Quick reference guide for Visual Studio Online using your DreamSpark Account
With DreamSpark all Students now get Visual Studio Online for FREE
- Visual Studio Online is the fastest and easiest way yet to plan, build, and ship software across a variety of platforms. Get up and running in minutes on our cloud infrastructure without having to install or configure a single server.
- Application Insights provides a 360° view across availability, performance and usage of your ASP.NET services and mobile applications for Windows Phone, iOS and Android platforms. Search and analyze your data to continuously improve your application, prioritize future investments and improve overall customer experience.
- Azure App Service Web Apps is a part of a fully managed cloud offering that enables you to build and deploy web apps in seconds. Use ASP.NET, Java, PHP, Node.js or Python. Run popular web apps and CMS solutions. Set up continuous integration and deployment workflows with VSO, GitHub, TeamCity, Hudson or BitBucket – enabling you to automatically build, test and deploy your web app on each successful code check-in or integration tests.
Microsoft Azure for DreamSpark is available now for validated DreamSpark students at no cost and no commitment, with no time limit and no accidental charges. You can upgrade to more services later if you want, but you can host your web apps and websites today with the power of the Microsoft cloud behind you and it won’t cost you anything.
Making sure that you know all the ways that Visual Studio Online can help you be successful with your team based student projects.
Host your code in the cloud
Host your code in the cloud to access it anytime, anywhere. Pick a traditional, centralized version control system using Team Foundation Version Control, or if you prefer a distributed approach, use Git repos.
https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/code/share-your-code-in-tfvc-vs
Manage your work in one place
Quickly plan, manage, and track work across all your backlogs and teams with easy-to-use, fully integrated tools for agile planning and portfolio management. Maintain a backlog of your project, work in sprints, track progress on a task board, and coordinate your team activity.
https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/work/create-your-backlog-vs
Build your applications in the cloud
Create and manage build processes that automatically compile and test your applications in the cloud, either on demand or as part of an automated continuous integration strategy.
https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/build/build-your-app-vs
Test, test, test
Apart from creating test plans to track manual tests, you can use the cloud-based Load Testing feature to ensure your websites and services can handle the heaviest expected load – it will take you five minutes to be 100% sure. You’ll need Visual Studio Ultimate to create and execute load tests.
https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/test/load-test-your-app-vs
Gain insight into your applications
Visual Studio Online Application Insights is a new cloud-based service (currently in preview) that collects rich operational, performance, and customer usage information from client/device apps or server applications – whether they run on-premises, in Microsoft Azure, a third-party cloud provider, or a combination of all three.
https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/insights/get-usage-data-vs
Connect with Microsoft Azure
Create test environments, deploy and scale web apps in seconds, build and host backends for mobile applications or explore the DevOps lifecycle through the new Azure Preview portal. Microsoft Azure provides a whole set of services for developers.
https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=99
For more information
Work with non-Visual Studio IDEs (XCode, Eclipse and GitHub)
Visual Studio Online API & Service Hooks
Application Insights