Remote Plugins for ISF - desire2learn

I want to extend the "Insert Stuff Framework" in the D2L LMS. I understand there is a concept of "Remote Plugins" and there are examples for "Widgets". Can I use Remote Plugins for ISF as well?

As of April 2013 Remote Plugins are not (yet) available for the ISF system, but, they are available for Course Builder. If you can fit your workflow into course builder that is the best choice today. ISF is an obvious next top area to make available through remote plugins. If the project is not starting immediately check again as more remote plugins points will be appearing.

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Release powerapp solution to new environment with devops

I am interested in any information about or experiences with deploying PowerApps solutions to new environments within the same tenant.
In my solution I have a canvas-app and several flows between the app and sharepoint. I have used connection references to all connections (sharepoint, mail, etc.). On the devops side I have a build pipeline from my development environment, very much in line with Microsoft's recommendations for ALM. In addition, I have a release pipeline to publish the solution in another environment, e.g. a test environment. I can publish the release but when I access the solution in the new environment all flows have been turned off and all connections to sharepoint have been severed. When I inspect the flows it throws an error that it was unable to locate the connection Id. What strikes me as odd here is that the connection references that are visible in the new solution cannot be selected. However, what I can do is to add a new connection (from each flow), whereafter I can turn the flow back on and activate each of them in the canvas app.
What I am asking for here, is any documentation, guide, tutorial, help, etc. to make this release a little more automatic, so I won't have to re-add connections for every single action from each of my flows.
I think you are in luck 😊 and you should check out the latest PA community call. I think the last demo is the thing you are looking for (especially from that moment I suppose🤔) and is now one of the targets in Power Platform.
If you are considering to introduce source control as well (like git), currently there is a cool experiment going on in the community in that direction which I think is quite promising and you may check this article. But please consider this pack/unpack tool as an experiment and don't just remove the original .msapp files yet 😉.
I think I have finally found a working solution. I'll document my steps here for other ALM hopefuls.
When pushing to the target environment for the first time I need to click on each of the connection references, click on solutions layers, ) use the breadcrumb path to go one step back ] and from here I can assign the correct connection. Subsequent deployments now work without any hassle.
Also, first time deployment, I have learned cannot activate workflows. However, future deployments can activate workflows by managing the setting the the Import Solution build tool

Can't find the configure features wizard in TFS 2018

I've installed TFS 2018 and I'm looking to run the configure features wizard but can't seem to find it. It isn't where they describe in the documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/customize/configure-features-after-upgrade?view=tfs-2018.
I didn't do an upgrade but after installing I did customize the template. The documentation pointed me to the previous link with regards to how to apply certain template changes to existing projects. After making those types of template changes it sounded like I should expect to see the configure features option available somewhere but if that's true I cannot find them.
See the section "Compatible for quick updating" here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/customize/on-premises-xml-process-model?view=tfs-2018
Can someone point me to where that feature resides now in the new interface?
If you don't see the Configure Features option, it means there are no features to configure. If you're upgrading from TFS 2015 or 2017 and everything was already configured, then there might not be anything that needs to be upgraded.
The Configure Features Wizard detects which features have and haven't been configured. Most new features include additions or changes to work item types (WITs), categories, or process configuration. New features are introduced with different updates to Team Foundation Server (TFS).
After you installed TFS2018, there are no configure features wizard simply means there are no features need to be update/configure for your team projects.

