Visual Studio Team Services online - "free for 5 users" clarification - visual-studio

We are using Visual Studio Team Services (online) to manage our source code and backlog. We have 2 users who have Visual Studio Enterprise Subscriptions. I understand that VSTS is free for up to 5 users. My question is: would the 2 licenced users be included in the 5, or would we be able to have up to 5 additional users (making a total of 7)?
I'm sure I read somewhere before that the users with Visual Studio licences wouldn't be included in the 5 but can't find any clarification online now.
Would be interested to hear if anyone has first hand experience of this one way or the other. Thanks!

It is free for up to 5 unlicensed users. Licensed users do not count against your 5 free users.

Related

Practice TFS free

I just revised my first job as a developer. In my workplace we developing mainly in c# language.
In my work place there is a lot of use in source control and TFS which I'm not familiar with, my question: suppose I want to learn TFS in my spare time at house, is it possible? I don't have a pro account, I have visual studio 2017.
I don't mean to online courses, I need to do a "hands on" practice, i.e I need tfc on my own pc if it's possible.
You can download and run TFS Express or use Visual Studio Team Services free for up to 5 users.
Or, ask if your company has a place where you can "play" on the live TFS instance, but in a test environment - I have setup separate "Team Project Collections" for people to experiment on.

Visual Studio Community Edition can't access VSTS?

I'm working on a .NET project with a subcontractor.
The client has all source code in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).
The client has granted access to the subcontractor, but he cannot see any source code or builds.
When logging in to the VSTS website, he receives the following error messages:
"TF400409: You do not have licensing rights to access this feature: Code"
"We could not verify your Visual Studio subscription so we've downgraded you to Stakeholder."
The subcontractor meets the criteria for commercial development using the Community Edition of Visual Studio (fewer than 5 developers etc.), so it would be sad if they had to purchase a license, just to access one client's source code.
Is there a way out?
Could he maybe set up a free VSTS "Community" instance and thus be marked as "licensed" in the system?
Access level is assigned per Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) subscription and not per company. So even though you contractor might be considered a single entity he will be part of the free license count for the particular subscription he is trying to access. Either there are already 5 free developers or he is not assigned the correct level.
Access level is assigned through the dashboard https://{youraccount}.visualstudio.com (select Users from the '...' menu). The 5 free licenses can be used by assigning the users to the Basic access level. You can read more here: Manage users and access in VSTS (if you turned off User Hub).

what is the difference between visual studio 2015 community and professional

This link provide us a comparison about three versions. Apparently only TFS features is the different. here
I guess that is more than that.Technically, Is it full featured ?
Otherwise why would we pay $45/month for professional version. Products
Per this link
VS Community Usage terms
For individuals
Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.
For organizations
An unlimited number of users within an organization can use Visual Studio Community for the following scenarios: in a classroom learning environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source projects.
For all other usage scenarios:
In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community. In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
For more information, see the Visual Studio Community license terms.
Licensing is the critical point.
If you develop in the contest of an organization, you must be within limits not buying Pro license (full details), e.g. classrooms, academic, open source projects plus some.
Technically they are the same and Team Explorer is built-in. My understanding (I can be wrong) regards the licensing: the features listed are almost all accessible via web interface, so there is no technical blocker as I see it.
BTW I contribute to an open source TFS plugin using Community edition and found no problems.
Then you have to consider the free tier of VSTS which is a separate license. For TFS on prem, you need some CAL (Client Access License) but there is some free tier also.

