Three COOL features we noticed on Visual Studio Team Services

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We continue highlighting new features on Visual Studio Team Services that are proving really productive for our project teams. Make sure your bookmark and follow Visual Studio News page, which informs you on all the latest updates.

This time we were excited about a lot more than three features, so we decided to focus in the top 3 instead.

Keyboard shortcuts

When you are next in your Visual Studio Team Services account, simply click the question mark ? .

This launches a set of keyboard shortcuts that allow you to quickly navigate the Code and Work hubs.

If I, a mouse dinosaur, love this feature,  so will you!
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For example, if we click ? on the landing page, then click gc, followed by r, we have navigated to the Code hub and are selecting a repository with four keystrokes. In fact, if you have a better memory than I do, you do not need to click on the ? … making it three keystrokes.

You will notice another “cool” feature, the ability to have multiple Git repos within a Team Project that is based on a TFVC repo.
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We will drill into this one in a future post, so that we can cover two other features today.

Seamless integration of build with GitHub

When our projects are ready for the Open Source stage, we move the repo to GitHub. Latest example is the Migration of release management assets from RM server to VSTS project.

But … “what about our nightly and continuous integration builds”?

Simple …

  1. Create one build definition for multiple build triggers, i.e. nightly and CI.
  2. Configure your build to target the GitHub repository type and configure the connection, repo and default branch to use.
  3. Wait for the triggers, which will sync the build with the GitHub repository and run your configured build.
  4. Take some time to peruse the new build result summary, timeline, artefacts and tests.
  5. There is more! If you happen to use other tools, for example slack, you can configure the build notifications to seamlessly trickle through.

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Powerful and seamless integration!

Extensibility

If you missed the news on extensions, you need to look at Extensions, Previews, and more – Nov 18, Visual Studio Marketplace and the Visual Studio Team Services Extensions from the Rangers.

One of the many extensions we have installed adds a nifty Estimate feature to the WORK hub.

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Extensibility allows you to seamlessly extend your Visual Studio Team Services experience! Track this tag to keep up to date with our news on extension development, learnings and releases.

We need your ideas and feedback!

Do you have an extension idea, feedback, adoption blockers, or an interest to join our extension efforts? Add a comment below or ping us here.