On the way home from our trip to Florida we stopped at the Welcome Center to Georgia because I love maps and my wife needed to walk around. On the way out of the center I saw a Canadian flag and a US flag which I thought was strange, but when I read the sign I was amazed to find out what Dan had been saying was right! “Georgia welcomes our Canadian neighbors!” Well Dan I guess I can’t say you aren’t welcome in Georgia anymore. =)
Last week my wife and I took a vacation down to Florida, and it just so happened that I was passing through Miramar, FL on Saturday afternoon so I thought I would drop in for the SharePoint 1,2,3! Level 300 meeting. How lucky was I to meet Stacy Draper? He was even giving the presentation! I also had a chance to sit with an old friend, Dave Noderer, who runs some of the Florida .NET user groups down there. It was a great turn out for the Level 300, but as I talked to the guys they said they had more than twice as many for the Level 100, which is something we found here in Atlanta also. The other thing, as always, that we talked about was having people put some kind of deposit/investment into the event to help the drop-off rate. They had over 100 sign up for the 300 level class, but not everyone attended.
The small extra bits of information that Stacy presented were amazing. These are the reason that it makes it more valuable to show up for a session for a couple hours instead of doing it on your own. Check out his book if you haven’t yet.
Hopefully the web casts of the sessions will be online soon so if you don't have the opportunity to see a session you will get to view them online. We should have them on INETA Live! soon.
Last week I received my new machine that I am going to use for every Microsoft server product under the sun. Last week I was having an asthma attack and keeping my wife up with the coughing, so she kicked me out of bed. I came downstairs to work on the computer until it settled down. Needless to say the computer never kicks me off. I am just kidding my wife wasn’t that bad, it just sounds funnier that way.
Anyway, I have installed Visual Studio Team Foundation before, in fact I have even installed the TFS Proxy, but I wanted to make sure nothing had changed since the last time I installed it (during the BETA). For some reason when I install VSTF I get the same feeling that I used to get when I installed BizTalk 2004. I call it the “Next and Pray” method. This method consists of you setting the settings, pushing the Next button and Praying! Hopefully over time I will become more comfortable with the VSTF install or they will make the install easier for guys like me, maybe creating a developer install. =)
Well I got it up and running, but I have a few suggestions for VSTF doc team. This is more of a wish list, the documentation is great and make sure you read it first.
Wish List of changes in documentation:
1) Have detailed steps in the walk through about how you would set up the users for TFS. I know how to set up users, but I am not 100% sure that I know my install is perfect based on the directions given. Just have to “Next and Pray”
2) This is really a wish list item. Have a web site where you enter the configuration you will use and it creates a step by step list of things you have to do to install TFS. Most of the documents are well written, but having a web site to create this checklist would be helpful. This probably won’t happen because most people that install TFS are familiar with their network environment.
3) Put more error checking in the install. I know that this is the first version, but hopefully like BizTalk the next version will be a much easier install. It becomes hard when you have a bunch of major products like SharePoint, SQL Server, and Visual Studio on the same machine.