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Transform tool for transferring TFS 2015.3 Release Templates to VSTS

If you are moving from on-premises TFS to VSTS you might hit the same problem I have just have. The structure of a VSTS releases is changing, there is now the concept of multiple ‘Deployment Steps’ in an environment. This means you can use a number of different agents for a single environment – a good thing. The downside this that if you export a TFS2015.3 release process and try to import it to VSTS it will fail saying the JSON format is incorrect....

Deleting unwanted orphan XAML Build Controllers on a migrated VSTS instance

Whilst working with the VSTS Data Import Service I ended up migrating a TFS TPC up to VSTS that had an old XAML Build Controller defined. I did not need this XAML build controller, in fact I needed to remove it because it was using my free private build controller slot. Problem was I could not find a way to remove it via the VSTS (or Visual Studio Team Explorer) UI, and the VM that had been running the build controller was long gone....

Problem adding external AAD user to a directory backed VSTS instance

Background I recently decided to change one of my VSTS instance to be directory backed. What this means is that in the past users logged in using LiveIDs (MSAs by their new name); once the VSTS instance was linked to an Azure Active Directory (AAD), via the Azure portal, they could login only if they were using an account in the AAD their MSA was listed as a guest in the AAD they used a work ID in another AAD that is listed as a guest in my AAD Thus giving me centralised user management....

You can now manage complex ARM based environments in Azure DevTest Labs

Azure DevTest Labs has been available for a while and I have found it a good way to make sure I control costs of VMs i.e. making sure they are shutdown outside office hours. However, in the past, have had a major limitation for me that they only allowed templates that contained a single VM. You could group these together but it was bit awkward. Well at Connect() it was announced that there is now complex ARM template support....

There are now no excuses for not using Continuous Delivery from VSTS for Azure Web Apps

One type of feature I hate people demoing in any IDE, especially Visual Studio, is the ‘just click here to publish to live from the developers PC’. This is just not good practice, we want to encourage a good DevOps process with Source Control Automated build Automated release with approvals The problem is, this can all be a bit much for people, it takes work and knowledge, and that right click is just too tempting....