Learning about the Team Foundation Service Preview

Martin Woodward

UPDATE Feb 16 2012: All the videos referenced in this blog post have been re-recorded with the latest version of Team Foundation Service Preview. While the links remain the same, the videos pointed to by those links have been updated in-place.

 

As you may have read by now, today is an exciting day.  At the BUILD conference we just announced the availability of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Service Preview at tfspreview.com.  This is our next generation in application lifecycle management, agile project management and software development collaboration services based on the next version of Team Foundation Server running on the Windows Azure platform.  If you want a quick overview of the Team Foundation Service preview then check out this quick video over on Channel 9.

We’ve been working on this for a while now and there is plenty of work remaining, however we are ready to take the next step and open it up to a broader audience to try so that we can get feedback and gain experience to make the service better and better.  The service preview requires an invitation code at the moment to be able to create an account. If you have yours then head on over to tfspreview.com to create your account then come back here to read more about what you can do with it.

Team Foundation Service Preview Tutorials

For those of you lucky enough to have your invite and want to learn more (or if you want something to do while you wait for one of your friends to invite you) then we just uploaded some video tutorials to Channel 9.

Team Foundation Service Preview: Getting Started Getting Started

Find out how to get started with tfspreview.com.  Once you have your invitation code we show you how to create an account and create your first team project.  We then take a look around some of the key feature areas in your Team Foundation Service Preview account.  Finally we look at how to install the update into Visual Studio to allow you to connect to the Team Foundation Service Preview from Visual Studio 2010.

Team Foundation Service Preview: Managing Security Managing Security

Now that you have an account for the Team Foundation Service preview, we look at how to add and configure new members to your teams.  We also do a deep dive into the security configuration capabilities of Team Foundation Server and find out how to check the effective permissions of a user or group through the web site.

Team Foundation Service Preview: Agile Project Management Agile Project Management

Some of the powerful new features of the Team Foundation Service preview are the new agile planning tools. We show use of the product backlog tool to easily prioritize work by simply dragging and dropping backlog items in the list as well as how to decompose work on the backlog into epics and stories.  Then we look at planning a sprint, entering team capacity and visualizing progress using the burn down charts.  Finally, we show how to use the built in task boards to manage the work throughout the sprint while keeping an eye on the progress of your team.

Team Foundation Service Preview: Using Visual Studio, Microsoft Test Manager, and Eclipse Using Visual Studio, Microsoft Test Manager, and Eclipse

It’s not just about the web. In this video, we look at using the Team Foundation Service Preview from Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft Test Manager 2010 and Eclipse to manage your code and track your work items.

Team Foundation Service Preview: Team Build Team Build

We look at how to configure and use a build server in your own organization for use with the Team Foundation Service Preview.  We show how to install and configure the build service and attach it to your service preview account.  Then we show how to configure your build server.  Finally, we show how to create and manage an automated build from Visual Studio using your newly installed build server and how to access the build results via the web.

Providing Feedback

The whole reason that we are making this Team Foundation Service Preview available early is so that we can make it better.  Therefore we would love to get your feedback.

  • For feature suggestions please use our UserVoice site at http://visualstudio.uservoice.com so that others can vote and comment on your idea which helps us see what people like and what common pain points there are that we can help to address.
  • For bug reports on the current service preview, or an any Visual Studio products then please use out connect site at http://connect.microsoft.com
  • For support questions specific to the team foundation service preview or to join in the discussion with the best of the community then please head on over to the Team Foundation Service Preview support forum where the team will be hanging out.

Keeping up to Date

To keep up to date with the latest developments in the service preview there are a couple of blogs you will want to check in with or better yet subscribe to:

  • Visual Studio ALM Blog This is the blog you are reading now and will contain News and announcements from the Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server team.  Now that the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and the Team Foundation Service Preview are available expect to see more posts coming to this blog over the next few weeks.
  • Team Foundation Service Announcements The latest service announcements and information will be posted here.  Part of the preview exercise if is for us to learn how to grow and support the service, we will be aiming for 99.9% uptime by the time we come out of preview, but as we grow and develop the service some growing pains are to be expected – especially at first.  If you ever have any trouble accessing the Team Foundation Service Preview then check out this blog to first to see if we are doing some work on it
  • Brian Harry’s Blog Brian is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft and he runs the team behind Team Foundation Server and the Service Preview.  He blogs about all the latest news from the Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server  team along with the occasional post about his farm.
  • Jason Zander’s Blog Jason is a corporate vice president for the Visual Studio team in the Developer Division at Microsoft, including Visual Studio Pro, Premium, and Ultimate.  That means to say that he is our boss :-).  Jason often post announcements about new features or when the latest new stuff is available for you to try.

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