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VS Team Services Sprint 108 Is More Like a Jog
Visual Studio Team Services is at Sprint 108 this week, and it might seem like a lightweight with mainly fixes, but it does pack quite a few new features -- integrating Team-based collaboration features, build and replace enhancements, Docker support -- to be worthy of attention.
- By Michael Domingo
- 11/10/2016
Visual Studio Team Services is at Sprint 108 this week, and it might seem like a lightweight with mainly fixes, but it does pack quite a few new features -- integrating Team-based collaboration features, build and replace enhancements, Docker support -- to be worthy of attention.
In a blog post announcing the sprint roll-out, Microsoft's Brian Harry notes that of most significance with "this sprint is integration with the new Microsoft Teams collaboration tool." Microsoft Teams is a real-time conversation and collaboration chat-style service that made its debut last week at an event in New York as part of Office 365.
"We've enabled chat integration and hosting of our Kanban board in a team context," Harry added, and said not to expect it to polished in the state it in currently: "It's still preview and has some rough edges. We'll keep refining it but we're pretty excited about it." The Teams capabilities are now available to see in preview as of yesterday.
Besides some fit-and-finish fixes that have been added since the last sprint, this sprint includes some build and release pipeline features. The History tab now includes an option to roll back to a previous build definition. The repository picker includes a Favorites tab that can filter to show frequently used repos. Build checkouts, typically set to be automatic, can now be disabled to allow for custom manipulation via a task or script. Specifically for .NET builds, there's now support for .NET Core build/test/publish via a new .NET core task included in the project.json templates. And there are now new Build and Release templates targeting ASP.NET and ASP.NET core and Azure Web applications.
There's also a number of incremental improvements, including new Docker extensions added to the Marketplace, Azure Web App task support additions, and others. More details and examples of these changes can be viewed in the release notes.
Harry notes that sprint 109 is expected to roll out in two weeks, with a sprint 111 coming in January 2017. "We're going to skip 110 because it falls right in the middle of the Christmas holidays," he notes.
About the Author
Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.