Let your voice be heard

Ever wanted to have a voice in the direction of the VS Team System developer tools? Want to suggest or comment on what has been done so in the next release called Rosario? Now is your chance. The team has published the specifications of features and is looking for feedback from the public.

The list of feature specs include:

• Add to Source Control
• History Improvements
• Improved Label Dialog
• Resolve Improvements
• Send Mail for TFS
• Core Linking WorkItem Tracking
• TFS Bug Submission portal for TFS 2008

This is great stuff and its fairly in depth. So check it out and let your voice be heard.

-paul

Indy Code Camp is coming to town

Saturday, April 26, 2008
8:30 AM – 5:30 PM
IndyNDA presents
Indy Code Camp
Register Now!

The continuing goal of the Code Camps series is to provide an intensive developer-to-developer learning experience that is fun and technically stimulating. The primary focus is on delivering programming information and sample code that can be used immediately. The event is free for attendees. All slides, manuals and demo code are provided to attendees.

This event promises to be a great time. There are something like 40 sessions taking place. If you never been to a code camp, then you are in for a treat. This is not your typical slide deck some demo sort of thing. Its more like 70 minutes+ of heads down coding and few if any slide decks. Please come out and sponsor your local event and show what Indy Devs are really made of.

-paul

Package What? PackageThis!!

Ever seen content on MSDN and then never be able to find it again? For that matter what about content on TechNet? I am constantly finding info on one of the two sites and then never seeing it again. Even better I have a list of links that point to various areas of MSDN just to try and find info quicker. It does not work well all the time.

While sitting in on the recent IndyTFS meeting, the presenter was looking at documentation on MSDN and the audience was interested in getting that info so they could review it. Not sure why, but I remembered that there was a tool that would allow me to package up the content into a .chm file that I could have available offline and I could even make downloadable to the group. A quick search and I found the tool that is now available on CodePlex called PacakgeThis.

So if you ever wanted to get content off MSDN or TechNet and have it packaged in a way that makes it easier for you to use then I suggest you look at this tool. I really am surprised that I have not heard more folks using this tool given that finding info on MSDN can be a pain. I now I am going to be using it more often.

-paul

Heroes Happen Here Launch Bloomington, Illinois

Sometime back I was approached by the folks who run the Bloomington, Illinois Dotnet User Group about speaking at their launch event. I graciously accepted and helped them to get the event planned out by calling on some friends to help out with speaking. Well they have put the whole thing together and so its ready to go.

The evening is going to be a great time. The other speakers are highly knowledgeable in their areas. I will be presenting an Overview of Windows Server 2008. I fell great about this since I am really getting into the new server OS. It is an area that I hope to speak on in future meetings.

 

So if you are in or near the area, stop by for some good times. Please register as space will be limited.

 

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM Central Time (US & Canada)
Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc.
404 North Hershey Road
Bloomington Illinois 61704

http://bloomingtondotnet.org/

-paul

BOF Submission time extended

Going to TechEd2008? Wanting to get more involved in the community? Here’s your chance. They have extended the submission time so that you know have an opportunity to submit a Birds of the Feather topic before voting commences. This is a great way to get involved. You can get more details from the INETA February newsletter. http://www.ineta.org/newsletters/2008_02.htm#A10

“Based upon feedback, we have extended the deadline for topic submissions to Wed 4/2/2008 and the voting deadline to Mon 4/7/2008.”

So get those topics in ASAP.

 

-paul

IndyTFS Meeting

Join us next week March 26th 2008 for our monthly meeting of IndyTFS.

Extracting Real Business Information from the TFS Data Warehouse

Presented by Jamie Kurtz from Open Solutions

This session will focus on the tremendous value the TFS data warehouse can bring your organization. We will start with an overview of the two different data stores that make up the warehouse - including an overview of the main tables and the Team System cube. Then we walk through some examples on analyzing this data with tools like Excel, Access, and SQL Server Reporting Services. The goal of this session is to provide enough of an introduction that attendees will be able to return to their own TFS environments and implement great visibility into their development processes.

 

This promises to be a great meeting. If you have ever heard Jamie speak you know that he is extremely knowledgeable in all areas of TFS. If you have never heard him, try to get to the meeting and see what I mean.

Remember that this will be our last meeting at the Microsoft Office. In April we will be moving. See the website for details. Please register so that we order enough pizza.

 

-paul

The Exchange Server 2007 installation process

I have been playing around with Exchange lately to learn about setting it up in a production environment. Just another technology to understand a bit better. I am by no means an Exchange guru, so I did a bit of digging to see what I need to do to not only prep my server, but to do a smooth install. I happened to stumble across this great set of articles that I found to be quite a nice walk through. They use the beta product, but it really was no different than installing Exchange w/SP1. If you are curious, or want a quick rundown of the process, I suggest that you check these articles out.

Step-by-Step Guide: Test driving Exchange Server 2007

Day of DotNet - Fox Valley

The FoxValley .Net Users Group is going to be hosting a Day of .NET on March 15th 2008. They have a great lineup of speakers and topics. If you happen to be in the Midwest area on that day, I suggest that you register and meet so great local talent. You can get more info at http://www.fvnug.org/

 

-paul

RadioTFS Episode #3

For those of you that are following the new RadioTFS podcast series, we have just released episode #3. This episode is all about the Team Foundation Server Power Tools 2008. Check this episode and all the previous ones out at http://radiotfs.com. Feel free to leave questions, comments, or show suggestions at radiotfs@gmail.com . We will read you questions on the air during the next show.

-paul

March TFSTimes is out

The March edition of TFS Times as been released. Check it out at http://www.tfstimes.com

 

-paul