Team Development for Sitecore V5 – Part 2

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Following on from my first blog on the new features in Team Development for Sitecore this post will look at more of the new features.

Project Wizard

The Project Wizard is a simple but very useful additional to TDS that will guide you through connecting to a Sitecore instance. It can be found as a second option in the Add New Project dialog: This project type opens a wizard that allows you to enter the connection details for your TDS project and select a target TDS project: One of the great features of the Project Wizard is it's ability to auto-complete the remainder of your project details. It does this by checking your solution for previous TDS projects and if it finds one that has a URL that matches the value entered into the Sitecore Web Url field then the reminder of values are pulled across. Of course you can alter these values afterwards but this saves you a lot of typing.

Global Config

The Global Config features is a massive time saver for anyone working with large numbers of TDS projects. Gone are the days of having to copy and paste Access Guid's between different TDS projects and ensuring they are all up-to-date, with the Global Config you can manage all of these centrally. The Global config file is very simple to add, just right click on your solution and select Add Global Config: This will add a TdsGlobal.config file to your Visual Studio solution: The Global file itself contains a lot of commented out XML, these are the settings that you can control via the Global file, just uncomment the property you wish to set globally and enter the appropriate value: When you configure a value in the Global.config file a world icon will appear next to the corresponding field in the property page to show that this value has been globally set:

Sitecore Rocks Integration

The final feature I am going to look at is the integration with Sitecore Rocks (if you haven't tried Rocks you should download it today and give it a go). In TDS V5 we have made it a lot easier for you to get your items from Sitecore using Sitecore Rocks, now as you explore you Sitecore solution in Rocks you can right click on any item and quickly add it: The integration is intelligent and will only allow you to add items to projects that point at the database in question. It can also tell if the item is already part of your project or not.

Summary

TDS V5 contains some awesome new features especially for those who are working on solutions with large numbers of TDS projects. These new features should help you streamline and simplify your experience. If you have any suggestions for features yourself we would live to hear them so that they can make TDS an even better solution.