Build and Release Management Using TFS 2017

This 2-day course focuses on building and releasing .NET applications using Team Foundation Server 2017 and Visual Studio Team Services. It focuses on the new scriptable, cross-platform build system introduced in TFS 2015 and how to use it effectively. We then deep dive into Release Management and how you can release your applications to both Azure and on-premises infrastructure.

If you are eager to learn how to implement DevOps practices designed to streamline your build and release processes using TFS or VSTS, this is the course for you.

The content in this course is a subset of our 3-day “DevOps using Visual Studio 2017” course.

This course includes hands-on labs to reinforce practical skills and ensure you’re ready to use the tools on your return to your workplace.

At the completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• Describe the current features in TFS or VSTS focused on build and release management
• Plan and configure a scalable build environment including pools and queues
• Configure appropriate security on pools and queues
• Author build definitions
• Configure Continuous Integration (CI) builds as well as scheduled builds
• Use existing build templates as well as create new build templates
• Create custom build workflow using build steps
• Automate the execution of tests as part of our build
• Understand the features and capabilities of Release Management
• Use Release Management to create and manage releases
• Use Release Management to create environments
• Manage configuration information in each environment
• Deploy software to on-premises servers as well as to Azure
• Configure continuous release by triggering releases from builds
• Create approval workflows and track releases across environments

Audience: This course is designed for .NET developers, TFS administrators, and build masters. It is a hands-on look at various technologies rather than a high-level management overview.

Pre-requisites: Attendees should be familiar with Visual Studio and the basic use of Team Foundation Server or Visual Studio Team Services.

Modules:

Module 1: A Lap Around the Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Family

• Overview of the Visual Studio 2017 family
• Overview of product features
• The need for centralized builds
• The importance of release management

Module 2: Configuring Your Build Environment

• Understanding build infrastructure
• Creating agent pools and queues
• Installing build agents
• Specifying capabilities on your build agents
• Configuring security
• Overview of non-Windows build agents
• Overview of hosted build infrastructure

Module 3: Authoring Your First Build Definition

• Creating a new build definition
• Understanding build templates
• Selecting the solution to build
• Running tests as part of your build
• Queuing a build

Module 4: A Closer Look at Builds

• Selecting our source repository (TFVC/Git/GitHub/Subversion)
• Running multiple concurrent builds
• Working with build variables
• Configuring Continuous Integration (CI) and scheduled builds
• Using gated check-ins
• Using demands to influence agent selection
• Build retention policies

Module 5: Customizing Your Build Process

• A lap around the available build tasks
• Using build tasks to deploy your application components
• Extending builds using scripts

Module 6: Other Build Enhancements and Features

• Viewing build status
• Controlling build outputs and understanding artifacts
• Packaging your .NET application
• Examining test results from a build

Module 7: Overview of Release Management

• What is release management
• Key concepts in release management
• The current state of release management in TFS/VSTS

Module 8: Release Management

• Authoring a new release definition
• Linking your build definition to a release
• Determining what to deploy using artifacts
• Defining and using configuration variables
• Configuring continuous release
• Naming your release and using retention policies

Module 9: Configuring Environments

• Understanding environments
• Configuring your approval workflow
• Notifying approvers
• Selecting your deployment queue
• Defining custom variables for your environments
• Configuring the environment owner
• Understanding deployment conditions
• Cloning environments

Module 10: Defining a Release Workflow for On-Premises Servers

• Overview of release tasks
• Copying files and running scripts
• Releasing a web application to an IIS server
• Executing tests as part of our on-premises release
• Tracking our release

Module 11: Defining a Release Workflow for Azure 

• Understanding Azure resources
• Understanding service endpoints
• Configuring endpoints for connecting to Azure
• Releasing an Azure web application
• Executing tests as part of our Azure release