The latest release of the TFS powertools has been released and can be downloaded here.

There are two things this time that got my attention;

• A UI for setting up alerts to TFS using an editor similar to the work item query editor. This is a really useful enhancement since most people want to automate tasks based on the event model in TFS.
• Support for TFS in Microsoft System Center. With a dedicated TFS pack it will now be possible to monitor TFS the same way as other application servers. This add-on will be released as a separate download following the existing release mechanism for SCOM management packs.

Brian Harry has written a good post on what else is included in this release.

Here's another question that I often get: How can I control which Team Projects a specific user can see in TFS?

A: In TFS 2008 this is the default behaviour! New projects will only be visible to the members of the project groups.

In TFS 2005 there's a different story. Here the behaviour is that all valid TFS users can see all projects. That of course won't give them rights to do things in the projects, but having a long list of projects can be confusing. The solution in this case is to create a role (i.e. "Denied users") with "View project-level information" set to "Deny".

Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of the RTM version of Hyper-V, the new virtualization component of Windows Server 2008.

I'm a huge fan of Virtual PC. I use it more or less every day for development tasks and training because it's so easy to use. Having a way to deal with different environments without messing up your main configuration is priceless.

I've tried to use Virtual Server much the same way on a server scale but compared to VM-Ware it's quite limiting when it comes to guest OS management, such as resource sharing, support for physical hardware (where's the USB support?) and image handling. Hyper-V will likely change this so that we now can use the same infrastructure for virtual images both on desktops and servers.

And as for Team Foundation Server? It's supported as well! TFS 2008 still requires 32-bit OS on the application tier but a 32-bit OS can of course be hosted in Hyper-V on a 64-bit system. Brian Harry wrote about the implications of using TFS with Hyper-V technology in this post.

I've concidered using Windows Server as the OS for my laptop for a while. With Hyper-V now out the door my next laptop will run Windows Server 2008!

One question I get quite often is how you can control access to the Team System Web Access client.

TSWA will use the permissions setup for a user in TFS. So if you're allowed to view reports or manage documents in Sharepoint then these features will be available to you in TSWA as well.

Now, in TSWA 2008 there is also a way to control which tabs a user is allowed to use. To setup access permissions, chose "Settings, Team Project, Access Restrictions" in the web client. A dialog like the one below is shown where you can configure permissions in TSWA similar to the rest of TFS.

When Nicole in the case above logs in to TSWA the UI will not allow her to work with the reports, source control or build tabs. Not bad but in my opinion it would have been even better if the tabs wasn't shown at all.

Conchango recently released v.2.1 of the popular Scrum process template. Mainly bugfixes in this release and it's possible to upgrade existing projects using an included utility. The process is straightforward for the latest releases, but when upgrading from 2.0 Beta 1 I've had to handle it manually (which is the way to do it). Below is some short notes of the installation procedure.

Upgrade 2.0 Beta 2 & RTM => 2.1

• Uninstall Scrum for Team System 2.0.
• Install Scrum for Team System 2.1.
• Upgrade existing projects to 2.1 using the ProjectUpgrade.exe as described here.

Upgrade 2.0 Beta 1 => 2.1

• Uninstall 2.0 and install 2.1.
• Upgrading projects using ProjectUpgrade.exe will not work, instead
  • Extract the work item type definitions from the process template.
  • Import the work items types (existing will be updated, bug will be added).
  • The "Sprint Retrospective" work item type has been renamed so the old one called "Sprint Retrospective Item" should be removed.
    • Use the Team Foundation Power tool tfpt.exe /DeleteWIT to remove the unwanted work item type.
  • Remove all template work item queries and add the ones from the new process template.
  • Remove all template reports and add the ones from the new process template.

Otherwise a great release of a great process template. Probably the best mapping of Scrum to Team System around.

Microsoft just released an update to the Team Foundation Server Power Tools.

My favorites this time:

• Support for custom work item controls in the Process Template Editor.
  
  I suggested this a while back at MS Connect and it's great to see that this has added to the tool.
  
  There's also a CodePlex project working on WI custom controls, WitCustomControls, that I've been involved in. The controls can be used as they are and the code is there too so it's easy to customize and create your own.
  
• TFSServerManager. A utility that will give you nice statistics of TFS usage.

Brian Harry has a complete post on feature in the march release here.

Download TFPT here.

Per at EPiServer has built a very nice project dashboard based on TFS and Conchango's Scrum project template. And it just the thing I would like to have/do but nerver got the time to... Great work!

The Dashboard features:

• Ajax-based web interface with support for Internet Explorer and Firefox
• All features are sprint-centric for daily work in a sprint
• Create, add and update product backlogs
• Create and update sprint backlog items (task, impediment, bug)
• Colorized sprint backlog items to visually see progress and unplanned work
• Import bugs from another project for maintenance tasks
• Statistics and sprint burndown chart easily visible for the whole team
• RSS feed for syndication of changes in product backlog

The dashboard is available as a shared project on CodePlex.

Now the week of the event has passed. We had a busy three-day tour of Göteborg, Malmö and Stockholm.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

I got a number of interesting questions and I thought I'd share some of them here.

Q: Can I use TFS from Visual Studio Professional?
A: Yes, Visual Studio Standard Edition and up will work fine with Team Explorer. The Team Editions include a TFS CAL, the other will require a separate license.

Q: How can I exclude certain files from source control in TFS?
A: When you add files to projects under source control you can undo the newly added files from the pending changes list and it will not be under source control. Should you later change your mind then exclude and include the file and it will be added to TFS.

Q: Will my check-in policies for TFS 2005 work in TFS 2008?
A: Short story: check-in policies are compiled against a particular version of the TFC objects and will therefore only work with that version. More info here and on the forums here.

Q: Is there any good articles on moving from Visual Source Safe to TFS?
A: Steve St. Jean has written a good piece on this and it can be downloaded here.

Q: Is it possible to merge two changesets?
A: No, each changeset is unique and its content cannot be modified.