Updates 28th Nov 2017: Also see this second post Creating a VSTS build agent on an Azure DevLabs Windows Server VM with no GUI - Using Artifacts 30th Nov 2017: Also see associated post Announcing a new VSTS Extension for Starting and Stopping Azure DevTest Labs VMs As I posted recently I have been trying to add more …

Reporting has always been important for software development, simply put the ability to know what has been done, and what remains to be done. For many teams the out the box reporting within TFS/VSTS dashboards has been enough e.g. sprint burndowns and kanban charts etc. Also TFS has always had SQL Reporting Services …

As time passes I have found there is a need for more cross platform VSTS extensions as there is more uptake of VSTS beyond it’s historic Microsoft platform based roots. Historically most of my extensions have been Powershell based. Now this is not a fundamental problem for cross platform usage. this is due to the …

BlogEngine.Net has served us well as a blogging platform for a good few years. However, it is no longer under active support, so it is time to move on, too much risk of future security issues to ignore the lack of support. After a bit of thought we decided on WordPress as a replacement. OK this has had its own history …

Whilst doing some NPM build work for VSTS Extensions I kept getting intermittent EPERM errors about renaming Windows files during NPM install (as discussed on GitHub)l. When you get this it completely blocks any development. As the Github issue discusses there are many possible reasons for this issue, and many proposed …

I have working on getting a Windows 10 Universal application analysed with SonarQube 6.x as part of a VSTS build. The problem has been that when the VSTS task to complete the SonarQube analysis ran I kept getting an error in the form 1WARNING: Duplicate project GUID: "8ace107e-8e3c-4a1b-9920-e76eb1db5e53". …

Are you enthused by the all news at Build 2017? Do you want to find out more about VSTS, DevOps and Continuous Delivery? Well why not take the chance to join us on June 17th at Black Marble, or one of the over 25 other venues around the world for the first Global DevOps Bootcamp? The Global DevOps Bootcamp is a free …

I did an event yesterday on using the TFS Database Import Service to do migrations from on premises TFS to VSTS. During the presentation I discussed some of the other migration options available. Not everyone needs a high fidelity migration, bring everything over. Some teams may want to just bring over their current …

Several years ago, for the launch of Windows Phone 7, we built a game based on work we did on helping teaching AI with .NET. o7 was born. A great game, and now it is back in glorious UWP for Windows 10. Try it out and let us know what you think. Get it here. b

Once again I am so very proud to announce I have been selected to continue as a Regional Director for Microsoft for another two years. The Regional Directors are a truly extraordinary set of individuals and I am humbled every time I’m in their company. Not only for their extraordinary depth of knowledge and level of …