TFS 2010 - How do I create email alerts when anything is checked into TFS, Build's Fail/Succeed or Work Items are Assigned/Changed?

This is quite simple to do with the right tools installed on your development machine:

1) Ensure that you have an SMTP Server Configured for your TFS box - as described on MSDN at "How to: Configure SMTP Server and E-mail Notification Settings in the Services Web.Config File" 
2) Install the Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Power Tools from MSDN
3) Open up the Alert Explorer which installs a set of alert actions. The alert explorer is accessible from several different menus within Visual Studio 2010. See screenshots below:

From the Team Menu:

On TFS Work Items:

From the top level TFS Server Node:

On Branches or Folders within the TFS Source Control Explorer windows:

There are several predefined alerts that come with the Visual Studio TFS Power Tools. These are shown below:

The alert filters are quite flexible. You can modify and change these Alerts in the alter definition editor as shown below:

DDK

Using the Fiddler Tool Proxy to Debug Visual Studio Web Tests and Load Tests

The Fiddler Tool (http://www.fiddlertool.com/) only listens to WinInet traffic by default - so it doesn't normally pick up any traffic which comes from your Visual Studio Web Tests or Load Tests - even when capturing is on. To help debug your Visual Studio tests, you can set the proxy manually within your code so it forces the traffic through the Fiddler proxy:

//For Fiddler Debugger
this.Proxy = "http://localhost:8888";
WebProxy webProxy = (WebProxy)this.WebProxy;
webProxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = false;

Note that you should have the System.Net namespace in your usings/Imports statements for the WebProxy class. This also assumes Fiddler is running and is set up to use the default proxy port of 8888.

DDK

Oakton involved in Development of Microsoft Azure Project for Queensland Government

We recently started work (a week ago) at the North Ryde Microsoft Offices on an Azure-based pledge application (www.qld.gov.au/floods/pledge). This relatively simple application supports the coordinaton of offers from private organizations and corresponding requests for help by flood-affected people in Queensland (and potentially other states affected by the floods).

As per the Australian Newspaper's IT section:

"Microsoft is helping to develop a flood-recovery pledge website for the Queensland government, which will go live later this week. It will be based on the company's Azure cloud computing technology. It has been working with partners Oakton, Devtest and Readify in its recovery program."

See original article at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/industry-digs-deep-for-queensland-flood-recovery/story-e6frgakx-1225989795344

The solution is using the following technologies to deliver the end product:

1. Azure Web Roles (with 2 web applications on the one Web Role, which is allowed in the latest Azure 1.3 SDK).
2. SQL Azure, Development against local SQL Express instances on each machine, SQL Deployment and schema changes with the SQL Azure Migration tool - http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com/
3. Visual Studio 2010 using Data Dude Projects for Deployment
4. ASP.NET Web Forms 4.0 (as opposed to MVC 3 which was just released and I did an initial mockup with) - with Entity Framework 4, EntityDataSource and the QueryExtender control (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd537669(VS.100).aspx) , one of the new controls in .NET 4.0. We didn't use MVC based on the existing skills of the team and the short timelines.
5. TFS 2010 with  the Agile template, using Web.Config transforms for different release builds as demonstrated in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/Video/ff801895
6. Forms-based authentication, with a slighly modified version of the ASP.NET SQL membership and Role Provider Database Scripts (so it works on SQL Azure). This is using scripts as described in the MS KB article here:
   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2006191/en-au
   This database can also be created by the SQL-Azure equivalent of the the aspnet_regql.exe  tool used for non-Azure applications called "aspnet_regAzure.exe".
7. A secured SSL site for the internal Administrative application (e.g. for basic approvals and vetting).

DDK

Demo Virtual Machine with Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010 - Hyper-V image now RTM

The "2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM)" image is finally available on Microsoft Downloads here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=751FA0D1-356C-4002-9C60-D539896C66CE&displaylang=en

The beta has been around for ages so I'm looking forward to getting this working. You can even convert the Hyper-V image to VMWare with the VMware vCenter ConverterTM http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/faqs.html

It includes the following:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services
3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
4. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition
6. Microsoft Office Web Applications
7. Microsoft FAST Search for SharePoint 2010
8. Microsoft Project Server 2010
9. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
10. Microsoft Visio 2010
11. Microsoft Project 2010
12. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2  

DDK