Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to connect to the Cloud Team Foundation Server using Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Version just release by Microsoft in BUILD 2011 Conference.

Overview:

In our earlier articles we have seen how to connect the Cloud Team Foundation Server using Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Test Manager Developer preview version. Connecting Cloud TFS with Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview IDE is similar to the one which we have seen in connecting using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate version. Here we no need to download the specified Hotfix for the VS2010 SP1 which provides some issues for some real time users.

There is Microsoft MSDN forum where we can see users raising questions on after installing the Hotfix (KB2581206 ) the Visual Studio 2010 crashes or not allowing to create applications. Even i had the same kind of situation suddenly my VS 2010 crashed and each and every time i open the VS 2010 IDE it shows error message and will close down the IDE. Then i came up with installing this Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview version and start connecting to the Team Foundation Server.

Let us see the step by step process on how to connect to the team foundation server using the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview IDE.

Steps:

Once we registered with the Cloud TFS, we can see nice interface with the list of options as shown in the screen below. Since we already done with the Step 1 and Step 2, now we will move forward and do the step 3 (Downloading the required client software) as shown in the screen below.

Now before proceeding to the next step, download and install the Visual studio 11 Developer Preview version. Follow my article on Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 11 Developers Preview to see the step by step process on downloading and installing the package. Once the Visual Studio IDE is installed go to Start –> Programs and select Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview as shown in the screen below.

We can see the nice interface of the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview IDE opened as shown in the screen below.

Now select File –> open –> Team Project to open the wizard used to connect to the team foundation server as shown in the screen below.

Clicking on the Open Team Project will open a window as shown in the screen below. This windows is used to select the server and do the necessary steps to connect to the Cloud TFS Server. Now click on Servers button from the Connect to Team Project window as highlighted in the screen below.

Since we already have our Cloud TFS connected initially using Visual Studio 2010 IDE we can still see the server mapped (Check the post here ). So just select the TFS Name and we can see the collections and projects getting initialized as shown in the screen below.

Once the loading is completed we can see our Project F5Debug listed in the Team Projects section as highlighted in the screen below.

Now we can see the Team Explorer opened in the right side menu and we can see the interface changed compared to the Visual Studio 2010 IDE as shown in the screen below.

Click on the Source Control Explorer will open the details which are downloaded from the Cloud Team Foundation Servers as shown in the screen below.

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen the option to connect to the Cloud Team Foundation Server using Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview.