Community | TeamSolutions

TeamSpec Skins Post

Joe Buys — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 21:20:00 GMT

We recently posted a great blog article explaining in detail how TeamSpec Skins work. This is a deep dive explaination of many powerful features of TeamSpec and how to make your requirements documents, using Microsoft Word, a much more intiutive and easy process.

Check out the post here:
http://community.teamsystemsolutions.com/blogs/teamspec/archive/2011/06/09/teamspec-skins-explained-in-detail.aspx

Cheers,
~Joe

TeamSpec Skins - Explained in Detail

sduchin — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:26:00 GMT

Skins are the most asked about feature in TeamSpec. They are also one of the most overarching and powerful tools that TeamSpec offers. In this post I will discuss what skins are, why skins are useful, and how to use them.

What is a skin?

A skin is an ordered, textual representation of a single work item. When TeamSpec brings a work item into a Word document with a skin, the skin designates which fields of the work item are referenced and how those values are organized. A skin will always arrange a work item’s pertinent information in a table or a list. You can add more work items, formatted with their own skins, into the table or list to create an ordered presentation of work items. In this way, TeamSpec creates documents that are ideal for project management and analysis. And, because the work item references are connected to the Team Foundation Server, you can update your document with changes made on the server or publish changes you make in your document to the server.

Default Skins

TeamSpec ships with a handful of default skins. These defaults skins all have descriptive names like “Numbered List Item (Title – AssignedTo).” The first half of the name describes how the information is formatted, in this case as a numbered list item. The second half of the name lists which field’s values will be referenced in your document. So, bringing a work item into your document with the “Numbered List Item (Title – AssignedTo)” skin will create a numbered list node with the title of the work item and a node with the name of the person the work item is assigned to.

You can add another work item to the list by striking enter at the last line to open a new empty node on the list.

Then add the next work item you want in your document using the same type of skin. TeamSpec will automatically integrate the new information into the list.

If you use a different type of skin, however, the new work item will be imported as the first node in a new list.

Creating Skins

The default skins are useful, but TeamSpec becomes especially powerful when you create your own skins. That way you can tailor the organization of your work items to the needs of your specific document. To begin, load the first work item you want to add to your document to the canvas. Now, by dragging and dropping from the canvas, add the information from the work item in the layout that you want the skin to have. For example, say we want to create a new skin that is a bulleted list containing the work item’s title, description, work item type, and state. I start a bulleted list in in word and then drag the work item title from the canvas to the first bullet.

Then I navigate to the end of the line, making sure that the cursor is no longer in the title field, strike enter and then tab to create a new child-node in my list. Drag the work item’s description to this new node. I do the same for the work item type and state so that I have the work item represented in my document the way I want subsequent work items to be referenced by my new skin.

Then highlight the whole work item reference, click the “Skins” button in the TeamSpec ribbon bar, and select “Create New Skin.” This will open the “Create New Skin” window.

Enter a name for your new skin in the first field. Verify the work item fields that you want represented in the second field. Choose the path at which you want your new skin saved from the drop-down menu in the final field. You can change this path with the Skin Manager. When you are ready, click create to save your new skin.

Your new skin will now be added to the list of available skins and will behave just like the default skins.

Importing Work Items Using Skins

There are two primary ways to bring a work item into your document with a skin: from the canvas or from a search. To import a skinned work item from the canvas, send the work item you are interested in to the canvas. Then click the “Skins” button and select a skin type. Your most recently used skins will be listed in the drop-down. If you want to use skin that isn’t listed, select “Browse for Skin…” and choose a skin from the open skin dialogue.

When you select a skin type, TeamSpec creates a formatted reference to the work item in your document according to the specifications of the skin.

To import a skinned work item from a search either perform a quick search or a query. Highlight the work item(s) that you want to bring into your document. Right-click on the work item(s), select “Skins” and choose a skin type. Like importing a work item from the canvas, your most recently used skins will be listed in the drop-down. If you want to use skin that isn’t listed, select “Browse for Skin…” and choose a skin from the open skin dialogue.

Note that unlike importing work items from the canvas, you can bring multiple work items into your documents from a search.

Creating Work Items in Skins

TeamSpec allows you to create a new work item and create a reference to it in your document at the same time. You can do this by adding a new, empty work item or by cloning an existing work item.

Adding a New, Skinned Work Item to your Document

To add a new skinned work item to your documents, click the “Skins” button on the TeamSpec tab of the ribbon bar and select "Insert Future WorkItem Skin."

