Getting started with VisualStudio Team Services

Before I even start writing any code I am going to set up a new project in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services.

If you do not have a source control repository and issue tracking system yet then I would highly recommend looking at VSTS. It really can give you a full end to end pipeline so that you can take that idea you have had for the next big application all the way from being written on the back of beer mat to an automatically deployed application with VSTS helping in all the steps in-between. VSTS also has a vibrant marketplace of add-ons that can extend VSTS. But best of all VSTS is cloud based so you don’t have to worry about deploying hardware and making sure you always keep it up to date.

VSTS is free up to 5 users and provides you with up to 240 free minutes of build time a month when you use a hosted build pipeline or you can use a private pipeline if you want to create your own build agent on your own hardware. You get one private pipeline for free and you can use that as much as you need to, no limit on minutes. Additional users cost $6 a month and additional pipelines cost $15 a month ( hosted or private ) but you should/will be able to do everything you need for the free subscription if you have a small team.

Once you have set up VSTS just log in and select the option to create a new project.

Make sure you select GIT for your version control and Agile for the Work Item Process.

Now that the project has been created we can switch over to our IDE to kick things off.