and it is totally fair enough. There was a showstopper in the...

10 Jun 2016

I updated SonarQube to 5.6 and nothing works any longer, should I panic?

SonarQube 5.6 is the new LTS release, hence there are lots of changes. The first step where you might panic is when you launch it for the first time, you will find this: ce is...

08 Jun 2016

Getting started with LaunchDarkly and client-side feature flags

These days it is extremely easy to start using Feature Flags, especially with a service like LaunchDarkly. In my case, I just wanted to setup a quick demo of client-side feature flags using only plain...

25 May 2016

Simple pipeline with UWP and HockeyApp

Everybody needs a starting point here and there, so this post would be pretty much about what I did with a very similar situation – a very basic pipeline to push UWP builds to HockeyApp...

08 May 2016

Application Insights Live Metrics Stream with ASP.NET 5

The single feature I deeply loved from the old Visual Studio Online Application Insights (before it was handed over to the Azure Team) was the Developer Dashboard, a real-time overview of how your application was...

03 May 2016

A look at the new Work Item Tracking features in VSTS

I usually don’t do this, but the VSTS teams are overhauling this area at such a pace that makes a knowledge refresh really needed Aside from the cards layout a few months ago, there are...

22 Apr 2016

Considerations on HockeyApp and exception management strategy for apps

I started to look at HockeyApp recently, and I reckon it is quite an impressive piece of software. Microsoft acquired it in 2014, and now they are pitching it as the solution for Application Monitoring...

12 Apr 2016

Getting started with Kusto a.k.a. Application Insights Analytics

Last week Brian told us about Kusto, an internal data analytics tools which then became a component of Application Insights. You can start using it right away, there is nothing to configure. You’ll find an...

09 Apr 2016

On the potential of Bash on Windows in a DevOps world

One of the announcements of todays’ //build is the availability of Bash on Windows, thanks to Ubuntu. I share the excitement as well, but focus on individual developers left something behind IMHO: it is a...

30 Mar 2016

SCVMM extension for the new Team Build in action

I mentioned that a few times – I am a real enthusiast when it comes to certain topics, and Lab Management is one of these. If you installed the SCVMM extension like I did in...

21 Mar 2016

Advantages of a shared architecture: the TFS/VSTS example

A few months ago I wrote a throwback article for MSDN about VSTS, its journey from “TFS in the cloud” to a full-fledged service, and its evolution. It is great to see how things evolved,...

09 Mar 2016

Why a TFS pre-release in production?

So, big question: why should I run a pre-release Team Foundation Server update in production? Isn’t it risky? And what about support in case things go wrong? The biggest reason why you’d want to do...

01 Mar 2016

Using custom Quality Profiles with SonarQube and the new Team Build

When you analyse a project with SonarQube you are running the analyser with a predefined set of rules – they are the most commonly used rules, but not the most comprehensive. This has a lot...

24 Feb 2016

Small but very valuable nuggets about Work Item Tracking in TFS and VSTS

Have you ever noticed this couple of small but very useful features in Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services? You can query across projects – think about it, you can create a cross-project...

11 Feb 2016

A new experience with Work Items deletion in VSTS

With Team Foundation Server you can either remove a Work Item by changing its state (leaving it on the backlog then, not really a removal) or permanently destroy it. No middle ground, no real choice...

06 Feb 2016

Help, the backlog is gone!

Just beware – if you are migrating stuff from a Team Foundation Server to Visual Studio Team Services, it might happen that despite correctly moving all the Work Items involved in the migration you can’t...

22 Jan 2016

Where are TFS and VSTS heading?

This week Microsoft made published an update to the Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services roadmap, and it looks very promising. As we already know, TFS and VSTS are an ever evolving platform....

14 Jan 2016

A cryptic story around Git, VSTS and Azure Active Directory

This is a short and easy tip with an interesting background. If you try to push stuff to a Git repository hosted in a VSTS account, where this account is backed by Azure Active Directory...

06 Jan 2016

I updated Release Management and my builds fail: now what?

This is a quick but worth tip to remember. If you upgrade Release Management, you always need to update the Client. Up to this, fair enough. But you are going to start getting errors like “The...

14 Dec 2015

Things to remember when you work with Azure and the new Team Build

Azure is an amazing piece of technology – its capabilities are immense and there is always something new to learn and use for solving our problems. It is quite a while I am spending time...

