TLS 1.2, PowerShell and Dynamics CRM with VSTS Release Management

PowerShell often used in tasks in VSTS release management. When accessing services authenticated via AAD (Azure Active Directory) it might require to use TLS 1.2 protocol, if it is configured to be required in AAD setup. Setting up the machine as per instructions here to allow TLS 1.2 may not work with PowerShell. In case you are accessing Dynamics CRM online with PowerShell using Microsoft.Xrm.Data.PowerShell in VSTS release management you might see this issue as  “[error]Get-CrmConnection : The pipeline has been stopped.”

Trigger Release from PS in TFS 2015.2

Can you trigger a release in TFS 2015.2 from another release definition execution? Was the request from one of the teams. To fulfill this requirement, if you are using VSTS or TFS2017,  you can use the extension “VSTS Trigger” available in marketplace. But this is not usable in TFS 2015.2 as it does not have the Personal Access Token feature. The PowerShell script described in this post will let you trigger a release from another release.

Mistake in .sln Can Cause NuGet Restore Task in Build to Fail and Hide the Real Issue

NuGet packages are very commonly used in VS Development. Using build VSTS task NuGet Restore is general practice of downloading packages while doing the automated builds. Today suddenly a team ran into the same issue described here https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/97737/error-da-toolnuget400x64nugetexe-failed-with-retur.html. Let’s have a look at the real issue caused this error in this particular teams’ instance and how it was found and resolved.

Setting Quality Profile via VSTS/TFS Build for SonarQube

Sonar analysis helps to identify the technical debt in the source code of your project. Running it integrated with VSTS or TFS builds add more value by automating the quality checks with sonar server. You can define your own custom Quality Profile to analyze your source code with selected set of rules. Let’s look at how you can specify the Quality Profile with the TFS/VSTS build task, that can be used to automate scanning of your code, when using the SonarQube extension in the visual studio marketplace.

Code Review with Git in Team Services

Code Review plays important part in software development as it helps to identify issues that may be overlooked. Reviews on code improve overall quality of the delivered software, and reviews are done in different ways by the teams, at times using pair programming, peer review and formal inspection of code by team leads etc. Team Services Git  version control now facilitates Code Review, via pull requests.

Business Rules for Work Items in Team Services

For inherited process model in VSTS, you can use Custom Rules to define rules that can clear the value of a field, copy a value into a field, and apply values based on dependencies between different fields' etc. You can define actions against conditions using custom rules. This provide you the flexibility in VSTS to go beyond the level of setting a default value or making a field required. To customize work items in an existing team project of Hosted XML model for VSTS, or on-premises TFS, you have to customize, downloaded process template or individual work item XML files (using witadmin tool) respectively. Differences between process models are described here.