This opens the “Insert TeamSpec Empty Skin” window. Select the skin you want to use to organize the fields of your new work item(s) in your document from the first drop-down menu. If you don’t see the skin you are looking for in the menu, click “Browse for Skin” and navigate to the skin that you desire. Choose the type of work item you want to create from the second drop-down menu. Finally designate how many work items of this type and skin you want to create in the final field. Click ok when you are finished.

Your new work item(s) will have new, empty references in your document and be added to the list on the index tab of the TeamSpec panel.

Enter text and choose items to specify the values of your new work item(s). Publish the work item(s) to save them to the server.

Cloning an Existing, Skinned Work Item

You can also create a new work item by cloning another skinned work item reference in your document. Choose a single work item reference that is organized in the same way you want your new work item organized. If that work item is referenced in a list, create a new node where you want to reference your new work item.

If the work item you are cloning is in a table, TeamSpec will automatically create the necessary new cells. Now highlight the work item reference you want to clone. Be sure that you have only highlighted the information from one work item. Then click the “Skins” button and choose “Empty Clone.”

Your new work item will have a new, empty reference in your document and be added to the list on the index tab of the TeamSpec panel.

Enter text and choose items to specify the values of your new work item(s). Publish the work item(s) to save them to the server.

Managing Skins

To manage your skins, click on the “Skins” button in the TeamSpec ribbon bar and select "Manage Skins." You can accomplish three tasks with the Skin Manager: deleting skins, setting skins to prepopulate certain work item fields with designated values, and adding or removing locations at which to save your skins. To delete a skin, select it from the drop-down menu at the top of the window, labeled “Skins:”, and click “Delete Skin.”

To set work item values that a skin will automatically include every time it is used, first select the skin from the “Skins:” drop-down menu. The fields specified by the skin that you choose will display in the center of the window where it says “Fields:”

Input a value to the right of a certain field to set it as a default for the skin. For instance, if you were creating a number of work items in TeamSpec all of which are assigned to the same person, you can set the skin to prepopulate the AssignedTo field with their name. TeamSpec’s skins can streamline your workflow by managing organization and content. To add a new location at which to save skins, click “Add” in the “Skin Paths” section at the bottom of the skin manager. Navigate to a new location and click “OK”. To remove a location from your skin paths, highlight the path and click the “Remove” button.

To finish and save your changes, click the “Close” button.

Conclusion

I hope that his has made the use and value of TeamSpec skins clear. If you have further questions or concerns contact us in our forum or at support@teamsystemsolutions.com

Using Quick Search in TeamLook

Joe Buys — Tue, 24 May 2011 18:30:00 GMT

TeamLook provides you with three powerful ways to access work items from Outlook. They are the “Go to Work Item” function, the query, and the quick search. There is no faster way to access a work item than just clicking “Go to Work Item” and typing in the item’s ID number. This is very speedy, but not very helpful if you don’t know the ID of the work item you are looking for; and equally unhelpful if you are looking for multiple work items. Queries offer infinite customizability and are saved so that you can return to them. This makes them an invaluable organizational tool as well as a powerful search tool. But the process is lengthier and not every search should necessarily be saved.

Quick search occupies the perfect middle ground. It is far more modifiable than “Go to Work Item” and you don’t need to keep track of ID numbers. A quick is search much less time consuming than creating a new query. And often you only need to perform a search once, find what you are looking for, and move on. Also, quick search is customizable. TeamLook allows you to tailor your search tool to your needs.

To begin, type a keyword search into the quick search field in the TeamLook tab of the ribbon bar. Click the binoculars to the right of the search field to run the search.

Quick search is initially set to search the Title and Description of every work item hosted on your default Team Foundation Server. TeamLook will return your results in their own window.

As a default, TeamLook will list the ID numbers and Work Item Titles of the search results. To change what information is displayed right-click on a work item and select choose columns.

This opens a window in which you can choose what columns of information are displayed in your quick search results.

Displayed fields are listed on the right; available fields are listed on the left. To add a column, highlight the desired field in the available list and click the right-arrow to move it to the displayed list. To remove a column, highlight the unwanted field in the displayed list and click the left-arrow to move it to the available list. To change the order in which the columns appear, highlight a field in the displayed list and move it up or down with the up or down arrow buttons. Click “OK” to save your changes and return to your search results.
If you have found the work item you are looking for, double-click on it to open it. The quick search window will stay open in the background so that you can easily return to your results.

If you have either not found the item you are looking for, or have found too many work items, you can focus your search parameters and search again. There are four ways to modify your search:

You can change your search keywords, you can select a specific project on your server to search within (or select a different server) from the first drop-down menu, you can search only work items assigned to a specific person from the second drop-down, or you can search only work items in a specific state. Click “Search” to return your newly focused results.