Visual Studio 2008/2010 - Professional vs Team System

Ok, I know this isnt a programming question, but I think its really important to understand the differences to be a more productive developer...so please don't close this question!! And yes, I do feel stupid for asking this question! Have only ever worked with the Prof edition of VS 2005/2008.
Now that we have a team of 6 people, I would like to what benefits Team System would offer us over 6 licenses of VS Professional? Also, what advantages does Team Foundation Server offer?
TFS can be good if you use work items and are interested in associating source changes with these work items. Otherwise, using it for a couple of weeks at a customer (that was not using work items) just made me want to run back to subversion.
Merging UI is not very good (to be polite), the VS plug-in always wants to contact the TFS server to check for any changes of the files you're using, there are false warnings of conflicts...
Note that I am the guy that usually defends Microsoft against the Java/PHP guys, so it is very strange for me to write this...
TFS is a great source control tool for every organization. And is much advance than Visual Source Safe. It also has work item management (for tasks) simmilar to Rational software. We are using it for years and not just for .Net languages.
With the Team System version you already have a Team Explorer wherein your users can access the source control. Also Team System consists of different sub products that targets specific job functions such as Team System for Development Edition (For developers), Team System Database Edition (For database architect), Team System Architect Edition (For System Architect), and Team System Test Edition (For testers). All those subversions are included on the Team Suite edition.
For the Professional version it could also benefit to the TFS source control system if the machine is installed with Team Explorer.
The major difference between Professional & Team System is Team Foundation Server. Team Foundation Server is the massive overhaul/replacement of Visual SourceSafe. But TFS also gives you other functionality such as work item tracking and other features to manage the complete development life cycle.
Hey, thanks to all for the answers so far! I have never worked in a team/collaborative environment before, so this is a tad bit new to me. We are in the midst of acquiring a "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium subscription". I know that this package gets updated to "Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN" on March 22 2010.
Will I still be able to leverage collaborative efforts using this package? Is it worth the $2970 additional cost?
EDIT: We are applying for the Empower for ISVs subscription. We work mainly on SaaS/RIA solutions. Am I understanding the term "Work Item" correctly - that is if I wish to task Developer 1 with say XHTML/CSS, Developer 2 with a certain functional module, and Developer 3 with another functional module - each of these is considered a work item that can be easily tracked with VSTS?
Team system, even without team foundation server has code analysis capabilities and metrics for your code that actually quantifies how maintainable it is. For a project manager this is nirvana when trying to find out who does a great job on their code and for a developer it gives him hard facts about where to improve his code.
That being said I think Team Foundation Server might be overkill for a team of 6 people except if you are building an extremely large system.
If you are comfortable with Subversion or a different version control manager,
you are dont mind using Nunit (or alternative unit test tool) and you are
familiar with or can find the open source (or fee based) code metric tools,
and you have bug tracker in place you can save quite a bit of money on the licensing.
I have worked a lot with Team System, and at some clients, just the Pro Version.
While some of the integration TS offers is slick, I am so used to nUnit and
Subversion that I actually miss them at times when working in TS.
Now in 2010, the Ultimate edition does offer some great UML diagramming and code analysis
tools that I will miss in lower versions.

Already have MSDN with Team System Test edition, how do I

Already have MSDN with Team System Test Edition, how do I go about getting Developer Edition? Can't find it on MSDN.
Do I need to buy a whole other MSDN license for this?
Can you add just another SKU into the Team System family, in other words, can you have 2 Team System Versions, or does it have to be the Team $uite MegaVersion or single versions?
Also, can you use FxCop with the nice VS shell integration inside of VS Test Edition?
Any URLs/hints would be greatly appreciated. Seems to me that there's very little documentation on how to mix and match VS versions. Would be great if MSFT had a "Visual Studio store" MENU ITEM in VS where you could go and just buy/download the different SKUs automatically. I mean it takes me just a few clicks to download extra states into TurboTax, but MSFT makes that very hard to do.
P.S. Same set of questions for Visual Studio Database Edition.....yes I'm a dev that wears many hats.
There are 3 common levels of licensing that you see:
Visual Studio Pro - Doesn't include any of the team system features
Visual Studio Team System xxxxx Edition - Where xxxx is either Developer, Tester, Architect or DBPro. Includes all the functionality of VS Pro + the functionality associated with the role you chose.
Visual Studio Team Suite - Includes the functionality of all the different role editions.
If you have the VSTS Developer Edition and you want some of the functionality from the other roles, you either have to buy a 2nd VSTS license for the other role, or upgrade to VSTS Team Suite. If I remember correctly VSTS Team Suite is about twice the cost of a specific role version of VSTS, so rather than purchasing multiple role editions most people just opt to upgrade to Team Suite since the cost is approx. the same.
You can compare the list prices here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/howtobuy/compare-price.mspx
First, once you logon to the MSDN site, make sure you've clicked the "Downloads" tab at the top of the page, and then near the lower-right click on "MSDN Subscriber Downloads". Software that you have access to at your level of subscription will appear in the list.
Second, you may consider reviewing the details of your level of MSDN subscription if you still don't see what you're looking for.
I hope this helps!
If you will really be using all the different products, then it is best to have the full System license. I think 2 of the products make the price of the full, if you are using 3 ...

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