TFS WitAdminUI moved to GitHub!

TFS WitAdminUI moved to Github where you can find an updated version.

Description

TFS WitAdminUI is a simple wrapper around the witadmin command-line tool offering various features.

Witadmin is a command-line tool which comes with Visual Studio. As described in MSDN, “By using the witadmin command-line tool, you can create, delete, import, and export objects such as categories, global lists, global workflow, types of links, and types of work items. You can also permanently delete types of work item types, and you can delete, list, or change the attributes of fields in work item.”

When working on customizing a process template, you need to perform several witadmin actions multiple times, and since it is a command line tool, it gets pretty bothersome composing the long commands over and over again with poor support for copy-paste actions. TFS WitAdminUI helps you by automatically generating commands based on the project collection and team project you are connected to. It allows you to preview generated commands with parameters for several witadminactions, get help on those actions and execute them against the selected project collection and team project.

Supported Versions

TFS WitAdminUI currently supports TFS versions:

• 2018 and all updates
• 2017 
• 2015
• 2013

TFS WitAdminUI currently supports VSTS in the following way:

"For Hosted XML and Inheritance process models, you can only use witadmin commands to list information." MSDN

Documentation

Documentation is available at https://aroje.github.io/.

TFS WitAdminUI 2015 – Simple Wrapper Around the witadmin Command-line Tool version for Team Foundation Server 2015 released

TFS WitAdminUI 2015 is my simple wrapper around the witadmin command-line tool offering various features. It is available for download from CodePlex. This version supports Team Foundation Server 2015 and Visual Studio Online projects. Comparing to the previous version for TFS 2013, this version contains minor bug fixes and supports management of process configurations in the group of Project Level Actions.  For details about the tool check out my previous blog entry about TFS WitAdminUI 2013.

TFS WitAdminUI 2013 – Simple Wrapper Around the witadmin Command-line Tool

TFS WitAdminUI 2013 is my simple wrapper around the witadmin command-line tool offering various features. It is available for download from CodePlex. TFS WitAdminUI 2013 helps you by automatically generating commands based on the project collection and team project you are connected to. It allows you to preview generated commands with parameters for several witadmin actions, get help on those actions and execute them against the selected project collection and team project.

TIPP: Toad For Oracle 12.6 does not support TFS 2013 Team Projects with Blanks in Their Names

Although it is not recommended to use blanks in names for TFS team projects, this option is supported and therefore you can end up with a team project named like that. This would be a showstopper for using this particular team project for versioning database objects with Toad For Oracle 12.6, because Toad does not support team projects with blanks (spaces) in their names.

Toad For Oracle 12.6 and Team Foundation Server 2013: Associating Work Items with Changesets While Performing Check-ins from Toad

 

As stated in the Toad for Oracle 12.1 - Release Notes, this version introduces the following feature “When using Team Foundation Server (TFS) in Toad, you can now check-in TFS Work Items and link one or more TFS work items to the check-in change set.” Additionally, the next version “Toad 12.5 supports Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2013 (TFS)”, as stated by Toad for Oracle 12.5 – Release Notes.

In other words, it is possible to associate work items with database changes while performing a check-in action from Toad for Oracle 12.6 when connected to a Team Foundation Server 2013 Team Project. This blog describes the main characteristics of this integration feature.

TIPP: VS Team Explorer 2012 Required for Associating Work Items with Changesets from Toad For Oracle 12.6 to Team Foundation Server 2013

As stated in the Toad for Oracle 12.1 - Release Notes, this version introduced the following feature “When using Team Foundation Server (TFS) in Toad, you can now check-in TFS Work Items and link one or more TFS work items to the check-in change set.” In other words, it should be possible to associate work items with database changes while performing a check-in action from Toad for Oracle.

Additionally, the next version “Toad 12.5 supports Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2013 (TFS)”, as stated by Toad for Oracle 12.5 – Release Notes.

I am currently working with Toad 12.6.0.53 with Team Coding 7.1 – Trial, and I found out that the feature for associating work items during check-in unfortunately does not work out of the box on a client machine where Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 or Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2013 bits are installed. In order to solve the error you need to install Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2012.

TIPP: Visual Studio Test Professional 2013 and Visual Studio Update 4

Visual Studio Test Professional 2013 is the only version from the Visual Studio 2013 offerings which was not released containing the latest updates from Update 4. Thus, if you upgrade your Team Foundation Server environment to Update 4 (TFS server, build server, lab and test agents), you need to install Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 to all machines where you have Test Professional 2013 RTM. 

Note: Visual Studio Test Professional 2013 is not listed in the “Properties - Applies to” section of the Description of Visual Studio 2013 Update 4.

Actual scenario where this was discovered:
The Team Foundation Server 2013 with Update 4 environment was initially set up (12.0.31101.0). As the lab environment was set up, Visual Studio 2013 Agents with Update 4 were installed respectively on test lab machines. Visual Studio Test Professional 2013 RTM (12.0.21005.1) was installed on test lab machines aimed for manual testing.

You could start Microsoft Test Manager and load tests on those machines. You could initiate the test run and Test Runner would also load correctly. But once you actually started the test run (with Start Test), Test Runner would block displaying “Initializing…” and you could restore it only by manually killing the MTM process and restarting MTM. The event log was full of errors reported by VSTTExecution, like “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” and “Method not found”. Once the Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 was installed, test runs could be started without problems.

Recordings from WinDays 2015 Available Online

Recordings of this year’s sessions at the Croatian annual Microsoft conference WinDays 2015 are available online [in Croatian].

• VS Online or Team Foundation Server?
• Visual Studio Release Management – the right infrastructure for high-quality DevOps

Enjoy!

Visiting Microsoft Build Developer Conference | April 29 – May 1, 2015 in San Francisco

In a few hours I’ll be leaving for the Microsoft Build Developer Conference, which will take place from April 29 – May 1, 2015 in San Francisco. According to current announcements related to conference content and events, it is going to be THE conference for many new exciting things….

Microsoft WinDays 2015 – WD XV

I had the chance to present 2 sessions at this year’s Croatian annual Microsoft conference WinDays 2015 with my colleague Ognjen Bajić.

The 1st one was about the comparison between Visual Studio Online and Team Foundation Server. We discussed the scenarios when one and/or the other “TFS flavor” would be the best choice for the customer. If you missed our session, you can read about the topic in the special digital edition of WD Mreža 2015 - Windays 15 in the article entitled “VS Online ili Lokalni Team Foundation Server” [in croatian].

The 2nd one was about the use of Visual Studio Release Management for automating the delivery cycle and achieving the right infrastructure for high-quality DevOps. We have shown an end-to-end demo of the full release management workflow with delivers to 3 different agent-based environments, as well as an example of agent-less delivery using DSC and PowerShell.