TFS Power Tools March 2011 Update (Backup/Restore, Shell Extension and tfpt enhancements and bug squashing added for flavor)

Friday, March 04, 2011

bharry's WebLog - Mar ‘11 Team Foundation Server Power Tools are Available

"Today we released an update to the Team Foundation Server Power Tools. You can download them here:

Main Power Tools

Build Extensions

MSSCCI plugin (unchanged from previous release)

The primary enhancements in this release are:

Addressed reported issues in the Backup/Restore Power Tool

Fleshed out the Windows Shell Extension for version control

Took the first step on the path to a bunch of new TFS Build Power Tools

Backup/Restore Power Tool

We released the backup/restore Power Tool in the last Power Tools release and you can read about it in depth here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/08/18/backing-up-and-restoring-your-tfs-server.aspx and here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/08/19/backing-up-your-tfs-server-with-sharepoint-and-reporting.aspx. Unfortunately, we pretty quickly got feedback that there were enough bugs in it that it was not nearly as useful as we had imagined. In this new release, the experience is pretty much the same so I’m not going to repeat all of the screen shots. The big difference is that we fixed just about every bug that was reported. We also put a ton more effort into testing it. This is probably the most involved Power Tool we have shipped today and it’s clear that the standard Power Tool approach was not sufficient. We’ve tried really hard to ensure that this is going to be a great solution for you. Of course, if you find any issues at all, please let us know and we’ll get them fixed as quickly as we can. Here’s a list of all of the bugs that we fixed:

...

Windows Shell Extension

I’m really excited to finally be getting back around to giving the shell extension some more love. It’s been a long time. We focused on adding the most requested functionality to it and it’s getting close to the point where most people won’t have to run Team Explorer for version control if they don’t want to.

Here’s a screen shot showing the new commands on the context menu.

...

TFS Build Power Tools

So, why, above did I describe this above as “first step on the path to a bunch of new TFS Build Power Tools” when we’ve already got some build Power Tools. Well, because this marks a new milestone. Over the last year, we have adopted TFS Build as the heart of the internal DevDiv automated build system. As part of doing this, we’ve implemented a ton of new internal tools to manage and report on builds. In fact, we were demoing them to our MVPs at the MVP Summit yesterday and they were drooling over them.

...

Bug Fixes

And, as always, in addition to the emphasis on bug fixing in the Backup/Restore Power Tool, we fixed bugs in other parts of the Power Tools too. Here’s a list of the fixes:

..."