Get Ready for TFS 2013.2 (Update 2) RC Upgrade Weekend

2014/02/26:: Updated to include RC vs. CTP , list of RC products (go-live), CTP products (test), download link

Are you excited about Team Foundation Server 2013.2 (Update 2) RC?

Are you comfortable running pre-release software in production?

If so, you might want to consider scheduling your TFS upgrade for Friday February 28th and Saturday March 1st. During those days, Microsoft experts will be standing by to help support you in the event that you have questions or something goes wrong.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of the Upgrade Weekend, please visit http://aka.ms/TFSUpgradeWeekend to complete a brief registration survey. This survey will remain open until February 26th, 2014. Please contact VSEAP@Microsoft.com if you have any questions about this offer.

Here are some reasons to consider upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2013.2 (Update 2) RC:

• Work Item Tagging
  • Query on tags – You can now write and save work item queries containing tag clauses.
  • Tags in VS – Previously tags could only be assigned/used within the TFS web UI.
  • Tag permission – Now you can control, with a permission, who can create new tags.
  • Edit Tags in Excel – Now when you are managing a list of work items in Excel, you can include the tags column, edit it and publish the tags changes back to TFS.
• Backlog Management
  • Perf improvements – Navigating between the backlog, sprints, etc is MUCH faster.
  • Non-working days – You  can define you’re non-working days (weekends, for most of us) and we’ll exclude them from the burn down calculation.
  • Configurable start date for cumulative flow diagram – Now you can define what date to start the diagram.
• Charting
  • Pin charts to project home page – You can now pin a chart to your project homepage so everyone can see it when they visit your project.
  • Customize chart colors – Maybe not a huge deal but very nice.  Now you can select what colors you want to use in your charts.
• Export Test Plan to HTML
  • You can now export your test plan to HTML for offline reading/sharing, printing, etc.  You can choose the level of detail you want to include in the document.
• Release Management
  • We added a new concept of “Tags” that enables you to tag deployment targets.  Tags can be used to treat a set of machines the same.
• Git Improvements
  • Annotate – The annotate (aka blame) feature in Visual Studio has been updated to support Git.
  • Amend – You can now update your most recent local commit from within VS just like the “git amend” command line allows.
  • Push to multiple remotes – Team Explorer now recognizes multiple Git repos and allow you to select which remote you want to push to/pull from.
  • Revert a commit – You can now easy “rollback” a commit in the event you checked in something that you’ve decided that you really don’t want.
  • Progress with cancellation –You now have the ability to cancel long running Git operations.
• And of course, bragging rights for being on the newest version of Team Foundation Server!

You can email VSEAP@Microsoft.com if you have any questions about this offer.

Downloads for TFS, RM and VS are located here: Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP2

Community Technology Preview (CTP) products (Visual Studio Update, Release Management)

CTP products are for test and evaluation only. The recommended approach for upgrading Visual Studio on test workstations is installing the latest Visual Studio Update CTP on top of an RTM release or a previous CTP build of that Update.  Release Management Update 2 CTP is time-sensitive. The software will stop running ninety days after you install it. You will not receive any other notice. You may not be able to access data used with the software after it stops running.

Release Candidate (RC) products (Team Foundation Server, Agents)

RC products are “go-live”. This means that customers can use these products in production environments. This is still a pre-release, so there may be some bugs that will be fixed for the final release. Upgrade from Update 2 RC to Update 2 RTM is supported. In order to upgrade to future releases, the customer must first upgrade from Update 2 RC to Update 2 RTM.