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Lots of Features Rolling Out with Visual Studio Team Services Sprint 99
Something as simple as a checkbox has users expressing their excitement with this update, but there are quite a few features that will be rolling out with the latest update that also shouldn't be ignored.
The Visual Studio Team Services Sprint 99 is being rolled out this week, with a sizable list of features, some of which are a long time coming (namely, a checkbox), and some newer user-requested ones.
In a blog post, Microsoft's Brian Harry highlights one feature in particular, a checkbox for work items, that has been on the list of user-requested features for quite a few years. "It was originally created in 2011," he writes, noting that since its creation, its features haven't been full developed. "We've added the control but there's still some work to do. We've update the web UI to support it but the rich clients (like Team Explorer in Visual Studio) don't yet support it."
The addition of the checkbox to work items generated lots of excitement from commenters to Harry's post, and when it was posted on UserVoice in 2011, that feature alone had 650 votes. The checkbox is a replacement for developers creating a string field with a yes/no option as a workaround. The checkbox can also be customized as needed.
Another blog post, from Microsoft's Aaron Bjork, outlines the more significant items that have been completed in this sprint: e-mail improvements, work item management, and a number of dashboard improvements, to name a few.
Bjork writes that there has been some significant redesign of e-mails originating from Team Services. "Emails now include a consistent header, a clear call to action, and improved formatting to make sure the information in the mail is easier to consume and understand," he notes. E-mails are also rendered correctly for reading on mobile devices.
Also improved are some of the Dashboard features. Bjork writes that the Query Tile widget can now be color customized, and it now allows for 10 conditional rules. The widget catalog has also been redesigned to match the look and feel of the widget configuration panels. He also notes that Pull Request widgets can be resized.
You can read details on the rest of the major features here.
Back to Harry's post, which is worth reading for the insights and transparency that his group has been providing to developers as to the inner workings of each VSTS sprint. In his post, he charts the number of items per month that his group has worked on. "When we first started our "cloud cadence" journey with our cloud solution, we delivered 1- 3 items per sprint," writes Harry. "Each year afterwards, the number got larger and larger." According to his charting, the team is working on an average of 18 items per month.
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