Many times I am being asked about the Email alerts in TFS, I must admit that I had been lazy lately regarding this subject but that is now changed with this new User Guide.

There are two alert methods to be used:

1. Pull Alerts – Where the user decides which alerts to receive
2. Push Alerts – Where the administrator decides which alerts each of the users will receive

The Pull Alerts in my opinion is an unnecessary using Team System and I will explain why:

In Team System you get all the information where ever you are and what ever tool you are using, if you are using Visual Studio you have the Team Explorer in it, if you are using the Test Manager you have all the information in it too, you can get the information thru Excel, thru MSProject, Word, SharePoint, Web Access you can even create your own clients so why do I need someone that will push me unnecessary emails?

For organizations that decide to use the Push Method it can be done using Web Services that gets events from the TFS and send emails to who ever the Administrator decides, this subject is out of the scope of this User Guide I like to focus on the Pull Alerts Method.

What you will see in this User Guide?

• How To Set The Mail Server
• How To Define Emails For Work Items
• How To Define Emails For Builds
• How To Define Emails For Source Control Items

See you in the next post…

Have Fun!!!

I have just installed the new Power Tools.

Downloads:

• TFS Power Tools
• MSSCCI (Was not updated in this release)

Besides the fact that you will need to install the Power Tools both on the Client computers and on the Server nothing is changed in the installation.

It is important to have on the Application Tier the SQL Server Management Studio for the Backup and Restore functionality to run correctly, this feature is using it’s API to work.

So What Was Changed? These Four things:

1. We now have a Backup and Restore GUI in the TFS Administration Console so every one can now Backup and Restore in a few Clicks of a Mouse.
2. Clowning Build Definitions using the right click on the build definition and choosing “Clown Build Definition”
3. “Open With” option in Source Control that let you choose a program like “Notepad” for example when opening files
4. Ability to: Convert, Reparent, List and Update Branches.

Microsoft has added bug fixes to the installation so it is highly recommended to upgrade to this version of the Power Tools.

Note: I have also added the description of each of the existed functionality from the product site.

Have Fun!!!

Alerts Explorer

A plug-in to Visual Studio, Alerts Explorer provides a graphical user interface that supports flexible subscription of alerts based on check-in, work item change, or build completion.

Team Foundation Server Backups

New! The tool can schedule backups for the following databases that your deployment of Team Foundation Server uses:

• the configuration database
• the database for each team project collection
• the databases that Team Foundation Server uses in conjunction with SharePoint Products, if your deployment includes integration with SharePoint Products
• the databases that Team Foundation Server uses in conjunction with SQL Server Reporting Services, if your deployment includes reports

By using the restore wizard included with this tool, you can restore your entire deployment to new hardware, or selectively restore team project collections to an earlier point in time.

Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Best Practices Analyzer

Updated! A diagnostic tool with a graphical user interface that you can use to perform the following actions:

• Verify that the deployment for Team Foundation Server is configured according to recommended best practices
• Identify the source of problems in an unhealthy deployment.
• Take a snapshot of the configuration of a deployment.
• Obtain usage data about the volume of data stored or accessed in the past 14 days. Includes specific information about database tables that have a tendency to grow and that may need to be reduced in size.

Custom Check-in Policy Pack

A supplemental set of four custom check-in policies to use to enforce software development practices during the check-in process.

Process Editor

An add-in to the Tools menu, the Process Editor provides a graphical user interface for editing Team Foundation Server process templates inside the Visual Studio IDE. This tool also provides a GUI for viewing the values assigned to all fields defined in a project collection.

Team Explorer Enhancements

Updated! This tool provides additional Visual Studio menu options and functions to support finding files under version control by status or wildcard, opening a folder using Windows Explorer from the Source Control Explorer context menu, and labeling files and folders in Source Control Explorer.

Team Foundation Power Tool (TFPT.EXE) Tool

Updated! A command line tool that you can use to work with files and directories under version control, team projects, and work items. Some commands display a graphical user interface when run.

Team Members

An add-in to Team Explorer, this tool allows you to organize users into sub-teams and access a number of collaborative tools, such as IM and email, sharing of queries and links, and downloading and installation of custom Team Foundation components.

Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server

This tool provides a Windows PowerShell interface that supports basic version control commands and a pipeline and glue to enable scripting.

Windows Shell Extensions

This tool provides integration with Windows Explorer and the common file dialogs. With this integration, you can perform many source control operations without having to run Visual Studio or a Team Foundation command-line tool.

Work Item Templates

This tool provides an add-in to the Team menu and a folder under each team project node in Team Explorer. With this tool, you can create, apply, capture, set, and organize default work item templates.

I have seen this error at one of my customers sites, the main problem we had is to get to the the source of this error.

So what were the symptoms?

The SQL Server was installed to serve the TFS 2010, in the installation we saw no problem at all and the server worked well.

The first time we noticed that we have a problem was when we tried to backup the databases using the SQL Server Maintenance Plan, we have received an error from the plan’s job.

when trying to understand what the problem is we saw no errors at the “Windows Event Viewer” , in the logs we saw that the “Could not obtain information about windows NT…”

After a lot of research and many Google links that gave us nothing we found the real problem:

So what do you need to do next?

First of all you need to check that the user that runs SQL Server Services has sufficient privilege in the domain, in most cases it will be sufficient to have the basic user domain privilege to fix this problem.

What append in our case is that the user that runs the SQL Server Services had two groups, the basic User Privilege and another group that some of its security settings Denied the required privilege.

What we did is just removed this group and all worked well.

Have Fun!!!

In order to model the real world while we test our applications for performance most chances we will need to test using the cache located on client’s computers.

Both in “Web Performance Test” and “Load Test” we have the ability to do that, but how does it really works?

In both cases the cache will be saved in memory!

• Web Performance Test: The only requests in the test scenario that will “benefit” from using the Cache are the requests that repeats in the test scenario, for example: getting to home page twice in one scenario.
• Load Test: The first run of the “Virtual User” will save the cache in memory and all the runs that comes after that for the same virtual user will benefit from the cache.

So how do we set the cache in each case?

Web Performance Test

Step 1: Open the recorded “Web Performance Test”

Step 2: The cache is configured per request so choose the required request

Step 3: Open the Properties window of the request

Step 4: Change the “Cache Control” to True

Start running the scenario and benefit from the cache.

Load Test

Step 1: Open the “Load Test”

Step 2: Right Click on the Scenario, in this example “Scenario1” and choose Properties

Step 3: In the Properties window type the required percentage of new users in the “Percentage of New Users” field.

This will define how many Virtual Users will get a memory storage and how many will not get a memory storage.

You can now run the test and start benefit from cache.

Have Fun!!!