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Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools Released

by Abel Avram on Apr 29, 2008 |

Microsoft has released the March 2008 version of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools. According to Microsoft, the Power Tools is "a set of enhancements, tools and command line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server 2008 experience".

The Power Tools installer contains the following tools:

Command line tool (TFPT.EXE)
Team Explorer IDE menu additions
Build Notification tool
TFS Best Practices Analyzer
Process Template Editor
Work Item Templates
Custom check-in policies
TFS Server Manager

Brian Harry, a Microsoft Technical Fellow working as the Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server, offers more details about the content of the package released. This is a short list of the features included:

Process Template Editor support for custom work item controls
TFSServerManager client
TFS BPA support for Windows Server 2008
Work Item Template improvements
Scriptable Team Project creation
Support for 64-bit Sharepoint farms
Improvements to tfpt review
Performance improvements in tfpt online

The following operating systems are supported: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2. The package installer needs Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, and Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer. A WssExt64Bit installer is available providing the ability to install the Team Foundation Server WSS extensions into a 64-bit WSS instance.