SmartHotel360 Demo Apps and Architecture showcased in Microsoft Connect(); 2017

Hello All,

If you are eagerly waiting to dirty your hands on the demo app showcased in Microsoft Connect() 2017, Here you go..

Today Microsoft keynote demo team made the demo app called "SmartHotel360" public.
https://github.com/Microsoft/SmartHotel360

SmartHotel360 is a fictitious smart hospitality company showcasing the future of connected travel.

The heart of this application is the cloud – best-in-class tools, data platform, and AI – and the code is built using a microservice oriented architecture orchestrated with multiple Docker containers. There are various services developed in different languages: .NET Core 2.0, Java and Node.js. These services use different data stores like SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, Azure CosmosDB, and Postgres.

The App contains:

• Website
• Mobile App
• Desktop App
• Backend it contains Azure Functions, CosmosDB, SQL and lot of API's

In production, all these microservices run in a Kubernetes cluster, powered by Azure Container Service (ACS) as shown in the accompanying architecture diagram.

You can find everything you need to run the backend services locally and/or deploy them in a Azure environment, the team has shared SmartHotel360 Backend repository in GitHub .

You can also grab all the presentations, links to workshops and demos, and creative assets to host your own Re-Connect(); events, shared by Microsoft team Connect-Event-in-a-Box repo on GitHub.

All the public repos w.r.t SmartHotel360 can be found here:

https://github.com/Microsoft/SmartHotel360
https://github.com/Microsoft/SmartHotel360-Azure-backend
https://github.com/Microsoft/SmartHotel360-mobile-desktop-apps
https://github.com/Microsoft/SmartHotel360-public-web
https://github.com/Microsoft/SmartHotel360-Sentiment-Analysis-App

The team says
"Our Microsoft Application Platform gives developers the power or Azure, our best-in-class tools, our data platform, artificial intelligence, and cross-device apps to start building the apps of the future. We hope you can use SmartHotel360 as a great learning resource to start building what you need today with any apps, any tools, and any platform."

Thanks to Erika and team for coming with the awesome app, this will definitely help developers, consultants to understand the power of Azure, VSTS, .Net Core and entire Microsoft tool ecosystem.

Happy Reading!

TFS Work Item Customization Part 3

In this Work Item Customization Part 2 video, we will discuss basics about customizing Team Foundation Server work Items.
We will discuss about adding new a backlog item "Initiative" to backlog page or portfolio Management. We also discuss about customizing Category and Processconfig file.

TFS Work Item Customization Part 2

In this Work Item Customization Part 2 video, we will discuss basics about customizing Team Foundation Server work Items.
We will see about adding new States and Transitions, work item conditions/rules like Required and Read only, restricting state to certain TFS group and dependent drop-downs.

• Define State and Transition like In-Progress to Review, Review to Closed 
• State based condition like Field as ReadOnly in Review state 
• Group based condition like Review state should be available only for Reviewer Group 
• Dependent Drop down Field Ex: 
• Category 1 
• SubCategory 1.1
• SubCategory 1.2
• SubCategory 1.3
• Category 2 
• SubCategory 2.1
• SubCategory 2.2
• Category 3
• SubCategory 3.1  

TFS Work Item Customization Part 1

In this Work Item Customization Part 1 video, we will discuss basics about customizing Team Foundation Server work Items. We will see how to Export Task, show from both Visual Studio Process Editor and Command line. How to edit the work item definition in VS Process Editor and also how to customize using Notepad++. We will see

• How to change work item type Name, Add a Text Field and Text Box and Import using command line.
• Open in VS Editor and Add a Field with allowed values, add control in UI and Import using Visual Studio Process Editor

 

TFS 2015 vNext Buildpart - 1

In this video we will discuss about Team Foundation Server TFS 2015 vNext Build feature. We will discuss how to create or modify vNext Build from web access.

TFS Kanban Board Part 1

In this video we will learn how to use VSTS/TFS Kanban Board to manage and track our backlog items. Topics covered in this first part are as below:

• What is VSTS Kanban board How to add new cards in board 
• How to Reorder cards in same column or other and which reflects in Backlog Page or Vice Versa About Swim-lanes and how to use Swim-lanes to categories the backlogs 
• Search Item in Kanban Board 
• Delete Card or Work Item 
• Add task checklists i.e. how to Create child task for a backlog/card within Kanban Board view, view task list w.r.t Card and edit or mark as done for task.  

