I was delivering a training course on TFS 2012 this week and one of the delegates came across some unexpected behaviour that I hadn’t noticed before.

We had added the Work Items Check-in Policy to version control earlier in the day and were looking at automated builds.

With TFS you can perform a private build (or buddy build) to ensure that your proposed changes integrate successfully before you check them in.  You can also select the option to Check in changes after successful build which turns it into a kind of voluntary Gated Check-in.

This is what my delegate did and as his build completed successfully, his shelveset was committed to version control.  Somebody then pointed out that as the changes were not associated with a Work Item there should have been a policy warning like the one below.

I can’t say I have ever noticed this behaviour before and it took me a minute to realise the reason behind it.  Check-in policies are evaluated on the client side so for example if you use the Code Analysis Policy then it is your responsibility to run the code analysis rules against your code before check-in.  The server will not evaluate the policy for you, it will simply check to see if you have passed the rules locally.  The check in that happens as part of the private build happens server side so it did not have to pass the client side check-in policies.

You can of course control permissions on builds or ensure that the build also runs a suite of unit tests but it’s one to be aware of.

Richard

Recently I’ve been working with a customer on migrating their existing Team Project to a new Process Template on Team Foundation Server 2012. 

We’ve decided to go with the TFS Integration Tools to move selected Work Items and code across to a new project in a new Team Project Collection.  There were a number of alternative options open to us but this is a large project that has been migrated through the versions of TFS and we’re going to take the opportunity to clean it up and consolidate.

I spent some time mapping their existing Microsoft Solutions Framework for Agile Software Development 6.1 project to Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2.2.  I had to take into consideration some custom fields that had been added to the template and also some legacy fields that had been left hanging around after previous migrations.

The customer is not a heavy Visual Studio user, doing most of the development through Eclipse and as a result they are licensed for Visual Studio Professional 2012.  In turn this means that their developers have “Standard” licenses for Team Web Access. 

As part of the work we have been doing to transform their development process we have a need to use both the Product Backlog view and the Kanban board, both of which are only available to users who are “Full” licensed users of TWA. 

The cost of upgrading the developers to Visual Studio Premium was prohibitive as they will not make use of the additional Visual Studio features and the current Microsoft licensing did not give us any other option.

I evaluated both Urban Turtle and the Eylean products and although they both have their plus points and are very economically priced, neither gave us exactly what we were looking for.

Last week at the Build Windows Conference, Microsoft released a Preview of Team Foundation Server 2013 which also has a Go-Live license. 

Ordinarily it would be a pretty gung-ho decision to move your business onto pre-release software but in this case it is worth considering.  The reason is that Microsoft have listened to the feedback and re-jigged the licensing for TWA. 

TFS2013 now provides both the Kanban Board and the Backlog & Sprint Planning Tools to “Standard” users (VS Pro) and rightfully provides some very cool additional features (Portfolio Management, Team Rooms, Test Case Management, Feedback Management) to “Full” users (VS Premium, Ultimate & Test Pro) 

TFS 2012 Team Web Access Levels

TFS 2013 Preview Team Web Access Levels

As a result, there is a strong case to move the project to TFS2013 and although the decision on which way to go has not been made yet, I was worried that the TFS Integration Tools mapping that I had written would need a lot of work to update it for the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 3.0 Template.

I downloaded the Scrum 2.2 and Scrum 3.0 Templates and performed a Diff on the folders.

There were some minor build changes and some changes to allow for the new Git support but I was particularly interested in the Work Item and Reporting changes. 

Release Burndown report – Order by Iteration Path

Minor change but hopefully a helpful one as I have run into this problem before and presumably this small change to the rdl file will resolve it.

New Category – Feature Category

New Work Item Type - Feature

Both of these have been added to support the new portfolio management functionality in TWA.

And that’s it, so there are no field changes to the core Work Items.  Obviously it is still a Preview version of the template but it shouldn’t change significantly and I can make any tweaks if it does.

If you’re in a similar position in that you would like some of the “Full” features from TWA 2012 but the Premium upgrade does not make financial sense then TFS 2013 could give you what you need.

Cheers,

Richard

Microsoft announced that there will be a new Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server this year along with some other cool updates.  Some links in case you missed them:

Brian Harry: Visual Studio 2013 – A good overview of what’s coming up in the next version

Introducing Cloud-based Load Testing with Team Foundation Service – No need to go looking for tin to run those Load Tests now.

Improving Communication with TFS Team Rooms – Nice feature if your teams are distributed

Video: Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2013 – Good demo from the two Brians at MS.

