So I've (just like most other VS/TFS geeks) downloaded the latest bits to try it out. Apart from the expected wait-for-download the many-GB-files the setup went great. VS 2008 setup took about an hour to complete and installing a new TFS 2008 from a bare Window 2003 Server took less than two hours. Since the installation of TFS nowdays is a pretty straight-forward procedure I wasn't expecting any trouble so it was good that the new setup worked flawlessly.

Since most people only can access the 90-days trial you can still upgrade using the trial versions. When you have the right keys all that needs to be done is to re-run the setup and in the options you get it's possilble to enter the new license key to activate the product.

Next up is to upgrade our internal TFS 2005 installation to 2008. I think it will be a bit more challenging

The first of three talks on TFS Source Control is now done. It was nice to see so many people show up to the event and there was good discussions both during the talk and in the breaks.

I say I'd post some additional links after the event so here they are:

• The code sample for custom check-in policies can be downloaded here. The sample creates a policy that can be used to require an associated work item but only for specific types of work items.
• One guy mentioned a UI for the VSS Converter. Nothing I've looked at but here's the link to it: http://www.codeplex.com/VssConverterGui.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

The MSDN Live tour is now over. After having visited Umeå, Stockholm, Malmö and Göteborg it feels a bit wierd that it's over. It was a busy week (to say the least) and it's been a great experience to travel with the rest of the speakers and to get an opportunity to meet with a lot of .NET developers. Really nice!

So just for administration: you can download my VSTS presentation here.

Johan has also posted this and the other presentations on his blog.

Next month I'll be at the Öredev conference to give a talk on experiences from implementing Team System and TFS. The talk will address common concerns, such as:

• How do I plan for Team System?
• How do I implement TFS?
• What generally needs to be configured in a new installation?
• What can be extended in TFS to support the way my organization works?

And Peter will be talking too, so a big opportunity to hear more about our expericens from build automation and why we developed TFSBuildLab.

Sign up for the conference to hear more about development in general and in this case Team Foundation Server in particular.

TFSBuildLab v1 is done! Peter has done a great job wrapping up all loose ends and we've finally been able to get it out the door. The interest seems pretty good - the number of downloads so far is beyond our expecations.

Peter has written a detailed post on the updates from beta 2 to RTM here. Have a look at all the cool features and not to mention the statistics pulled from our TFSBuildLab production system.

So thanks for the interest so far and keep the comments and suggestions coming! The forum at Codeplex is always open.

Recently the v.1.3 of Team Foundation Power Tools (TFPT) was released. Great pack of utilities while we wait for TFS 2008 where many of the tools are built-in features.

The newest add-ons this time are:

• Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer: great tool for both performing a sanity check on a server before installing TFS as well as a utility for troubleshooting unhealty TFS installations.
• Work Item Templates: a feature that allows commonly used work item forms to be pre-populated with the default values.

I ran the analysis above on our TFS server and fortunately it only returned a couple of minor issues found (like not having the latest quiecense GDR installed). Good for me  

The release can be downloaded here.

Microsoft Sweden has started a series of presentations under the umbrella "application life-cycle management (ALM) called ALM Live. The talks will cover areas like project management, agile development and configuration management and Magnus Juvas kicked it off yesterday with a talk on effective project management. The presentations are of course targeted for Team System and TFS. For the next couple of events I'll be talking about TFS and how use the version control system effectively.

Here's more information about the event at the different locations:

It's going to be a great show this time, lots of good subjects and speakers! This time the major training companies have a chance to join in to show their muscels and I'll be working with Informator to give a talk on how Team System fits well both in a large as well as in a small project. We'll also look at some cool features coming in Visual Studio and TFS 2008 - maybe something about build automation?

More about the event here (including registration of course!).

Just a month after the first beta we've now released beta 2. Most work has been around easier installation and better administration, but a few new features are there as well.

Have a look at it at CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/tfsbuildlab.

Comments and suggenstions are much welcome as always. And please post to the forum as well.