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andyste1
Copper Contributor
Joined 7 years ago
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Advantages of installing a newer build agent?
We have an on-prem Azure DevOps server (2020 update 1.2). All our builds use the "default" agent (v2.181.2) created when DevOps was installed. I'm aware that it is possible to download and install agents from here: https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/releases, but what are the reasons for doing so? Are they merely to provide bug fixes and performance improvements, rather than (say) new build tasks or build task features (which I assume are part and parcel of DevOps itself, and have nothing to do with agents)? One of the reasons I ask is that last year I tried installing a new agent (v2.210.1), and builds had been working fine. However we recently started seeing our builds taking a long time, and in the agent log found that the agent was repeatedly attempting to downgrade to v2.181.2. Why was this? Is something limiting which version we can use, e.g. the version of DevOps itself, or a particular task in the build definition? (The build did continue to work when I reconfigured it to use the default agent, v2.181.2, which is coincidentally what the newer agent was trying to downgrade to). I assume I would get similar issues if I was to create an agent using the latest version (currently v3.227.2)? Like I say, curious to know why I would want to install a newer agent in the first place.Azure DevOps license question
A couple of years ago we purchased a DevOps 2019 Server license for an on-premises server. We also purchased a number of copies of Visual Studio 2019 for our software dev team (standalone, rather than subscription), each of which included a DevOps CAL. The software dev team will soon be upgrading to VS2022 - will the existing CALs remain valid or do we have to purchase new ones? I don't know if this makes a difference but we'll probably end up purchasing VS2022 as a "standalone" again, however I've noticed that DevOps CALs are no longer included with the standalone version - only the subscription route has this.Recently updated documents web part for all users?
Our organisation has a site with a number of sub sites. On the top-level site's home page I'd like some way of showing documents and wiki articles that have been recently added/updated, not just in the main site but across all the sub sites too. I've found the "site activity" web part but that only shows changes in the main site. Is there something similar that would include changes across all sub sites? Failing that, I could live with having the "site activity" web-part on the home page of each sub-site, if this is possible? The problem is that when I edit a sub site page it's a very different experience to editing a page in the parent site (why is this?), and the list of web parts is completely different, with no sign of the "site activity" web part:Outlook freezes after I've been writing an email for a while
Occasionally, while typing an email (in the "popout" window), the window will freeze. The main Outlook window will also lock up, and the only way out is to "end task" in Task Manager. I've tried leaving it for a number of minutes to see if it unfreezes itself, but it doesn't. The Outlook status bar doesn't report any connectivity issues when this happens. When the window freezes, it is often accompanied by small areas of the main Outlook window going "blank" (usually an empty white rectangle), or the icons on random buttons and toolbars disappearing, both in the main Outlook window and the open email window. After restarting Outlook, the yellow "updates available" banner appears. Seems a bit of a coincidence, so was wondering if the freezing is related to O365 checking for and/or downloading updates? I'm currently on v1902 (build 11328.20158), on Win7, but this has been happening for the past 4-5 months. The freezing is very rare however, and only seems to occur when I've had the email (that I'm typing) open for while - say 20 minutes or more.