You can also customize which work item fields are searched. Click “Query Fields…” in the quick search window to open a preferences window labeled “Select Fields to Query.”

This preferences window looks and behaves like the “Select Fields to Display” tool with which you change the information displayed in the quick search results. Select which work item fields you want to search when you run a quick search by moving fields between the available and searched lists. TeamLook will search the query fields that you specify here every time that you run a quick search. So by altering the “Query Fields…” you can tailor the quick search tool to your particular needs.

Hopefully this has made the functionality of the TeamLook quick search tool clear and has given you an appreciation for the power and possibility for personalization that it provides.

Attaching Outlook Artifacts to Existing Work Items

Joe Buys — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:29:00 GMT

TeamLook gives you the powerful ability to attach Outlook items to work items without deviating from your workflow. For instance, you may receive an email that pertains to a task that you have assigned your lead developer. Without even navigating away from that email, you can attach it to the pertinent work item. Your lead developer won’t have to stop what they are doing to read an email that you’ve just forwarded them. Instead, the information will be there in the work item, ready for when they address the task.

With TeamLook you can easily attach emails, events, and tasks to existing work items. To attach an email in your inbox to a work item, right-click on the email and select “Attach to Work Item.”

If the email that you want to attach is open in its own window, click “Attach to Work Item” in the TeamLook Section of the message’s ribbon bar.

To attach an event on your calendar to an existing work item, the process is the same. Right-click on the event and select “Attach to Work Item.”

The process begins the same for tasks on your to-do list. Also, you can attach multiple tasks, emails, or events to a work item at the same time. Just highlight the items you want to attach, right-click, and select “Attach to Work Item.”

Selecting “Attach to Work Item” in every one of these scenarios will take you to the “Attach Email To Work Item” window.

In this window, you will find and select the work item(s) that you want to attach the Outlook artifact(s) to. The first thing that you should do is select which Team Foundation Server the work item(s) are stored on from the first drop-down menu.

Once you have selected the proper server, you have three different options for how to find the pertinent work item(s). Select a search type by clicking the appropriate bubble. You can run a saved query that you select from the drop-down menu.

You can type in specific work item ID numbers (separating multiple IDs with commas).

Or you can run a title and type search.

When you’ve chosen and filled out the type of search you want to use, click Find to see your results.

Check the boxes of any work items that you want to attach the file(s) to. Then click “Attach and Open Work Item(s)” to review the attachments you have just made, or click “Attach and Close.”

Your emails, events, or tasks have been successfully attached to an existing work item (or items) and this update has been saved to the server. I hope that this explanation has been helpful, and has shown you how easily Outlook items can be connected to TFS items with TeamLook.

TeamLook Version 3.5 Released!

Joe Buys — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 23:40:00 GMT

It is finally here -- TeamLook v3.5 has been released to the world!

This took us a little longer than anticipated to get out the door. Mainly because we have been working on some incredible updates to TeamSpec, which in a round about way affect TeamLook (as there are many commonalities shared between our products). Most of the dialogs you see in one product are usable in either product and when we have to update the dialog to add better support for one product, invariably there are bugs that pop up in the other product.

Here are a list of the features we have added:

New Feature: Attach Email to Work Item through Right-Click!
New Feature: Areas and Iterations Dialog!
New Feature: Print Work Item (from Work Item Dialog)
New Feature: Support for Related Work Item Types when Creating Related
New Feature: Export to Excel and Project for queries and items

Please check out the TeamLook Download Page for the full information on our release notes:

http://www.teamsystemsolutions.com/teamlook/download.aspx

And keep your eyes open in the next week for updated versions of TeamSpec!

Cheers,
~Joe

TeamLook Templates - Explained in Detail

Joe Buys — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:50:00 GMT

There has been quite a few questions about how the TeamLook Templates functionality should be used in conjunction with your Outlook/TFS settings. Hopefully this post will help clear up some of those questions.

The Templates functionality falls in line with the TFS Power Tools templates for quickly creating work items. We can completely parse any templates you have defined through the TFS Power Tools. If you are constantly creating work items that all have similar fields and want to save yourself some typing, you can create templates for new work items that will pre-populate a bunch of the fields in the work item with the values you want.