TechEd North America 2013 – Check out all the on-demand recordings from TechEd

Testing Improvements in Team Foundation Service Update for TechEd 2013 – Updates to web based test management

Extending Visual Studio Team Explorer 2012 – More extension points for VS.

Team Foundation Task Board Enhancer: version .7.6 released – No feature updates but still one of the very few TWA extensions available.

Microsoft Code Digger – Updated this week so it can run against code not contained in Portable Class Libraries. Thanks for the heads-up Col

Cheers,

Richard

Are you using TFS 2012? 

Are you using or adopting Scrum?

Then get the most out of your tools and your process by attending a 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course with a free one day Scrum with TFS course.

The CSM course is taught by our Certified Scrum Trainer, Colin Bird, and I will be helping out with the optional, free third day which will give you hands on experience with TFS 2012, putting into practice what you have learned in the first 2 days.

The course will be held on Microsoft Campus in Reading on the 21st May – 23rd May

More details available here or you can register here.

If you hurry you can still get the discounted early bird price!

Cheers,

Richard

I was putting together a demo of cross browser Coded UI testing with Visual Studio 2012 and ran into a minor problem.  Hopefully this post will save you some time.

I grabbed the very helpful Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts from Brian Keller and installed Chrome, FireFox and the Selenium components for Coded UI Cross Browser Testing from the Visual Studio Gallery. 

After that, one line of code can make your Coded UI tests run on a different browser.  For example, just stick this line at the beginning of your test method:

BrowserWindow. CurrentBrowser = “chrome”;

More details here: Using Different Web Browsers with Coded UI Tests

The problem I ran into was that the Selenium Components installer failed, which seems to be a reasonably common issue due to access permissions, but helpfully Microsoft provide the simple steps to manually install what is needed.

1. Download chrome driver from:

http://chromedriver.googlecode.com/files/chromedriver_win_26.0.1383.0.zip

2. Download selenium dot net bindings from:

http://selenium.googlecode.com/files/selenium-dotnet-2.29.1.zip

3. Right click on the downloaded zip files.

4. Select "properties".

5. Under "General" tab, click on the "Unblock" button.

6. Now unzip both the files and copy the contents to the following path (for the selenium-dotnet 2.29.1 binaries, copy the contents of net40 folder):

"%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\VSTT\Cross Browser Selenium Components" (for 32 bit machines)

"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Common Files\microsoft shared\VSTT\Cross Browser Selenium Components" (for 64 bit machines)

On the 64 bit VM I unzipped the contents of the zip files into the “Cross Browser Selenium Components” folder and started my test but received the following error:

Test Method CodedUITestProject1.CodedUITest1.CodedUITestMethod1 threw exception:

Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITest.Extension.UITestException:

The playback engine could not find the selenium binaries required to run cross browser coded ui tests.  This may be because the Selenium .Net bindings and the Selenium Chrome driver are not installed or an older version of the Selenium Components Installer was used.  For more information about installing the binaries, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=267598

The important line in the manual installation instructions that I’d failed to follow was:

for the selenium-dotnet 2.29.1 binaries, copy the contents of net40 folder

So, to resolve the problem, simply copy the contents of the “net40” sub-folder into the “Cross Browser Selenium Components” parent folder

Happy testing.

Cheers,

Richard

Yesterday I presented at Microsoft Tech.Days Online 2013.  It was a slightly odd experience presenting in an almost empty auditorium to some cameras and a bunch of AV guys.

*Picture shamelessly borrowed from fellow presenter Colin Beales

If you attended the sessions, hopefully you enjoyed it and if you have any questions then please do get in touch.  The event continues today with some great content for IT Pros.

Cheers,

Richard

It’s my pleasure to be part of Microsoft UK Tech Days Online 2013 which is happening next Wednesday (24th April 2013).  It’s shaping up to be an excellent 3-day online event for both developers an IT Professionals with some really interesting areas being covered.  Day One is aimed at the development community with sessions on targeting Windows 8 and Windows Azure alongside Team Foundation Server and Application Lifecycle Management.  The day starts at 09:20 BST 

I am hosting two of the sessions and I’ll be around to answer questions live on the day.

12:00  Being Agile with Team Foundation Server 2012

Team Foundation Server 2012 introduced a number of excellent features and capabilities to help enable your agile team to plan, manage and track their work. This session will introduce the tools and provide details on how to get the best out of them.

15:40  Testing enhancements in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and Update 2

Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the newly released Update 2 have introduced some exciting new features and functionality to the core testing tools.  This session will demonstrate the new web based Test Case Management, cross browser support for Coded UI Testing and Microsoft Test Manager improvements.

You can register for this event here and it’s worth doing even if you can’t make it on the day as we’ll follow up with resources and recordings of the sessions.

Cheers,

Richard

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