TFS Azure Preview

I’ve been waiting for a TFS Azure Preview invitation code a few days and it finally came to my mailbox. After playing a couple of hours with, my first impressions are more than good ! The cloud features are almost the same as the on premise version. The web portal is friendly and smooth as the upcoming release of TFS. Using the cloud for that kind of usage could be really valuable (availability, safety, on-demand !).

I have not seen communications regarding the future pricing of this Azure feature yet. But I’m pretty sure that it would interest a lot of developers !

If you want to test the preview, you can register on this site: http://tfspreview.com

You will receive an email from the MSFT team in a week giving you an registration code and 5 other codes for your friends.

Enjoy !

How to add SharePoint snapin to Power GUI script editor

1. Open Power GUI script editor

2. Select: Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

3. Now, you can use PowerShell intellisense on SharePoint module !

How to generate a self-signed certificate from IIS

For test purposes, it is sometime useful to generate a dummy certificate on your test environment. You can do that by using different ways:

- Create a certificate request and send it to a trusted Certifcate Autority (verisign, thawte etc.).

- Create a Domain certificate. To do that, you will need to setup a Certificate Autority on your domain.

- Create a self signed certificate. IIS has the ability to generate a had oc certificate on your machine. Note that this certificate will only be known and trusted on your machine. For example, you cannot use it over the web to sign your production website.

Here is the procedure to generate a self-signed certificate on IIS 7.x:

1. run inetmgr command

2. Go to the server level and select Server Certificates

3. On the right panel, click on Create Self-Signed Certificate.

4. specify a frendly name for your certificate

5. {Your certificate is beeing signed by your machine and placed in the personal certificate store on your machine}

Now your certificate can be now used on your machine !

Disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC)

Most of the time, developers are working on a server system such as Windows Server 2008 R2. Server operating systems restrict usage exclusively for the deployed roles. By default, internet explorer is clamped and does not provide a full web experience. For example, you cannot download a file from the web.

To fix this annoying issue, go to the server manager and follow those steps:

1. To configure IE ESC back:
2. Close all instances of Internet Explorer.
3. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Server Manager.
4. If a User Account Control dialog box appears, click Continue.
5. Under Security Summary, click Configure IE ESC.
6. Under Administrators, click On (Recommended).
7. Under Users, click On (Recommended).
8. Click OK.
9. To disable IE ESC, click Off for both Administrators and Users, and then click OK