Suppose you wanted to create 10 bugs that all had the following fields:

Title	PREFIX ISSUE:
Assigned To	Melroy Happydance
Area Path	TestCollection\Projects\Alpha
Iteration Path	TestCollection\Projects\Alpha\Next
Severity	Priority 0
Blocking	True

You could type in each of those work items and populate those values with those fields, or you could define a template that had all these fields worked out. You can do that using the TeamLook Templates product feature. Here are the basic steps to doing so…

Configuring your Templates

First you’ll want to configure the template(s) you want to use. In the case I am describing I will use a bug template for the project TeamLook. When you open this dialog you will be presented with a hierarchical display of the templates in a template path. You can change this to any path (network share, or local) to store your templates. Here at TeamSolutions, we use a network share so that we can all share our templates and the latest versions of those.

When you click the ‘New Template’ button, you’ll see a screen that looks very similar to a Work Item Form with a couple extra fields at the top. These are the fields that describe what the template is – in our case I will call it ‘Task – Next Release’.

Something else to notice above is that in the work item form below, the required fields all have a yellow background. This helps you identify which fields are going to be required before saving a new item – a good reference point for what might need default values. Above, I have highlighted the fields I changed from the defaults (blank).

Once you click ‘Save & Close’ you’ll see that this new Template shows up in your list...

Using your Templates

There are a variety of ways in which TeamLook exposes the Templates. First, if you right click on an email (or multiple emails), you’ll see an option for ‘Create from Template’. This will pop up a dialog for choosing which template you want to create a work item with. This can drastically reduce the amount of manual entry you have to do if there are 10-15 required fields in your work item definition!

Secondly, if you are in the reading pane of an email you will see the ‘Create from Template’ in the TeamLook Ribbon Bar.

The two methods above will open the ‘Work Item Templates’ dialog and allow you to create a work item from the email information. Lastly, if you are inside the ‘Manage Templates’ dialog, you can create new work items by clicking on a template and selecting ‘Create Work Item’. This will not base the new work item off an email, but rather, just a work item with the defaults filled out.

Once you have selected the template you want to use you’ll see a regular work item form pop-up, with the defaults filled out…

Hopefully this has given you a better understanding of how Work Item Templates can be beneficial with TFS.

Thanks,
~Joe

TeamSpec now supports TFS 2010 and Word 2010!

Joe Buys — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:47:00 GMT

I can't even count the number of emails I have received over the past four months asking one of two questions...

"Do you have a version of TeamSpec that works with TFS 2010 RTM?"

"Does TeamSpec support Word 2010?"

I suppose I could try and count up all the times I have got a voicemail, email, blog posting response, or even a letter in the mail! However interesting the results would be, I simply have better things to do -- such as write this posting, officially announcing support for Team Foundation Server 2010 and Microsoft Word 2010!

Here are some of the great new features:

Support for Microsoft Team Foundation Client 2010
Support for Microsoft Word 2010
Significant stability improvements for associate and skins
Other bug fixes.

Download a free trial version today from here: http://www.teamsystemsolutions.com/teamspec/download.aspx

TeamLook with Support for TFS 2010! Released

Joe Buys — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:32:00 GMT

It has been a long time in the making, but TeamLook with support for TFS 2010 has finally been released! Here are some of the highlights...

1. Full TFS 2010 (RTM) Support
2. New Query Manager with new query types support
3. Manage TFS Queries from Outlook view (via Right-Click)
4. Offline view for Work Items
5. Work Item Templates support - Allows populating common fields for new work items quicker.
6. Reading pane support for Queries and Work Items
7. Many other fixes and features!

Full TFS 2010 (RTM) Support

Directly from the screenshot below, you can see that we support the new Query Folders and Sub Queries. We also now support hierarchical work items just as Visual Studio does - directly within the query window. You can view your work items, and sub work items using the familiar method that VS uses.

New Query Manager with new query types support

We have completely redone the Query Manager. To add or edit queries, you simply do the logical thing in the query list... Right-Click on them! This will allow you to create queries, edit queries, or delete them. Once you have the query opened, you'll see that it is very familiar and similar to VS. Welcome to the new Query Manager -- its much improved, yet very familiar!

Offline view for Work Items

When you run a query, TeamLook stores all the information about that query that you normally see on the website. We keep this around so that you can use Desktop search to find those work items later. Further, since we download all this informatino about the work items, you can review them when you don't even have a connection to your TFS server!

Work Item Templates Support

Previously only available in the TFS Power Tools, the templates allowed you to easily set "default" values for work item fields so that creating a bunch of work items wasn't so repetative. We have pulled this feature into TeamLook (and Outlook), so that creating work items through office is even easier.

With all these great new features in the new TeamLook v3, don't be the last one to upgrade!

