INDYTFS Meeting this Wednesday

Managing Workflow in Software Development with TFS Work Item Tracking

Presented by Jamie Kurtz from Open Solutions

Learn how to take advantage of TFS work item tracking to effectively manage development within your organization. This session will introduce the basic concepts of tracking tasks, bugs, and other types of work within TFS. Then we will move into customizing rules and fields on existing work item types, followed by an exercise implementing our own custom workflow.  Finally, we will explore the work item tracking data available within the TFS data warehouse databases.

Microsoft Corporation Parkwood Business Park , Building Four
500 E. 96th St., Suite 460
Indianapolis, IN 46240

January 23rd 2008, 6PM – 8PM

Agenda:

6:00pm – 6:30pm Welcome, Introductions and Pizza
6:30pm – 7:45pm Jamie will present
7:45pm – 8:00pm Q&A, Raffle and Wrap Up

REGISTER – http://www.indytfs.org/sig/Events/tabid/63/ModuleID/414/ItemID/7/mctl/EventDetails/Default.aspx?selecteddate=1/23/2008

 

We ask that you register so we have enough pizza and drinks.

 

-paul

RadioTFS is Live

RadioTFS is a new podcast series that Mickey Gousset and I have decided to embark on. It will focus on all things VSTS and TFS of course. This is our first recording, so be kind as there were some minor audio issues that we are going to rectify in the coming shows ( Skype issues). This first cast is on TeamBuild and we also through in a bit about ourselves. The best thing about this is the fun tha Mickey and I had and we are across the country from each other. I mean it really was a hoot. Go check it out and please give us your feedback.

Link to RadioTFS Podcast

Link to Radio TFS Podcast RSS Feed.

Entity Spaces

I have never been a big fan of code generation tools. They are either to complicated to be of any use, they tend not to scale very well, or they become to unmanageable. That is until I went to work for an organization that was using a freely available code generation tool named MyGeneration. Then I find out the company I worked for employs Mike Griffin, one of the creators of the tool. Mike and the team set out to create a very cool Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET called Entity Spaces or ES. ES is not free, but at 149.00USD, you cannot beat it. You use ES together with MyGeneration. The results are a very LINQish experience. Oh yeah it does work with LINQ!!

I must say that I was quite impressed with the scalability, ease of use, and the speed . What I really like and I believe is one of the reasons that it works so well is that it works on native .NET data types, not strongly typed objects, so I get to return SQL Readers, DataTables, Datasets, etc..

If you are looking for a jumpstart on your software projects, I suggest you seriously look at this tool. Mike has also created a very quick video walk though to get you going. I just used it on a new project and was able to use the tool without any customization. I was able to generate a DAL/BOL in minutes and it works fantastic. If you find the same successes that I and many others have found, please blog about them or drop Mike a line directly.

-paul

Thanks for the Support

I just wanted to thank everyone that is supporting my new inititive the TFS Times newsletter. I started the newsletter in Novemebr 2007 and recieved around 85 hits. December saw a modest jump to around 135 give or take. I just looked at the latest count for January and I am already up to 362 hits in the first four days. This is awesome!! I am really excited that the community finds the newsletter that informitive and only hope to keep the community growing.

-paul

January TFS Times is out

Hot off the presses, the TFS Times January edition is out. This issue is all about Team Build in VSTS 2008. if you are interested in helping out, or writing an article, feel free to email at feedback@tfstimes.com

Enjoy

-paul