Together with my colleague Bart Wullems I wrote an article about eScrum in Team Foundation Server.  This article is published in the Dutch .Net Magazine.  This magazine is from Microsoft Netherlands for the Netherlands and Belgium Microsoft Developers.

This is the link directly to our article : http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/3/0/130ccf47-be89-48ee-829d-3a6568befbaa/114602.pdf (It's in Dutch)

You can read the magazine online here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-nl/cc998678.aspx.

I hear you thinking, another Team System user group.  Yes, but this one is special.  Its called TSUG-VE which means Team System User Group - Virtual Edition.

This user group lives on the Microsoft Island of Second Life.  So everyone in the world could join this group.  This is the link to the website : http://www.tsug-ve.com/.

If you join, please read the rules.

I just received some sad news.

Patrick Tisseghem, one of the Belgium Sharepoint Guru's and co-founder of U2U passed away.

Words fall short to describe this.  I know Patrick for several years.  I followed several courses given by him.  He was always helpful.

Patrick, I'm glad to know you.

My thoughts go out to his wife Linda and their daughters.

We will miss you Patrick.

After all the SP releases, Microsoft also now released the SP1 for Team System Web Access.

Download it here : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3ECD00BA-972B-4120-A8D5-3D38311893DE

If you have installed Team explorer 2005 and afterwards installed Team Explorer 2008, there's a bug when opening Work items in Excel.  You got following error

TF80070 Team Foundation encountered an error while performing the operation. It is recommended that you save your work and restart the application.

There's a hotfix available for this : KB946075. Unfortunately you can't download this fix, unless you have Microsoft support calls available in your organization.

But luckily there's a work around for this.  You can use Team Explorer 2005 to connect to your TFS 2008 and open from within this tool your excel.  I know it's a work around, but till you can get your hands on the hotfix, this should help you.

Today the July version of the TFS Power Tools is released.  You can download them here : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=00803636-1d16-4df1-8a3d-ef1ad4f4bbab&displaylang=en

Read more about them in the preview of Brian Harry.

Two other updates are also coming shortly:

• eScrum for TFS2008
• Update of Team Web Access and SCOM management

We all know a good training will get you 50% of the way! http://www.ordina.be/soa

Since the release of the March 2008 TFS Power tools, it is possible to write scripts to automate the creation of new Team Projects.  So this is a little walk through on how to use this feature.

Two important remarks:

• You need to have Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 installed.  But as there's no Service Pack 1 for the moment, you could use the beta of it.  Download it here.
• If you have, like me a test VPC with and the server and the client, you need first install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and then also the Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1.  You can download the TFS SP1 here.

The command you have to use is this : tfpt createteamproject /validate /server:tfsservername [/teamproject:teamprojectname] [sourcecontrol:Branch:[branchpath]] [/processtemplate:[templatename]] or you could use a settingsfile and the command would look like this tfpt createteamproject /validate /settingsfile:filespec. Using the settingsfile is a lot easier.

A bit about the parameters :

  OK, let's make a little example now.  The example I will show make use of a setting file.  Let's start with the XML. This XML file contains all our settings for our project.

 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 

 2: <Project xmlns="ProjectCreationSettingsFileSchema.xsd"> 

 3:  

 4: <TFSName>win2k3</TFSName> 

 5:  

 6: <LogFolder> 

 7: c:\RemoteTFSProjectStart

 8: </LogFolder> 

 9:  

 10: <ProjectName> 

 11: My First Auto project

 12: </ProjectName> 

 13: <ProjectSiteTitle> 

 14: <!-- default to project name if not specified --> 

 15: My First Auto project

 16: </ProjectSiteTitle> 

 17: <ProjectSiteDescription> 

 18: <!-- default to empty string if not specified --> 

 19: This is my first attemp to automaticly create Team Projects

 20: </ProjectSiteDescription> 

 21: <SccCreateType> 

 22: <!-- none | new | branch --> 

 23: New

 24: </SccCreateType> 

 25: <SccBranchFromPath> 

 26: <!-- string.Empty for none and new; supplied for branch --> 

 27: string.empty

 28: </SccBranchFromPath> 

 29: <ProcessTemplateName> 

 30: MSF for Agile Software Development - v4.2

 31: </ProcessTemplateName> 

 32: </Project>

So this is pretty easy.  Next step is to run the createteamproject command :

1. Start the command prompt
2. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools
3. Usage: tfpt createteamproject /settingsfile:<path to >AutoCreate1.xml (be sure that you put the path to the settingsfile with it)
4. If alle settings are correct your team project will be created.

Three things are missing:

1. Area's
2. If necessary creating of new TFS security groups
3. Adding your users to the correct groups

But all three items can also be in the automated process by calling a service afterwards.  This service will can the TFS API's to do these jobs.

Why would you use this?

Well in our company we are busy with creating an Infopath form, where project leaders can request a new team project.  After they submit the form, one of the three TFS administrators approve this request and then a workflow will start to automatically create the team project and put the security correct.

The July version of the TFS power tools are coming.  It's a small release this time.  But for me the most important change is the new UI for subscribing to TFS alerts.  After my basic version, I think I will use this one, instead of improving mine.

More info and a few screen shots can be found on Brian Harry's blog.