06 Dec 2015

What’s happened to the Visual Studio installer?

Well, they sorted it out! The Visual Studio 2015 installer is now componentised: It is now very straightforward to understand, especially for upgrades. This is true also for the third party components like the Android...

03 Dec 2015

Endpoints in a Team Project: what shall I do with them?

If you roam around a TFS/VSTS Team Project Administration page you will surely come across the Services tab: What am I supposed to do with these? Why is there “Endpoints” and “XAML Build Services”? Let’s...

26 Nov 2015

Shopping in the Marketplace with Visual Studio Team Services

With the rename, Visual Studio Online Visual Studio Team Services introduces the Marketplace for its extensions. It is a very welcome addition to the platform, as it enables scenarios of customisation in a very easy...

20 Nov 2015

Upgrading SonarQube to 5.2, my notes

Today I updated our production instance of SonarQube to the eagerly awaited version 5.2. It is such an important release because it finally embraces a full client-server paradigm (whereas the runners had to talk straight...

17 Nov 2015

Small touches I like in the TFS 2015 Update 1 Upgrade Wizard

Microsoft is always working towards improving the user experience of its products, and Team Foundation Server is no exception to this rule. There are two bits I really liked in the Upgrade Wizard of 2015.1:...

30 Oct 2015

Dashboards in Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 1

Another great new feature in TFS 2015.1 is the introduction of a real dashboard instead of a pre-built welcome page. This is an example: This is an upgraded Team Project by the way. There are...

13 Oct 2015

TFVC and Git in the same Team Project: a revolution

TFS 2015 Update 1 is literally hot off the press, and I am already on it as the changelog is massive! The #1 priority to me was to have a look at Git and TFVC...

10 Oct 2015

Problem solved! Git-LFS and VSO

One of the problems you might face with Git is the performance hit when you start storing binaries into the Version Control. It is actually by design – Git takes content snapshots at every commit,...

02 Oct 2015

Personal Access Tokens in Visual Studio Online

When you try to access some services in Visual Studio Online, you might need to enter your Alternate Credentials. Think about Git, for example. This approach works, no questions about it. But in terms of...

28 Sep 2015

Why shall I split the columns in the Kanban Board?

A very interesting discussion came out at the SmartDevsUG meeting last night about the Kanban Split Columns in TFS and VSO. What is the real rationale behind it in a real world project? Why should...

15 Sep 2015

Reading the TFS update logs

Did you ever read a TFS update log? If not, you should do it. Once you do anything on the TFS databases, all the operations are logged, obviously. You can reach these logs from the...

10 Sep 2015

Draft Builds in the new Team Build

With the new Team Build you have the possibility of working on Build Definitions in an asynchronous fashion, without impacting other team members or wasting time cloning the existing build. For example, you might want...

28 Aug 2015

Quickly change the TFS Integration Platform settings

You installed the TFS Integration Platform, and now you want to move your database. Or you want to change the temporary folder used during the migrations. Shall you waste time reinstalling it? No, what you...

25 Aug 2015

Pre-upgrading a large Team Project Collection to TFS 2015

TFS 2015 is out and we all rush upgrading our Team Project Collections! But if you have a collection bigger than 1TB you should stand back and read some documentation before that. This page in...

13 Aug 2015

Change the Release Management URL when the console is stuck

Quick one, but helpful IMHO. After updating Release Management Server or Client you might experience this: and then you would be stuck – you can’t change the Release Management Server URL. The quick and dirty...

04 Aug 2015

Team Project rename: is it that easy?

Renaming a Team Project was the most asked feature for Team Foundation Server since 2005, with over six thousands votes on it. Microsoft finally delivered that feature in April, in Visual Studio Online first and...

27 Jul 2015

TFS and HTTP status 417

Panic today – a guy couldn’t connect to Team Foundation Server with a weird “The request failed with HTTP status 417: Expectation failed.” What did it happen? I never saw such a HTTP status code!...

17 Jul 2015

How to configure SCVMM-based Lab Management for selected Team Projects

Not all the Team Projects we have in the company might need to get Lab Management, and we pretty much know about the need of locking down certain resources. So if you want to enable...

13 Jul 2015

How easy is to use a Symbol Server with Team Build vNext?

Answer: it is extremely easy! A Symbol Server is a very important piece of infrastructure every development team should have. It enables someone debugging (with the aid of an IntelliTrace file for example) problems happened...

03 Jul 2015