Microsoft Consultant at Avanade Blog

Microsoft Certified Master

konstantinm — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:02:00 GMT

Microsoft came up with fairly new program for IT professionals. IT Professionals who hold Microsoft Certified Master technology-based certifications are recognized as holding the highest level of technical certification for Microsoft server products.

You can get Master in Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

You can read more about this on the site at Microsoft Master

How to Restore file deleted from TFS

konstantinm — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:58:00 GMT

There may be times when you remove file by mistake and need to restore a most up to date copy of this file into the TFS Source Code repository. This task can be accomplished with the help of the TFS command line tools.

In order to recover file we need to run following line of code tf dir $//deleted command. This statement will give you a list of deletion IDs for all versions of the file. Once this command line has been ran, you will see the following output
projectFile1;X1
projectFile1.cs;X2
projectFile1.cs;X3

This list of files will give us good idea about the file that we want to recover. Once we determine versin of the file that we want to recover we run the following command line
tf undelete projectFile1.cs;X3

X3 is the version that we want to restore and as it was specified in our original, we are restoring most up to date file. This command will restore this file into the folder that this file was deleted from. It will copy this file into the current workspace that we are working in currently.

Copied from Visual Studio Team System

TFS Reporting vc. HP QC Reporting

konstantinm — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:03:00 GMT

There is one main advantage of TFS over HP QC and it is reporting capability. This feature alone is enough not to use HP QC while making a selection for Project Management Tool.

HP QC has a web base configurable report that is very limited in terms of analytics operation that you may want to perform. It's very simplistic way of gaining an insight into Project Stats.

Combining SQL Reporting with TFS and providing several pre-build reports was a good idea. I am attaching a screen shot of such report for more detailed view.

Team Foundation Server is a solid product

konstantinm — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:08:00 GMT

Currently, I am on the project leading a small team of developers (on-shore and off-shore) and I started to feel the pain of not having the TFS available for this project.

We used to have the TFS in my prior project and I loved it. It has very nice capability around project management and it is especially good at tracking and assigning tasks. Probably the best part of this tool is configurability and you can adapt it for your project management style very easily.

There are several templates that Microsoft provides out of the box and we have our own at Avanade which is really nice and incorporates the best of Microsoft and Accenture practices, both are our parents.

The issue that I see with the TFS wider adaptation and recognition is the lack of interest among top management and also traditions of not braking processes if the are working even if they are very inefficient. I am hoping for a wider adaptation of this tool and it will be my dream coming on the customer site and see the Team Foundation Server being deployed there. This tool has a great future and I advise any Team Lead or PM to learn and adapt this tool it if they want to succeed on any project.

I will follow up with the practical usage of the Team Foundation Server in my next couple of posts. Meanwhile, your comments about your own experience with the TFS are welcome.

CCF 2008 and WCF services

konstantinm — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:58:00 GMT

CCF 2008 install several WCF Services which have various purposes. For instance, there is Microsoft.Ccf.Common.Logging.Providers.WebService responsible for logging error, warnings or information into file, event log or database. MSFT provides API for logging into a file and an event log but not into SQL Server, which I fin very odd. You would think that SQL would be your first choice, since you can run reports on top of it. I think MSFT needs to publish it as a patch. In any case, if you need one you need to create your own class those implements ILogging interface. You can disassemble one of their logging classes to see how it’s done by Microsoft.

CCF 2008 Improvements

konstantinm — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:18:00 GMT

CCF 2008 has the following improvements over CCF 2005

Better workflow implementation with the help of the Windows Workflow Foundation.

Enterprise grade Single Sign-On which help agents to access multiple systems with a single login.

Better development support with such tools as a hosted app. toolkit, security extensions.

End user portal built on top of MOSS 2007 that allows managing end user accounts.

Overall, CCF 2008 is a much better version with improvements in all major areas of prior CCF. It integrates portal, phone, email, fax, IM and chat in a much tighter fashion.

TFS Certification 70-510

konstantinm — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:06:00 GMT

I took the exam a week ago and passed it with the score of 900. It was quite comprehensive exam with 43 questions. Transcender is useful but extra study should be done. There were many very specific questions, so working knowledge of TFS is a big plus. Exam 70-510 is for TFS 2005 and I am not sure if and when Exam for TFS 2008 will be released.

Good starting point: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-510.mspx

Customer Care Framework 2008 Development Guide

konstantinm — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:59:00 GMT

Microsoft released Development Guide for CCF 2008 and this is very good document to read if you want to get started with CCF 2008.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/5/f/a5f78f68-62fe-426d-a51a-f68c786843bb/CCF2008_DevelopmentGuide.pdf

I recommend reading it... the only weak section that I saw in this document, was error logging section. They briefly mentioned that errors can be logged into Database but there are no useful code samples provided and only a small paragraph of text covering DB logging.

OpenSpan and CCF 2008

konstantinm — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:46:00 GMT

OpenSpan is fairly new company on the market, only three years old but did a good job by utilizing Micosoft's technology and creating a product that works well with CCF 2008. Their site has several Webinars that is highly recommended if you need to integrate CCF 2008 with OpenSpan.

I also arranged training via WebEx and will let you know the results. They use WebEx and one-on-one sessions. I am more interested in the integration aspect of CCF 2008 and OpenSpan product.

Customer Care Framework 2008 vs 2005

konstantinm — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:35:00 GMT

CCF 2008 is much more improved version over CCF 2005 and easy to migrate. Here is a brief list of new features that make it worthwhile switching from CCF 2005 to CCF 2008

New features:

CCF 2008 uses SharePoint Server 2007 portal for web portal access. Users can manage their accounts that was lacking in CCF2005.

CCF 2008 works now with Windows workflow Foundation, which is next Microsoft technology for defining, executing, and managing workflows.

Enteprise level Single Sign On. More powerful SSO architecture that allows you to manage different user id/passwords via one login data store.

Better intergration with telephony, emails, instant messaging and voice interactive systems.

Hosted Application Toolkit.

TFS 2008

konstantinm — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:56:00 GMT

There is no single answer to two decades old question. Why so many projects fail? and there is no silver bullet to fix all the problems. However, Microsoft seems to be finding the right way of approaching and dealing with this problem. TFS 2008 is one of the Microsoft answers. I will follow up with more on TFS right after I pass my 70-510 certification.

CCF 2008 Study Material

konstantinm — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:52:00 GMT

Started on studing CCF 2008 today and discovered wealth of information on Microsoft site. There is always lots of usefull staff if you know how to look for it...

Here is small list of links to get you started on CCF 2008. Let me know if links will become dead.

CCF: Web Applications Virtual Lab: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6949284
CCF: Single Sign-On: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6949285

First Entry

konstantinm — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:02:00 GMT

Hello,

This is my first entry into my first and official blog at Avanade. I am planning to write about tools such as TFS, Visual Studio 2008 and MOSS. I am also interested in WebServices and you will see information about it as well.

Thanks,
Konstantin.