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TFS 2010 Power Tools Released

After the release of TFS 2010, the TFS 2010 Power Tools couldn’t wait to follow. So we’ve got a new release of:

A few features are extended but the team didn’t add any really big new stuff.  An overview:

Process Template Editor (PTE)

The Process Template Editor now support all of the new 2010 features like link types, etc.  They also added GUI support for a few TFS process features that have been there all along. 

  • Support for defining link types
  • Support for work item type categories
  • Support for query folders
  • Support for new work item form controls: label, link labels, new links control
  • Support for adding build and lab template settings
  • Support for editing permissions on source control, build, lab, queries/query folders
  • Fixed 158 bugs

Team Members

  • Customized Instant Messaging settings
  • The ability to launch communicator by double clicking on the identity
  • More async operations (save settings)
  • Improved error handling (now in the output window).

Team Foundation Build Extensions

The Team Foundation Build Extensions provide the ability to execute Ant or Maven 2 builds from Team Foundation Server and publish the results of the build along with any associated JUnit test results back to Team Foundation Server.  This release is compatible with Team Foundation Server 2005, Team Foundation Server 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2010.

Alerts Editor

They made some small improvements to the Alerts Editor.

  • Moved from the team project tree in Team Explorer to a submenu item of the Team Project Collection. This change highlights the scope of the tool, which is at the project collection level, and reduces confusion between the projects alert and the old alerts node.
  • Simplified UI scheme and more default alerts around Team Build scenarios.

Portals And Reports

In TFS 2010, it’s possible to install Sharepoint but not Sharepoint portals and reports.  To add them later you can now use

  • tfpt addprojectportal - Create a project portal for an existing Team Project that doesn't currently have one.
  • tfpt addprojectreports - Create (or overwrite) the reports for an existing Team Project.

Best Practices Analyzer

And of course also some improvements in the Best Practices Analyzer.  TFS 2010 brings a lot of new capabilities that really changes the breadth and depth of health checks necessary.

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