Set TFS vNext build variables via the REST API

At $WORKPLACE we're currently busy porting over our XAML builds to the TFS 2015 build system and we wanted to be able to queue another build when the current build completes. Fortunately for us the REST API makes that a trivial exercise and that particular bit was running fairly quickly.…

The purple crocodile is imaginary!

I'm willing to bet the following is going to feel very familiar to you: Here you are at Awesome Company, happily working on the SuperProjectOfTheMonth and about every 15 minutes you run into this little thing that's costing you just a microsecond of brain activity to notice before you get…

What I learned from organizing a developer conference

At the end of 2014 I had been toying with the idea to organize a conference for the developer group I work with. At the time I had two basic goals: Provide a platform for the devs to have a talk about the cool stuff they are working on Get…

Deployment hook in XL Deploy

Now that we've migrated to TFS 2013 we now have Team Rooms available for all the projects. TFS provides a number of default events such as work item state changes and builds that have completed. Because we use XL Deploy to handle our automated deployments I wanted to include those…

Consuming WCF services with Reporting Services

When looking to consume a WCF service in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) I came across the XML datasource and a lot of articles showing me that while it is possible, it is a bit of a hassle with formatting the query and figuring out exactly which SOAP action to…