Release Management Workflow Migrator v1

We are pleased to announce that we have released v1.0 of the Release Management Workflow Migrator tool and guidance. It enables you to export your Release Management agent based deployment pipeline and reuse in Team Foundation Server or Team Services. It’s an open source project, allowing you to use “as is”, customise or contribute to the project.

Migrator

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Release Management

What’s the tool about?

The initial project idea came from Daniel Mann:

Driving goal of the tool wasn’t to provide a zero-effort, one-button migration path from RM server -> RM service, but rather to give users, that had already invested a ton of effort in designing complex agent-based release templates, a way to get those release templates into an RM service-friendly form with a minimum amount of rewriting. The intended user is one who:

  • Has a lot of complex agent-based workflows
  • Has minimal knowledge of PowerShell/DSC/Chef
  • Has no bandwidth to acquire that knowledge in the short-term
  • Has a desire to switch to the new RM service (for better metrics, to retire the RM server, whatever)

So with those 4 design principles in mind, we opted to not interact with the new RM service. The original goal was to worry about the “from”, not the “to”.

What’s next?

We are not planning any new features, but will keep a look-out for feedback and pull requests, that propose and collaborate on changes.

Testimonials

We are always on the look-out for early adopters and testimonials that share your success and scenarios. Here’s a great example:

FAQs

  • What about Team Foundation Server?
    Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 2, or higher, includes the new Release Management (RM) features and therefore supported by this tool.
  • Are any changes made to source or target environments?
    The tool only queries the RM DB to generate the release scripts. It makes no changes to the source or target environments.

  • What information is collected when running the tool?
    We do not collect any personal information when you use the migration tool. When you use the migration tool with Internet connectivity, basic usage metrics is collected to help improve our products and services, and for statistical analysis. Consult the RM Workflow Migrator Guide for options of disabling the metrics collection at run-time. Here is a snapshot of the telemetry we monitor:
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Team

We thank the following contributors, reviewers, and testers for this solution: Daniel Mann, Dave McKinstry, David Pitcher, Derrick Cawthon, Josh Garverick, Josh Sommer, Niel Zeeman, Richard Albrecht, Richard Fennell, Sergio Romero, Shashank Bansal , Shaun Mullis, Stawinski Fabio, Vladimir Gusarov, and William Salazar.

We need your feedback

We need your feedback. Here are some ways to connect with us: