We built it and no-one came -> New entry points for the Distributed System Designers

A lot of the customers I talked to about our designers have been surprised that our designers have been included as a part of the Beta 1 release. So, we sat back and throught about why this might be the case...

While I can imagine all our Beta users love scrummaging around the new project heirarchy for new isoteric project templates, we thought that we had been particularly successful in hiding our designers from most users. Therefore, due to this customer feedback we have now changed the entry points into the designers for Beta 2.

 

Entry Points into our Designer in Beta 1:

Users have to go to File->New Project->Other Projects->Visual Studio Solutions and select Distributed Systems solution to get to the designer. Or by adding a New Item to the solution through the Solution Explorer and then selecting the Application Designer (one of many other esoteric options).

 

Entry Points into our Designer in Beta 2:

In Beta 2, this has been changed. We now have our own Distributed System Solution node in the New Project hierarchy. The user will be able to File->New Project->Distributed System Solutions->Distributed System.

 

Furthermore, we’ve also added a RMA to Solution Explorer that will make it easier to add Distributed System Designer. Right-click the solution and Add->New Distributed System Diagram->Application Designer.

 

Given that most users couldn't find our designers in Beta 1 and we still got great feedback, I look forward to the feedback we'll get in Beta 2 now that we've made it easier for users to find our designers.

 

Cheers,