TFS Beta3 release imminent

We are in the final days of the TFS Beta3 endgame. We’ve been dogfooding updated bits for over a week now and after a few days of working out the issues, the system seems really solid. We’re wrapping up the run of tens of thousands manual test cases that has taken us 20+ days to get through. We’ve had nearly a dozen folks, who have never installed a Team Foundation server before, successfully complete the process from scratch. We’re putting the finishing touches on the install guide and readme. We’ve even taken fixes to a few “showstopping” bugs in the past few days. Final automated testing runs are proceeding this weekend and we’ll spend Monday looking at the results. Assuming everything looks good, we’ll wrap up the remaining details necessary to release the bits and get them out to MSDN subscribers by the end of the week. In the meantime, MSDN subscribers can download the ‘release candidate’ build of VSTS (50727.26) as well as the September CTP version of SQL Server (1314.06) and get them ready since these are the versions TFS Beta3 requires.

We are really excited to get Beta3 out in the hands of our customers. The improvements we’ve made since Beta2 are impressive. Performance, usability and stability have all been improved and we’re certainly getting closer to releasing the final version (but not quite there). Please let us know how you think we’re doing. Your feedback has helped keep us focused on making the right improvements while also spurring us on to release the final bits as soon as possible. 

jeff