TFS 2013.4 Version Control – Enhanced Web Portal – Part 2

I have explained few of the enhancements available in TFS Web Portal for Version Control in Part 1. There are lot more really useful enhancements available.

1. It is possible to view a file as of in a given changeset and download the changeset version of the file to local machine.

2. Explore as a changeset version allows to view entire solution as of that particular version.



As of changeset version can be explored.

3. Download a solution as of a changeset version.

4. Annotate a chageset version of a file.
 

5. Compare a file for given two changesets.

6. Shelveset exploring has similar capabilities to changesets except few like explore as of version which is obvious since it is not committed, so no version is available.
 
View shelveset content, add comments/discussions, download shelveset file(s), compare with changesets are few of the available features.
 
7. Sharing a changeset as an email, enhances team collaboration.



Can share with multiple team members and add more custom content to email is possible.


Discussions etc. of the changeset are shrared via email and links are added for easy access.

8. Similar to changeset a shelveset can also be shared via email.

9. Rename history of the files can be viewed and show hide options available.

10. Branched history of file can be viewed with show hide options.

Let’s have look in to more new useful features of TFS2013.4 in coming posts.

TFS 2013.4 Version Control – Enhanced Web Portal – Part 1

Several enhancements are released with TFS2013.4 for version control in TFS web portal. Let’s explore them to understand how useful each of them.

1. It is possible to download a source code folder as a zip file from web portal. May be useful, but difficult to come up with a real usage example.

 

2. Code file view provides similar look at code files like in visual studio. This really helps to do code reviews etc. just using the browser. A download of code file is available as well.

3. Can show/hide annotations of a code file.

4. Changeset enhanced view provides file by file detailed view of changes.

Associated work items shown if any.

5. Discussions can be initiated as comments based on code. Other team members can reply to comments. Possible to add overall comment for the changeset.

6. Discussions as inline comments to the changeset code.

7. Create a work item based on a discussion on changeset. Would be really useful to create User Story/Bug/Task based on code reviews, discussion on implementation etc.

 

Discussion can be opened from work item.

 

8. Changesets can be viewed as list of files, files by folder or with full folder file hierarchy.

9. Several options to show comments (discussion comments) and filter files with discussions also available.

10. Changeset file changes can be viewed side by side or as inline changes. Inline view is really easy to read with line numbers.

 

11. As shown above options available to show hide comments made in portal.

12. Changeset file view can be in full screen mode.

There are lot more for for Version Control enhancements in Web Portal and I will show them in Part 2.

Bring Test Controller 2012.2 Online After Upgrading TFS Server to 2013.4

Recently I have done a TFS upgrade from 2012.2 to 2013.4 with a hardware move. DNS settings changed to access new TFS server using the previous TFS URL. All went well and I when I started TFS 2012.2 build farm (plan to upgrade them later) it was working as expected.
Started the test controllers and when viewed in MTM Lab Center the controllers shown offline.

My plan was to upgrade the test controllers later since currently lot of lab environments in use. Event viewer in test controller indicated an error.

Restarted test controller service, restarted test controller machine, but was not helpful.

Tried clean TFS cache in Test Controller machine.

All of above was not helpful. So I decided to take a risk and reconfigure the test controller 2012.2 with the new TFS (2013.4) server. My only worry was what will happen to the existing lab environments after reconfiguring test controller.


After reconfiguring everything was smoothly working. All my previously up and running labs were working as expected.

Quick Edit Code in VSO

Quick code editing in Visual Studio Online is a newly added feature with latest release. You can edit code check-in without opening Visual Studio. This is really useful to do a quick fix to your code just with a browser.
Let me show you how you could do this.
Explore a team project source code in VSO Web Portal and click on a file.

Click on edit will load the edit mode.

Add comments and check in (undo check out also possible)





Changeset can be viewed and file changes can be compared.
 
It is possible to add new files, upload new files and rename files as well.




Note: Code in above green box is manually added by me :).
You will find this feature is really useful to do quick fixes to code from wherever you are and whatever the device you use as long as you have a browser that can run VSO.
Currently this feature is not available for TFS on premise (2013.4), but will be available with a future update.