We recently got awesome new laptops at work (which are just awesome BTW) and on the standard image included a Team Foundation Server tool that I haven’t used in a while:  TeamCompanion 3.0.  I had used earlier releases of the tool but always seem to forget to install it whenever I pave my machine as I do quite frequently.  It’s been a while and I must say… the 3.0 version is just awesome.  I’d like to go over a few things that I really like in the latest release.

Experience

The experience of connecting to TFS inside Outlook is just first-class.  The same icons that are used in Visual Studio Team Explorer are the ones that appear in Outlook.  That really does make a difference for me…  Notice that I can also add certain work item queries that I’m interested in to the Favorites area as well.

If you are using Outlook 2010, you’ll notice that TeamCompanion adds a handy ribbon tab:

Work Items Galore

There are so many things you can do whenever working with work items with TeamCompanion!  For instance, let’s say you get an e-mail for a customer of a great feature request.  It’s super quick to create a new feature request work item or attach the e-mail to an existing work item.

What’s even cooler is that if the e-mail refers to a specific work item in the content (i.e. “Bug 1234”) then TeamCompanion can let you open the rich work item form to look at the details or edit the work item.  This is especially helpful for alert e-mails that you may get from TFS.

Even cooler is that all of the normal Outlook features work like replying, forwarding, flagging, categorizing, setting alerts, etc.

Other Work Item Features:

• Offline Work Item Support
• Scheduling Work Item Queries to Run
• Great Rendering of a Work Item
• Creating Tasks/Meeting Requests from Work Items
• Printing
• Editing Areas & Iterations
• Bulk Editing
• Searching Work Items
• “Query By Example”

Reports

I think my favorite feature of TeamCompanion has to do with handling reports.  By default, the rich reports you get with TFS are all scoped at the Team Project level.  However, I find myself frequently needing to filter to a particular Area Path and Iteration Path.  TeamCompanion actually allows you to save those common filters that you perform every day and store them.  Allows you to have all of the presets that you want.

Another handy feature is the ability to send an e-mail with the report easily within Outlook.  Nice!

I’m certainly not doing the latest release of the product justice.  They did a great job with improvements and new features from previous versions that I have used.  I’d suggest you’d download the trial and kick the tires.

Ed Blankenship

Some of the Visual Studio ALM MVPs have gotten together to drive the creation of a new Stack Exchange site dedicated to the Visual Studio ALM family of products (which includes Team Foundation Server.)  We were able to get past the “Definition” phase and now need to enough people to “Commit” to using it so that we can get the site off the ground.  If you aren’t familiar with the Stack Exchange concept, it’s an interesting way to ask questions and help answer them as well.  One of the sites that has been around for a while that I have participated in from time to time is Stack Overflow.  You basically end up with high-quality answers because others can agree/disagree with the answer and provide feedback or more information.

Help us out by indicating that you are going to commit to contributing to the site whenever it gets created.  Thanks for all your help!

Link:  Commit to Visual Studio ALM at Stack Exchange

Ed Blankenship

There is a great article in the August 1, 2010 edition of the SD Times by Dave Worthington (@dcworthington) about the Visual Studio 2010 ALM tools including Team Foundation Server 2010.  It’s titled “Microsoft’s islands in the stream.”  Some really great colleagues in the ALM community have been interviewed and provided some pretty honest feedback from what we have been seeing over the last year or so.  Check it out!

Ed Blankenship

This is some really exciting news for customers of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010!  Today, Microsoft has announced that customers who have purchased Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN or Visual Studio 2010 Test Professional with MSDN now receive the Lab Management capabilities for Team Foundation Server!  That means no per-processor licensing fees for your physical host servers that will be hosting your virtual machines!

Earlier this year, I passed on Lab Management news that indicated that it would cost $1,599 per processor (retail.)  Microsoft has listened to the feedback and has also made it a “feature” in the Visual Studio family instead of a completely separate product.

Microsoft has also announced an update to the Lab Management functionality in the different products to bring it to full RTM/RTW status.  You’ll recall that when Visual Studio 2010 released earlier this year that the Lab Management features ended up still being released in a “Release Candidate” status.  The product team has spent the last few months gathering feedback and include updates to improve performance throughout the product.  The “patch” will be available later this month.  I highly recommend updating to the latest version by installing the patch as soon as it becomes available.

When it is released, you will see the following “extra” installation media become available in your MSDN Subscriber Download listings:

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager* (SCVMM)
• Visual Studio 2010 Agents

*A grant of “limited use” rights for SCVMM are included.  This means that you can only use SCVMM for your Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management test lab.

This is a great move for customers.  Creating a virtual lab management can be an expensive endeavor for business.  I recall visiting customers who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on competing products like VMWare Lab Manager.  This is really bringing virtual lab management to everyone!

If you are curious about more information, see Brian Harry’s announcement.

Ed Blankenship