TFS Kanban Board Part 2

This part 2 is continuation of VSTS/TFS Kanban Board video series. In this video we will see advanced features of VSTS Kanban Board. Topics covered in this first part are as below:

• Map the flow of how your team works
• Add new Kanban columns
• Work in Progress (WIP) limits
• Show bugs on backlogs and boards
• Definition of Done
• Split columns (Doing and Done)
• Add swim-lanes to expedite work
• Add new swim-lanes 
• Rename Kanban columns and swim-lanes inline
• Query on Kanban columns

VSTS Copy Dashboard Tool

In this blog, I am going to talk about VSTS Copy Dashboard tool. This tool helps to replicate/copy the dashboards from one team to single or multiple teams in same VSTS account or another.
Assume we had setup nice Dashboards with widgets and charts using all custom work item queries, widgets on Build, Release Definitions, code, and sprint related charts etc. Setting up such kind of dashboards will take lot of time and effort and its little creative job 😊.
Now let’s say we have do it again for other Team Projects or Teams in same Project, huh it would be frustrating. VSTS Copy Dashboard comes to our rescue, this tool/app reads the dashboard(s) we have setup and replicates to multiple Teams & Projects in one go, isn’t it wonderful! Yes, Canarys a Microsoft DevOps Consulting company has developed this tool to help VSTS users to copy what they have done in one Project/Team to any other projects/teams provided it follows same process methodology and contains certain basic pre-requisites. And I remind you this feature has been asked multiple times in VSTS User Voice. So let us see how to use this.

To access the tool, browse to the VSTS Marketplace and search for the Copy Dashboard. You should see as shown below to get started.

Once you click on 'Get Started' button, you will get a login page as shown below:

Sign in with your VSTS Credentials i.e. Hotmail, outlook or your Organizational account.

Once you logged in with valid credentials, you will be redirected to account selection page where you can select VSTS Account and copy mode as shown below:

Currently the tool provides five modes of copying the dashboard as listed below:

1. Multiple teams within same team project

At present, only 1st one is enabled for the users and for others you need to request to tool owner to get access to below modes of copying dashboard.

1. Target multiple teams single team project within same VSTS account
2. Target multiple teams single team project but different VSTS account
3. Target multiple teams Different multiple team projects within same VSTS account
4. Target multiple teams Different multiple team project but different VSTS account

Upon selecting any of the four other modes you get a pop-up, select check-boxes for all the copy options you want and click on "I'm interested" button as shown below:

Once you get confirmation mail for other copy options, log in again and select the account and copy modes. Or you can continue with first option “multiple teams within same team project” without waiting for registration confirmation mail.
After selecting Account and mode click on continue button. You will see Source Selection and Target Selection. Under Source select the team project and Team from which you want to copy/replicate dashboard to other teams. Then select the Teams you wish to have this customized dashboard configured to. Then click on "Copy dashboard" button below.

After the dashboards are copied to all the target Teams you get a success message, and a link to VSTS Account. Navigate to your Teams and Projects to see the copied Dashboard. You should see the new Dashboard with all your widgets, charts in your Teams and Projects.

Just imagine if we have to reconfigure the dashboard, queries, charts, widgets etc. to all the 10,20,30 or more Teams or Projects. We would have spent days on this. The tool does for us in few minutes and it takes hardly 5 minutes of our time to carry out the steps rest tool will handle. That’s beauty of Microsoft VSTS API’s. Thanks to the developers of Copy Dashboard for making life easy for VSTS users.

Thanks for your time reading this post.

Regards,

Nagaraj

VSTS VM's and HOL's for beginners

If anyone wants to try their hands on VSTS/TFS can refer below labs by Microsoft.

These labs/VM's will give you ready made infrastructure and learning materials to quickly understand the concepts and features available in VSTS/TFS. Whether you are .Net developer or Java or Azure developer these labs should be of greater help to kick start your Microsoft DevOps journey using Microsoft product family.

To learn more  about the on-premise tool Team Foundation Server refer below URL:
TFS Labs

You can access the above labs using Microsoft TechNet Virtual Labs also. This provides a quick and easy way to evaluate and test Microsoft’s newest products and technologies through virtual environments that do not require any complex setup or installation. You can use virtual labs online immediately for free :)
TFS Virtual TechNet Labs

To learn more about the SaaS offering of Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services aka VSTS (famously called TFS on cloud):
VSTS Labs

If you are Java developer and wondering how Microsoft products can help achieve ALM/DevOps for your Java application development, refer below lab:
Java Labs


If you are in need of any training or help on DevOps, VSTS, TFS or Azure you can contact me: nagrajbec@gmail.com

Thanks for your time reading this post.

Regards,

Nagaraj