When your work circles around TFS, it’s nice to know whenever a new Work Item is assigned or the status of an old one gets changed. E-mail alerts are perfect in that sense. I just came across this blog post on setting up E-mail alerts from TFS through Gmail. Getting TFS alerts in your gmail account can be handy you use a lot of Goodle apps for work. Lev Blavias, the author of the post, recommends this link to help set up the alerts. He notes, that for the connection to work the following components need to be installed first: Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 Power Tool, Stunnel, and an SMTP virtual server needs to be set up on the machine.

But google apps and gmail are still far from being THE all-enterprise system for itnernal use, so for a lot of companies linking Microsoft Office with TFS is much more relevant.

Speaking of e-mail, some tools already offer connectors linking MS Outlook and TFS. The nice thing about such tools is that you don’t have to go through a lengthy set-up process yourself, as it’s already been configured for you. All it takes is to install the add-on and alas! Not only do you get your TFS alerts in Outlook, you can also create new TFS work items and meetings without ever opening TFS.

Here’s how this could look:

Just a quick sidenote to keep up with the development framework that made TeamExpand happen: did you know .NET has a new logo, did you know that?

The new logo was announced in October. The previous logo was created in 2000 and lasted 8 years.

The reason for this re-branding lies in the changes that took place in Microsoft products over the last years. .NET logo is now more than an addition to Microsoft’s other products, rather something bigger, associated with Visual Studio and Silverlight.

The .NET Framework is an integral Windows component that supports building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services.

I don’t think I mentioned the new Demo Movie on TFS Timesheet that came out a while ago. It describes the project manager interface of the application in details and takes a thorough look at the program’s functions. You can download it over here.

TeamExpand announced the commercial version of its TX Chrono, a timesheet tracking application targeted at software development organizations standardizing on the Visual Studio .NET environment. Besides a number of bug fixes, the commercial version of TX Chrono features new workflow functionality and complete TSF compatibility to make software development activities more visible and predictable. A trial version of the product will also be available for free download.

Allowing project managers and team members to submit, approve, and analyze timesheets, the Web-based TFS timesheet application also provides a set of notification and reporting capabilities that TFS lacks. This automates time reporting and the analyzing process, and brings visibility across all project-related activities, giving team leaders the amount of control over the project necessary to ensure the team’s success.

To learn more about TX Chrono, its features and how it works you can visit the product’s homepage or check out web demo over here.

I’m back with you after a short 2-week break. While I’m catching up on what’s been going on in the world of TFS, VSTS and ALM in general, here’s a link to the latest (August) edition of TFS Times. This month’s issue focuses on how the community has extended TFS and VSTS with new features. Speaking of TFS add-ons and plug-ins, remember what TeamExpand does?

Our team encountered the a bug in TFS’05, TFS’05 SP1, and TFS’08 where we’d get GCHandle error whenever we tried to create WorkItem through WorkItemTracking API.

After a while of pondering on what and how, we solved it by creating an IIS Application Pool for each tire of the application. Then wherever the access to WorkItemStore API was required in the configuration, the team used the following settings: (priorly granting the IIS Application Pool user rights to write in YOUR CACHE FOLDER catalogue)…and guess what? The problem was gone.

Good time management skills have always been rare… Even though most of us understand the value of time perfectly well, there’s little we can do to improve. Schedulers, organizers, time-tracking reports… no use unless you understand the incentives. TX Chrono is developed for those who understand the value of time and directly attribute this resource to money they earn or pay.

TX Chrono is a time control tool incorporated into your daily work. It doesn’t require any additional resources above your TFS and creates a powerful working environment for efficient work planning, reporting and monitoring.

TX Chrono tracks the time spent on each task and notifies the resource managers of all the details. As employees submit their time reports for approval, the management automatically gets notifications on under- or overtime hours and can any time notify users about missed time reports or discrepancies. Reporting can be organized by project, team, user and over a selected period enabling the resource manager to compare and analyze employees’ work efficiency, resource utilization and project metrics.

The program’s user-friendly interface and flexible settings not only allow users to keep a record of time spent on each task even if it takes several days or weeks, but also to create and modify their own time tables, add and remove public holidays and transferring working days, request vacations and days-off and get management’s approval on those. Also, to prevent any possible mistakes in your reports, understand the value of time perfectly well, there’s little we can do to improve. Schedulers, organizers, time-tracking reports… no use unless you understand the incentives. TX Chrono is developed for those who understand the value of time and directly attribute this resource to money they earn or pay.

TX Chrono is a time control tool incorporated into your daily work. It doesn’t require any additional resources above your TFS and creates a powerful working environment for efficient work planning, reporting and monitoring.

TX Chrono enables you to check the time data upon submission, correct and finalize it before it finally gets approved. All these serve to increase each employee’s personal effectiveness, and the company’s overall efficiency.

Say you’ve got TFS, a perfect lifecycle management tool, now it wouldn’t hurt to control your lifecycle processes time-wise as well, would it?

By the way, a full-fledge licensed version of TX Chrono will soon be available on the TeamExpand website, so watch for the news. =)

A new draft documentation on “Moving Team Foundation Server From One Configuration To Another” has been recently posted and is availably for public review over here.

Let VSTS developers know if you’ve gone though a similar process to improve this draft.

Also, do not forget, if you have any problems with VSTS deployment you can always seek additional consultation and services from TeamExpand.

Alright, I’ve been getting questions regarding differences between the time reporting functions inbuilt in VSTE / TFS and Team Expand’s TX Chrono. Well, here you go:

VSTE and TFS time reporting vs. TX Chrono
Visual Studio Team Edition and Team Foundation Server have a number of time reporting limitations, namely:
- no possibility to analyze on which day a task was executed/completed,
- no such thing as time sheet approval
- duration of a working week is not defined

TX Chrono:
-an extended functionality allowing developers to report their time easily.
–Project and resource managers enabled to approve team members’ time spendings;
-automated analyzer warns management about time reporting fallacies
- interface showing all tasks completed by an employee within the reporting period (week by default)
- preset reports
- allows users to make corrections in the time spent before sending the reports for approval

Simple, TFS lacks the organized and clearly defined workflow of reporting and approving that TX Chrono offers.

Check out new HowTo sections for TeamExpand Looker and Chrono. These new pages walk you through the installation and some main features of TX Products and contain enough screenshots not to lose you halfway.