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:

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.

Check out new demo movies on the “bridge”-tool between Visual Studio Team System and Outlook. Two of them have recently been added to the TeamExpand website, each discussing the tool’s particular feature. By watching them you will learn:
1) how to use TX Looker to send an e-mail in Outlook based on your work item in TFS in seconds without ever starting TFS on your computer;
2) how to use TX Looker to create an appointment or meeting in your Outlook Calendar based on one of your TFS work items without starting TFS/VSTS.
3) how to manage your TFS work items using only Outlook.

Sooo, to se how this works in practice, check out the new demos over here.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) provides tools for four basic roles in a typical software development team: Architects, Project Managers, Developers, and Testers. A seemingly well-thought-through scenario…or not? Where’s the rest of the crew that should be participating in the company’s life? Ever thought of connecting your development processes with your business goals? Or should they go on leading their existence separately? If you ever think of creating an integrated inter-dependent working environment and bringing your marketing, QA, sales, etc. into the corporate decision-making and allowing them to take part in the company’s life, TX Looker is just the thing you need.

TeamExpand has developed an Outlook plugin to TFS allowing everyone on your staff to utilize TFS through the familiar Microsoft Outlook Interface without ever having to waste time and efforts on installing the TFS itself. This direct connection between MS Outlook and Team Foundation Server not only brings your entire team together in task management and development lifecycle processes, but also allows you to plan tasks using the Outlook Calendar and get real-time alerts on new assignments and events. Those on your team not writing code and not employing Visual Studio in their daily work also won’t spend any extra time on getting used to the Visual Studio/ TFS interface. With TX Looker you’ll forget what it’s like to waste time.

I came across another list of TFS add-ons over here. Obviously not a full list, just a few things to hake a look at, play around with, and maybe if you like them, install =).

Oh, and I’d add TX Looker (an add-on that allows users to utilize Team Foundation Server through Microsoft Outlook Interface, receive real-time notifications about new assignments and events, plan tasks using MS Outlook calendar and access TFS without having to run Visual Studio) and TX Chrono (a web-based add-on that allows employees to submit timesheet reports, enables resource managers to review and approve timesheets and run reports on submitted data), of course.

The release of TX Looker (full-fledge version, no more beta’s) is scheduled for the end of March. Behold and despair! TX Looker is coming to save your time and efforts. =)

Here’s a small preview of what it’s gonna look like:

This is the Looker folder in the main Microsoft Outlook window. Looker here makes TFS tasks and work items accessible and available to work with in Outlook.

And this is what the actual connection to TFS work items looks like:

On the top left you can see options such as New Email - for creating a task-based e-mail, New Task - creating a new task based on the old one, and New Meeting - for creating an appointment in Outlook Scheduler based on your work item.

Team Foundation Sidekicks is a suit of new and nifty tools that you can use to make your life with TFS easier. Version 2.0 comes in single installation package and is compatible with both old and new (2005 and 2008) versions of TFS. Too bad only TFS administrators and advanced users will be able to enjoy these tools as most of them possess strictly administrative features “for administrative and advanced version control tasks in multi-user TFS environments”.

Yeah, and as for you non-administrative and non-development team folks, there’s another awesome set of plug-ins to TFS over here. If your work doesn’t require having TFS applications running the entire day, and yet you still need to be part of the team, report your schedule and monitor what’s going on at the ALM level, TX Looker and Chrono are always at your service.

MS Outlook is the most widely used application for e-mail correspondence, contacts management and personal time planning. Most corporate users have MS Outlook constantly running on their computers.

At the same time more and more software developers find the capacities of Team Foundation Server (also known as “Team Build”) useful in managing source control, data collection, reporting, and progress monitoring in collaborative development projects.

Now if both are so useful, why not combine the two? Who wouldn’t want to be able to access TFS while in MS Outlook and without ever running another application? That’s one of the many things TeamXpand can do for you. Its plug-in to MS Outlook allows the two to work together simultaneously in one application.

Why combine?
This direct connection between MS Outlook and TFS sure enough has a lot of advantages over using the two of them separately enabling you to make much more out of your time. With the two combined into one, you’ll have less applications running on your computer, and as a result employ less computer resources. Sure you have enough applications running anyway! At least now there won’t be a need to switch between them to manage tasks, plan and report time. Why overload your computer when you can ease the work for both of you? Needless going on with why this might be just the thing you need? Thought so.

Think of your people.
Now your typical software company (although in question whether a “typical” software company actually exists) has a team of software developers and twice as many people not writing code (sales, marketing, pr…). For the latter while there’s no use in having access to source control and the development itself, it would be more than useful to be informed of the work status and development progress. Moreover you can get them involved into the task setting and reporting processes with TFS. Obviously, being able to do so in good old Outlook will save loads of precious time they’d otherway waste on getting their whereabouts in the Visual Studio interface.

Tasks and Alerts
TeamXpand enables you to assign TFS tasks, report bugs, report time, add and edit TFS work items – all in one Outlook application. Whenever there’s a new assignment or event, real time mode alerts get sent to all the concerned.
All of the above ultimately increases performance efficiency of the entire company just as well as of any given employee.

Hawkeye introduces Visual Studio Plugins:

“TFS Quick Search Plugin (for VS 2005!):
The plugin offers a simple way to search the title and id of work items in the result of a TFS query: It will add a small search box to all your work item result windows and allow you to search the titles or ids of the items in the list:
You can just start typing and the work item that contains the word you type will be automatically selected.
Usage:
• Enter a text: it will find the first title that contains that string
• F3: Find the next occurrence of that text
• Enter a text prefixed by “#” – search for that ID. E.g. #834 will jump directly to the item with the specified ID.”

“Visual Studio Properties Window Search/Find Plugin:
This Visual Studio Add-in will extend the Properties window of Visual Studio by providing a fast search/filter box in the toolbar.
You can just start typing and the properties list will automatically filter the list of properties to the properties that start with the specified string.
Alternatively you can type “?” (question mark) followed by some text and the filter will automatically filter all the properties that contain the specified string.
For example typing “?” (question mark) will show BackColor and ForeColor properties.”

These sure are nifty… and might be handy for those of us using TFS on daily basis…But wouldn’t all these extra plug-ins be too bulky? Especially compared to another option you have. With TX Looker you can work with TFS from your Outlook interface, where all the quick search options are already available AND familiar. Why waste time and resources on additional plug-ins? While at that, why waste time on starting TFS at all if you can access it from Outlook?