Empty groups not being expanded in a combobox for a TFS work item

A common work item type (WIT) edit in TFS is to limit the list of names shown in a combo to the users assigned to the project i.e. the members of the Team Projects Contributors and Project Administrators groups. This is done by editing the WIT either via your favourite XML editor or the Process Template Editor (part of the power tools). You edit the Allowedvalues for the field you wish to limit such as the Assigned To as shown below, ...

September 29, 2011 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Tempted by the new Kindle?

I am back on the should I buy a Kindle train of thought. Todays announcements are certainly interesting, I am not talking so much about the new Kindle Fire, but the new entry level version and the Touch. For me the tempting feature is still the E-Ink and battery life. The point is I have got used to reading on my phone, a Kindle might be easier on the eye, but it is more kit to carry, and I just don’t think I want to carry any more things. ...

September 28, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Just posted VirtualPC activity documentation for TFS 2010 Community Build Extensions

I have just posted new VirtualPC activity documentation for TFS 2010 Community Build Extensions. This has been a really nasty set of documentation to write as getting this activity running raises a lot of issues over COM security; thanks to Rik and Andy (our SharePoint specialists at Black Marble who are therefore used to COM problems!) who helped get to the bottom the issues. The best thing I can say about this VirtualPC activity (and I wrote much of it) is don’t use it. Much better to use the Hyper-V one it is far more flexible, allowing control of remotely hosted VMs, or even better use TFS Lab Management ...

September 27, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Upcoming Black Marble event on Windows 8

In case you did not make it to the Microsoft Build Conference, Black Marble are running a pair of free events in Leeds on the 12th of October on Windows 8 and the other announcements made in Anaheim earlier this month. The morning session is focused on the IT pro side and the afternoon on development, so why not make a day of it? To get more information, and to register for these free events, have a look at http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/Events ...

September 27, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Syncing the build number and assembly version numbers in a TFS build when using the TFSVersion activity

Updated 27 July 2013 - Here is a potential solution Update 27 Sep 2011 – this seemed such as good idea when I initially tried it out, but after more testing I see changing the build number part way through a build causes problems. The key one being that when you queue the next build it is issued the same revision number [the $(Rev:.r) in the BuildNumberFormat] as the just completed build, this will fail with the error ...

September 26, 2011 · 3 min · Richard Fennell

Video of my Webinar for Typemock is available

The video of my recent webinar for Typemock on using Isolator for designing SharePoint webparts is up at http://www.typemock.com/sharepoint-web-parts You can also find a link to it from http://bit.ly/RFennellVideos, as well as links to all the other videos of my presentations I know of that are publically available.

September 26, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

More documentation for the TFS 2010 community build extensions

Today I have posted a few more pages of the getting started documentation for the TFS 2010 community build extensions. This is an on-going task, I hope to get a few more written when I get a chance. I am writing the documentation in no obvious order, so let me know if any specific activity is in more need of some introductory level documentation than others.

September 24, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

New Release of the Community TFS 2010 Build Extensions

Mike Fourie has just announced that we’ve just shipped the second stable release of the Community TFS 2010 Build Extensions. Well worth a look if you need to customised your TFS 2010 build with any of the following AssemblyInfo BuildReport BuildWorkspace CodeMetric DateAndTime Email File GetBuildController GetBuildDefinition GetBuildServer GetWebAccessUrl Guid Hello HyperV IIS7 ILMerge InvokePowerShellCommand nUnit QueueBuild RoboCop SqlExecute StyleCop TFSVersion VB6 VirtualPC VSDevEnv Wmi WorkItemTracking Zip

September 23, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Follow up to todays Typemock Webinar

Thanks to any one who attended my Typemock Isolator session today, hope you found it useful. In due course the video will be up on the Typemock site. But of you want to read more on using Isolator with SHarePoint have a look at Mocking Sharepoint for Design with Typemock Isolator Mocks SP2010 64bit Assemblies with Typemock Isolator

September 21, 2011 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Stupid gotchas on a SQL 2008 Reporting Services are why I cannot see the Report Builder Button

There is a good chance if you are using TFS that you will want to create some custom reports. You can write these in Reporting Services via BI Studio or Excel, but I wanted to use Report Builder, but could not see the Report Builder button on this Reporting Services menu The problem was multi-levelled First I had to give the user access to the Report Builder. This is done using folder property security. I chose to give this right to a user (along with browser rights) from the root of the reporting services site ...

September 21, 2011 · 2 min · Richard Fennell