Last Friday the new release of Team Foundation Server Power Tools became available and it is called the August 2011 release. In this release there’s lots of new features and fixes and I would like to make a small stop (already there’s plenty of details out there, so I will not repeat it) on two of them. First, with this release, you can do full-text searching over you work items. There is similar functionality in a codeplex project called Search Work Items, however this is a functionality that was requested on the Visual Studio User voice forum and it is something that has been implemented for the vNext of Visual Studio and TFS. TFS Power Tools make it possible for the product group to bring the functionality to customers earlier. The second is that you can now rollback changeset’s from Source Control Explorer UI – either by right clicking on a specific changeset or on a folder/branch. If you click on a folder or branch, then you will be able to rollback one changeset or a range. The functionality to rollback changeset’s was implemented in TFS 2010, however previously it was only available through command line (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380776.aspx). NB! If you have never tried to rollback anything in TFS, then when you rollback – the changes will be done on your local disk and you will need to check-in the rollback changes as a changeset to the TFS. The model is similar to merging, but e.g. allows you to rollback a rollback ;) Anyhow, more information incl. pictures can be found following links. Brian Harry introduces the latest TFS Power Tools Ed Blankenship - small intro to some features (Note! builddefinition and workitemsearch.mht) And you can download the new TFS Power Tools from the following link. Download latest TFS Power Tools
Microsoft has many channels (such as connect, MSDN forums, newsgroups, etc.) to gather feedback from users, customers, partners, MVP’s. This month a new channel called uservoice has been added to the list. Through uservoice new ideas can be proposed and those ideas can be commented/voted by other people. If some ideas have enough votes (they are important), then it is possible that Microsoft will listen to the people and the vNext of Visual Studio and/or Team Foundation Server will contain that feature or change. This uservoice channel is for Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server and the whole Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). So make sure you give all your ideas. Each user has 10 votes and thus can vote for 10 ideas. Make sure you vote for the ones that are most relevant and important for you, to make sure it will be in the vNext You can vote here: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/