Missing release management tasks in TFS 2015 on premise

It appears a fair number of release management deployment tasks and templates are not in TFS 2015 on premise right now, and I'm trying to figure out if this is by design or if my installation has problems. For instance, I do not have a sql deployment task available to me. I haven't been able to find confirmation one way or the other, so does the on premise version just not have these tasks?
be aware that VSTS development is always some months ahead of on-premise TFS. Especially release management is quite new and many enhancments and tasks will probably find it's way to TFS. Either directly, as extension or you can create custom tasks by yourself.
As seen here:
https://github.com/Microsoft/vsts-tasks/issues/1674 it's a very young step and all you need to get it work on your local TFS is on github:
https://github.com/Microsoft/vsts-tasks/tree/master/Tasks/SqlServerDacpacDeployment
This is by designed. It seems you are using some Extensions. You can find this in available extensions on the right top of the web portal.
Then you can find those tasks in below page and just need manually install the tasks.
DacPac deployments are part of the extention "IIS Web App Deployment Using WinRM"
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscs-rm.iiswebapp
Download and install it on your TFS server. You need to have Windows Remote Management enabled on your database servers for it to work.
I found this web site useful in getting it setup on the database server
http://www.hurryupandwait.io/blog/understanding-and-troubleshooting-winrm-connection-and-authentication-a-thrill-seekers-guide-to-adventure

Is it possible to add custom build runners to MS Team Foundation Build Server?

I've recently developed custom build runners (plugins) to TeamCity and Jenkins. The plugins enable the users to start automated load tests as part of the build process.
To give you some idea here's the Jenkins plugin page with a lot of description:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Apica+Loadtest+Plugin
Here are a couple of screenshots of the TeamCity plugin:
The setup GUI: https://i.imgsafe.org/5221a01.png
Build log: https://i.imgsafe.org/c93f7f9.png
Custom tab with load test summary: https://i.imgsafe.org/f5b6937.png
Setup validation example: https://i.imgsafe.org/52cc9a2.png
These Continuous Integration frameworks allow a high level of customisation for plugin development: the UI, the output, client and server code etc. can all be tailored.
I've received a question whether we can develop a similar build runner for MS Team Foundation Build Service. I've completely new to TFS, I've never used it for anything. I've read through a couple of tutorials on how to install and set up TFS but there seems to be very little material available regarding custom build runners. The closest I've got are the following pages:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb130146.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2010/02/12/how-to-create-a-custom-workflow-activity-for-tfs-build-2010.aspx
However, they don't provide any example on GUI extensions, validation, customisation etc.
Therefore I'd like to get the opinion of experienced TFS users before we get any more serious with the framework:
is it possible to develop plugins for TFS build?
what are the limitations? E.g. can I build a custom GUI with custom client/server actions?
can I include custom pages, show graphs etc?
Any advice is welcome.
Thanks for your help,
Andras
When it comes to TFS Build, you first need to know that there are two build systems: XAML Build and a new, now default, build system.
XAML Builds are based on Windows Workflow Foundation. You can create custom activities and add these to a Build Definition Template. XAML Build only run on Windows and extending them is not very easy.
The new Build system is based on Node, runs cross-platform and is very easily extendable. Microsoft has open sourced all the tasks they have for TFS Build (see GitHub for the repository).
Targeting the new build system means that you support on-premises installations of TFS 2015 and the cloud hosted version of TFS: Visual Studio Team Services (see visualstudio.com for more info).
The easiest way to get started is by creating a new VSTS account (free!), adding some code and running a build. If you have that working, you can start exploring the existing build tasks and learn what's possible. You can then easily create your own task and start experimenting.
One thing that might be of interest to you is that TFS/VSTS already support load testing. You can run a very simple load test with a couple of mouse clicks or configure more complex Web Tests and use these in TFS in combination with Application Insights. I'm not sure if that's what your customers are looking for but it's worth checking out (see Cloud-based Load Testing for more information)

TFS hook with Service Management application

We use a Service Management software called ITSM. We want to know if it's possible to hook this software with TFS, so when a bug is raised, a new workitem is created in TFS? It doesn't have to be ITSM, we just want to know how can this be done and then may be we can customise it for ITSM or any Service Management software we procure in the future?
Yes you can. TFS 2015 supports a new feature called Service Hooks that can be used to integrate two systems. Any two systems.
If you are using an older version of TFS you will need to use the client API to create that sort of integration. I built integration between ITSM and TFS when I worked at Merrill Lynch back in the day. Worked ok and allowed a bug to be raised in tfs from ITSM and kept limited sync.
You may want to look to Task Top for commercial integration between ITSM and TFS.

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