TFS Lab Management can be a good way to manage your development and test environments, providing a means to more easily store, deploy and snapshot environments. Problem is they are not magic, you need to create the virtual machines you will use. You can use tools such the ALM Rangers VM Factory to speed this process, but you still need the source ISOs to create the VMs. Until the release of System Center 2012 SP1 (and TFS 2012 QU1) Lab Management did not support Windows 8 or Server 2012. This was a limitation with the System Center 2008 Virtual Machine Manager. But with the release of these new versions you now have no excuse not to have a look at TFS Lab Management for even your most cutting edge projects. And remember you are licensed Lab Management (including SC-VMM for the sole use of TFS Lab Management) as part of your TFS 2012 MSDN license. ...

I have recently been battling running a command line tool within a Wix 3.6 installer. I eventually got it going but learnt a few things. Here is a code fragment that outlines the solution. <Product ………> ……… loads of other Wix bits <!—Next we define the actual CustomAction that does the work. This needs to be deferred (until after the files are installed) and set to not be impersonated so runs as the same elevated account as the rest of the MSIExec actions. (assuming your command line tool needs admin rights –> <CustomAction Id=“SilentLaunch” BinaryKey=“WixCA” DllEntry=“CAQuietExec” Execute=“deferred” Return=“check” Impersonate=“no” /> <!—Finally we set where in the install sequence the CustomActions and that they are only called on a new install Note that we don’t tidy up the actions of this command line tool on a de-install –> NOT Installed NOT Installed ...

Typemock have released a new version of Isolator (7.3) that addresses some problems they have been having with Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8 Resolved all issues concerning the breaking MS update Boosted performance across the board (up to 44% faster) Enhanced SmartRunner UI Improved mocking capabilities Better integration with .NET development ecosystem You can download this release, or a free trial if you don’t have an Isolator license, from the Typemock site ...

On the 17th of April I will be speaking at VISUG Conference in Antwerp. Looks to be an interesting day with 3 tracks, Win8, Web and ALM. I am on the ALM track with Martin Woodward and Neno Loje.

The new Windows 8 ALM Readiness Treasure Map application is available on the store. This is a great way to navigate a whole range of resources available for anyone involved in ALM work.

I recently wrote a post that discussed how the contributor rights had been stripped off areas in TFS 2012 server when QU1 was applied, this included details on the patches to apply the manual steps to resolve the problem. Well today I found that it is not just in the area security you can see this problem. We found it too in the main source code repository. Again the [Team project]contributors group was completely missing. I had to re-add it manually. Once this was done all was OK for the users ...

Microsoft have release Windows Phone 7.8 in the last few days. As usual the rollout appears to be phased, I think based on serial number of your phone. As with previous versions you can force the update, so jumping the phased rollout queue. The process is Put the phone in flight mode (so no data connection) Connect it to your PC running Zune, it will look to see if there is an OS update. If it finds it great, let it do the upgrade If it does not find it, select the settings menu (top right in Zune) You need to select the update menu option on the left menu Zune will check for an update, about a second or two after it starts this process disconnect the PC from the Internet. This should allow Zune to get a list of updates, but not the filter list of serial numbers. So it assume the update is for you. You should get the update available message, reconnect the internet (it needs to download the file) and continue to do the upgrade You will probably have to repeat step 5 a few times to get the timing correct ...

The Git support was not the only announcement for TFS at the ALM Summit last week. On Brian Harry’s blog you can see more on the new features either in the TFS/VS 2012.2 (Update 2) CTP or planned to appear in later CTPs. The list is long, but the ones that caught my eye beyond that of Git support are Microsoft Fakes moves from the Ultimate SKU to Premium, thus making it a ‘free’ option for many corporate developers as they already have that SKU Easier customisation of the Kanban board Tagging of workitems to allow flexible filtering Testing visibility in the web admin pages … and many other improvements. Have a look at the blog posts, or even better pull down the CTP for a look. Also remember if you want to see new TFS features why not try them via a Team Foundation Server account? ...

I spent much of the weekend at the Imagine Cup North East Hackathon; for those of you who don’t know the Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s world wide student competition. This event was to help students in the North East of England to get there entries kick started before their regional final in a few weeks, which lead to the UK finals and for one team the worlds in Russia in July. The event seemed a great success, everyone seemed to enjoy it and we mentors saw huge progress in the entries of all the teams. Not just in new code written, but arguably the more important areas of better team working and presentation skill. ...

At the ALM Summit yesterday Brian Harry made some major TFS and Visual Studio announcements Git support for the hosted visualstudio.com, this allows you to choose if you want a centralised (existing TFS) source control repository or DVSC (using Git). There is also new tools with VS2012 to make using Git easier. Read more as to why Microsoft have made this addition to their offering in his blog. For those of you using on premises TFS you will have have to wait for the next major release of TFS, don’t expect to see this in a quarterly update. Also he outline what is to be in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, loads of tool enhancements. Have a look the posts to find out more ...