For the next post I'll split our world into two parts:
Architect - the one who creates those guidelines
Programmers - those who get the guidelines and should follow the directions.

Tools Vocabulary:

• GAX - Guidance Automation Extension:
  This Part of installation should be installed on all your programmers' stations, this installation is working as a run-time environment on your computer. Once you installed the GAX you can download tons of guidance installers (MSI\Setup.exe), you can find those on the net or ask your architect to create some for you(read GAT bullet for further info).
• GAT - Guidance Automation Toolkit:
  This part of the installation will be used by the Architect (The one who writes those guidelines).
  After installing the GAT, you can insert your VS2005 and create a new solution : go to Guidance package and see your new sample packages.

Here are your first steps in the GAT world:
(From now on (this post, only) I am the Architect and you are my enthusiastic-gifted-lovely programmers).

1. Download the GAX,  run the MSI, in this point there is no visible difference in your VS2005. 
2. Download my sample project: GatLectures.Lec1Setup.msi (592.00KB) and run the installer, this sample project creates a sample solution. In this solution you can find more options on your context menu (Fig1), you can also see the new snippets(Fig 3 & Fig 4) I've inserted.
   Here are some screen shots samples:

Fig 1. Add Your custom made class, instead of copy&paste from others class.

         
Fig 2. Custom made screen for inserting the class parameters and generating the class data.

 

Fig 3. Choose your current snippets by moving between the existing projects

 

Fig 4. I've added two snippets samples, and you (the programmer) can use it without installing 
        anything else. (all programmers will use the same snippets in the whole project)

        Stop Here, Please try those two steps by yourself!

        After you've finished playing with this package yourself you can simply remove the package by going 
        to your: Control Panel -> add/remove programs -> remove the GatLectures.Lec1Setup.

3. Now you can play the architect role yourself:
   * Step 1 - Download the GAT and install it.
   * Step 2 - Open your VS2005
   * Step 3 - Open a new project -> Guidance Packages, 
                  here you can see the Guidance Package Development.
   If your fingers are dancing on the keyboard, like mine were in this installation, you can try this out or you can wait a little bit.
   On my next lectures I'll give a full explanation on how to do this right.

The First two steps will be a common behavior for programmers, the third step will be done by the architect or the guidelines creator.

* Special thanks to Gil for assisting me in the programmer's side (phase 1 and 2 of the installation & the screenshots).

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* I would be glad to receive any question\remarks either by comment or by mail, it will help me understand your point of view and where my explanations are insufficient.
* If you want to see something else (either simpler or complicated) just send me a comment or mail.

Gat is an acronym for Guidance Automation Toolkit, this name is a self descriptive.
The first big example I can think about GAT usage is for all the big guidance docs in our office, every programmer wrote at least one guidance document.

For example, document that holds your team standards, such as: all of our web-pages will inherit from MyTeamMasterPage.
For example, in my team we always open new web-page which inherit from the same page, which holds some helper properties.
Another example is in our Dal & BO which both sitting in COM+ they both inherit from the same class and implement the same interfaces and so on.

This guidance docs are pretty good, because they force the same standards between the team members, but the big problem that new programmers will need more time before they could learn and use all those specific standards, and also this is a waste of time for the programmer.
When we change those standards we should learn everyone those new standards and it take some time to get used to this new standards.

The Gat is giving you whole new world to automate this process and to stop the monkey copy-paste.

For example instead of adding new empty WebForm.aspx you can cause your programmers to add the special MyTeamWebForm.aspx which holds inside the logical stuff we describe before.

I know that some of you might mumble to yourself: Merlin did the same or I wrote such Add-ins, but it is more powerful than you can think about it right now, so stay tuned for the next days I'll post here my tutorial for the Gat newbie.

Shani's presentation about Microsoft Buzz-Words & dotnet in the future.

For almost a week my site is suffer from unknown crashes, I cannot determine what are the causes
for this behavior but I am trying to fix it.

The Strange thing is that I am sitting on the same machine with Pasha Bitz
and with this blog which they both using dasblog and still working perfect.

I want to apologize for the inconvenience.
Hopefully find the causes and fix it.

It was a shiny morning (I think it was Sunday, the one before the last one), we tried to create a new project after we finished the installation. yes, it was the beta 3, and we actually installed this on our machines, we spent the whole day (Sunday) trying to figure out what we did wrong, the symptoms: After the installation finished we could not see the project site! no error had occurred!

we were really disappointed to start all over again. we even re-install windows again with no luck.

I read some dudes writing about installation of the release instead of the beta 3, so I talked to Eliaz to send me the disk, we actually got it last Sunday, starting enthusiastic to install it, of course that we start everything from scratch. we didn't make it, again!

so we start Google it up, using almost every log file in our server, and checking almost every error, we found out some great points and I'll share them with you:

1. We Made the beta 3 installation step by step, almost by the book, except for one little step: we didn't give SMTP server (Security master didn't let us). I am not sure but I think that the beta 3 must install the alert using SMTP, if we had one on the specified server it might solve the beta 3 problem.
2. It turns out that the disks we installed (Microsoft sent us) were beta (all of them)
   how to recognize the real TFS version? there are many ways (if you are shouting: written on the disk! you wrong, it isn't one of them), I'll post some of them:
   * The release version disk includes two directories that are not exists in the beta 3.
      (SQLServerKB, KB913393)
   * While installing the beta 3, in the TFS installation, you will get to a screen asking about the
      service and reports users, they both won't validate the password, while in the release
      version it will check validity of password, for example: try to put a space in the password,
      the release will show a message alerting that you cannot use space in your password...
   * If you won't install those KBs above (from the new two directories), the release version
      will alert you in the "system health check" step at the TFS installation,
      while the beta 3, will not check those dependencies (while they are actually a must)
   * After installing the TFS:
      1) Go to your IE click: http://YourServerName/ you should view a page under construction.
      2) Go to http://localhost:8080/services/v1.0/registration.asmx you will get a service, invoke
          it using an empty string.
      If they are, both, working you are in the right direction.
      BTW, for getting the real TFS Version you can, simply, download it from:
      Microsoft Download center - VSTFS Trial Edition
3. I recommend to install the TFS using Tim Erickson's post, he actually wrote every click in the installation process.
4. After reading step-3, I must add that Tim didn't mention the fact that you must install the SQLServerKB after the SQL Server installation step.
   If you didn't do this you will get an error while trying to install this hot-fix, something about a shared files that cannot be moved.
   All you have to do is:
   Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> services -> and stop the SQL Server Browser process. and continue the hot-fix installation.
5. In our place the passwords must include space (Yes, the Security master, again) so as I said I've got a validation error in the TFS installation phase, I make a simple workaround:
   define two new local users (YourMachine\local_TFSService & YourMachine\local_TFSReports) with your own simple passwords and continue the installation.
   It works perfect for me, but I read that local users will cause problems on connecting your server from other (remote Pc). I didn't check this yet, I worked on the same machine for now.
   I'll let you know:
   1) If it's true and what the problems.
   2) How to change the users after the installation (without removing everything).
      (after all I almost sure that those users saved in one of the TFS services)  

I know that it sounds scary, and I always read about people trying to solve different bugs, and strange unclear comments but it is worth it and with the release version it is also fun and simple.

Thanks to Elad & Yoav for all the nights we spent together helping each other to solve strange problems during this operation.

While reading my emails, I found out an email from Martin Woodward, who let me know some great new things about my first article about the TFS (Team Foundation Server - where to start?)

1. The company that ships the Eclipse plug-in is called "Teamprise".
2. The "TeamPlain" product is currently a web interface to Team Foundation Server from DevBiz.
3. You can see a great demo, for further information about the usage of this product.
4. You can download fully functional copy of the plug-in here.

Thank you Martin.

There are things you should hear to understand...

Still hearing the sounds of Tech-Ed, Eliaz Tobias, the one who was in charge of the Architects sessions, publish a post which summarize the ARCast shows that were recorded in Israel 3 months ago.

Those ARCasts recorded In Tech-Ed by Ron Jacobs.

Ron Jacobs is not only a great presenter he is also great interviewer, he knows to ask the right questions at the right time, when you actually think I would like to know ... you can be sure that this question gonna rise out immediately.

Take my advice, get some of those ARCasts to your MP3 Player and listen to this while you are walking, running, taking a bus\train or somewhere else.

Most of us want to play&test our tools before we buy it or even give our word to the managers.
If you want to play with the Team Foundation Server and the client tools but you don't want to install everything, you could test the new features and play with project site with Microsoft Virtual Lab.

The Virtual Labs is a great way to learn and understand the dedicated subject you want to study.

Take this lab for learning the VSTS and TFS rolls
(in the middle you can find: "Architecting Connected Systems: Team Foundation Server New!").

My advice, to all  of you who want to learn this tool, take this lab again and again, play with the source control too, and try to configure the project site.

I really like the TFS, I think that it is a great tool which we can use to gather all our needs, it also can be customized to the team's need, but I still have some doubts on it.
Why? OK, so Everything is possible with this cool tool, but it could be hard (believe me, very hard...) sometime.

Here are my thoughts, we can easily create new working item and customizing the project work flow as you need, but what if we need to change an existing project that we already work on it?
For example, I have current project which I found that in one of my working items, I need one more (little) field, to fill for example: description of bug, I can't just do the regular download-change-upload operation, this operation works only for new projects!

I must admit, that I didn't hear about that feature before and therefore I preferred not to change existing projects, which cause me to prevent changing misbehaved items, or thinking a lot before creating new work-item.
But here I found two command line operations witexport, witimport.
witexport - export a single work item file.
witimport - import work item file.
and now you can modify existing project templates.

Anther question I asked myself is why this cool thing came only with command line tools? why should I learn all this stuff? so I've searched a little and find some great articles talking about VSTS Customization Toolkit which give us graphically manage of the process templates. no more XML Based for changing/creating work-items, we can play with this tool to see what we are doing.
I didn't play with this yet, but I read some great posts, so it sounds cool, I'll test it and let you know what I am thinking about it.

I've start learning about the Team Foundation Server (TFS), which looks as a great tool by now.

The first question every one asks me is how could I connect to the TFS, so the first and the simple way to do this is to install the TFS client (also named: Team Explorer), which can be found in the installation CD. This installation will give you the TFS Explorer window, which is pretty much the same as Server Explorer for the SQL-Server.
This is also can work as a stand alone Explorer for those of you who do not have the Visual Studio installed on their machine.

The second suggestion, for those who don't work with Visual Studio, like managers, you could see the project overview via the project portal, after all the TFS installation based on Share-Point Server.

My third suggestion is the Team Plain, here you can play with a demo, this tool provide your developers to access to the Team Foundation Server over web access. Team Plain also has new plug-in for Eclipse (someone heard JAVA?!) which also built with ... Java (I told you) and runs anywhere, even Linux, Mac OS etc.
So the Sky is the limit you can manage your projects with TFS, even when your organization is not MS-End-To-End-Based.
This cool tool ain't come for free but you can find more details in here.