News
Visual Studio Online Sprints 80, 81 Now Available
Project renaming, a top user feature, now available, as is account restoration and several incremental configuration updates to Kanban boards and Taskboards.
The week leading up to Microsoft Build is a busy one on all development fronts at Microsoft, including Visual Studio Online, which is under revision at a sprinter's pace. It's not to showcase VSO at the conference, but a goal to get it in shape for the release of Team Foundation Server 2015 Release Candidate 1, according to Microsoft's Brian Harry in a blog last week on Sprint 80. Just this week, Harry also blogged about availability of features in Sprint 81 as well.
Updates to those sprints should be available now, but Harry describes a reason for a protracted release of all the features in sprint 80 that were due to a few bugs the team encountered during a project rename. "[This] morning, we renamed one of our Team Projects "VSOnline" to "VSO"," wrote Harry, at the time. "We hit a couple of bugs in the process and will fix them in the next few days. Once the upgrade is complete and we've finished verifying rename, we'll turn it on for everyone."
Coincidentally, project renaming is one of the new features being implemented. Harry writes in a separate blog that "Team Project rename is our #1 User Voice request, by far and the longest standing customer complaint." Team Project Rename is a new feature that allows for developers to rename a project and have all references updated to reflect the renaming. It's a feature that Harry said will also be included in the initial TFS 2015.
Other changes -- mostly incremental -- in the sprints include:
- Kanban, Taskboards Configuration: Adds options to "turn the ID on or off, select how the assigned to field is displayed, and choose to show tags directly on your cards." Up to 10 more fields can also be added to cards so they don't have to be opened up every time.
- Filtering: Kanban boards have a filter box for filtering by text and new work in the Backlog. The Backlog column is collapsible.
- Definition of Done: Definitions now support formatted text via Markdown.
- Cumulative Flow Diagram: Configurable through a setting that can turn it off so it's out of the way.
- Git History: Adds Branch Updates view that allows for view of Git repo activityi over time.
- Cloud Load Testing Limits: Raises limits from 20 to 100 cores.
- Account restoration: This is a new feature that allows for restoring a deleted account within 90 days of a deletion.
"This has been a pain point for quite a few customers who have deleted accounts, only to realize later that they still need data from the account," writes Microsoft's Aaron Bjork, in a release note on Sprint 81.
More features and updates are expected some time in the second week of May.
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