Notes from my 2/27 Office Hours

Thanks to those of you who joined my office hours last Friday!

I’ve noted some of the more direct questions asked during our time, and have included some information below to help answer them.

Q: When will TFS 2015 come out?

A: The first TFS 2015 CTP is out now, actually. It dropped on 2/23. It brings in several new capabilities, as well as some that have been a part of Visual Studio Online for a while now. Some of these include: better license alignment w/ VSO, Rest API's, Service hooks (yeah!), text filtering on backlogs, and folder history

Q: Can I use Release Management to deploy to an Azure website from Visual Studio Online?

A: Why not? Rather than re-invent the wheel in a more detailed reply, I'll direct you to the great Donovan Brown's blog post on this very topic.

Q: What is a Service Hook?

A: Great question! A service hook is an integration point with VSO (and soon TFS) to allow you to perform tasks in other services or applications when something happens in VSO. I while ago I provided a basic example of a service hook which would allow you to post to a Team Room via email.

There are quite a few services which already leverage service hooks, such as Jenkins, Azure Service Bus, ZenDesk, HipChat, and Campfire (full list here).

Service hooks can also be used in custom applications and services, too! For more information on how to integrate service hooks into your app, start here.

So thanks again for joining me today. I hope to chat with more of you in a couple weeks!