TeamLook with Support for TFS 2010 - Features Video

Joe Buys — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:04:00 GMT

There have been many requests asking for support of TeamLook with TFS 2010. We have listened to the requests, and we now have something to show for it! The delay in support was not because we weren't listening, but because there have been many great new features we have been waiting to support. Here is a taste of some of those features...

(Please visit the site to view this media)

As you can see there have been MANY great new changes to the UI which allow much richer integration with Outlook! Offline support is now much more robust -- allowing you to have a complete snapshot of a work item even if you aren't connected. Plus - The new hierarchical work items will be fully exposed and supported in this upcoming release.

We are diligently working on this release and hope to have all the minor kinks worked out in the coming weeks. Look for an updated build, posted on our site, in the very near future!

TeamSpec with TFS 2010 Features Video

Joe Buys — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:45:00 GMT

Recently we announced that we will be simultaneously be releasing TeamSpec with the release of VS 2010 and TFS 2010. The video below highlights the benefits of TeamSpec supporting the new features of TFS 2010.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

As you can see TeamSpec now supports all the great new features of TFS 2010. For more information and to get a trial of this product yourself, please visit our Downloads page!

TeamLook and TeamSpec to simultaneously-ship with Visual Studio 2010

eric — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:11:14 GMT

TeamSolutions, LLC, Visual Studio Industry Partner*, announces plans to simultaneously-ship TeamLook and TeamSpec with Visual Studio 2010 prior to 5/30/2010.

TeamLook is a convenient software project dashboard that allows all stakeholders in a software development project to communicate and collaborate using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server from within Microsoft Office Outlook.

TeamSpec provides rich team project artifact management directly inside Microsoft Office Word allowing specification, requirement and other document content to maintain integrity with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server.

* The VSIP relationship is currently listed under Personify Design. Personify Design spun off TeamLook and TeamSpec into its own brand (and company) called TeamSolutions, LLC in 2009.

TeamSpec and Team System Solutions in the news!

Joe Buys — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:05:00 GMT

Recently there was a great article about the new ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) tools and features found in VSTS 2010. TeamSpec was referenced through our old company, Personify Design:

"Microsoft is also seeing a rise in requirements management solutions from companies like Personify Design..."

Read the full article here.

Note: Personify Design spun off TeamLook and TeamSpec into its own brand (and company) called TeamSolutions, LLC in early 2009.

Word 2007 Ribbon not showing TeamSpec Images

Joe Buys — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:50:00 GMT

The Word 2007 Ribbon bar can be a little finicky at times (to say the least). There have been numerous posts elsewhere on how to manipulate the Ribbon bar to show what you want, but not much else that explains errors and problems you sometimes encounter when writing add-ins utilizing the Ribbon bar.

Since we originally released the first Beta of TeamSpec, well over a year and a half ago now, we have received a handful of reports that sometimes the Ribbon bar will not show the Images that go with the buttons (see below). Internally, we encounter this very infrequently which makes tracking this issue down extremely difficult. Plus, everyone knows how developers can be... "Hey, it didn't repro on my machine, so it isn't a bug!" :)

As it turns out, if there is an operation that takes a little time to complete (more than a second or so from our testing), during the loading of the Ribbon bar, the Ribbon loading UI will silently fail and quit processing the remainder of the Ribbon loading. Images are one of the last things that are populated when building the Ribbon, so if you have a configuration file that you are reading to determine what should show on the ribbon, and your computer is under heavy disk load, you may see this error. Here is what the ribbon should look like:

For other Ribbon UI developers, make sure that your ribbon loading code is very small and that you are not doing any additional processing in the ribbon logic to avoid this problem for your add-ins.

So what’s your process template?

eric — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:58:56 GMT

Almost everyone knows about the extensibility of the process template that defines the team project within Team Foundation Server. I’m always interested in hearing what other teams have done to modify either the Agile or CMMI template to better tailor it to their internal processes. So I thought I’d share what we’ve done to extend the process template ourselves.

We are big fans of the Agile methodology and work in a semi-scrum environment. We started with the standard Agile work items (Bug, Task, …) and everything was working pretty well. Fairly soon though we found we could really use some additional states on the work items to allow us to better report on the current status of our work. This was before the days of the power tools that have really simplified these types of changes. We jumped on the internet and started reading about witimport.exe and how to modify the XML that defines the work item types. We added the states and happily moved along.

After our team grew we realized we needed additional workflow to better manage the work as it moved through the team. So we once again extended the process template. Now, for example, the work item lifecycle looks something like this:

A change request from the customer would be communicated to the project manager via email. She would then use TeamLook to create a work item and assign the appropriate priority and severity. At this point it would be dropped into a pending iteration waiting for the next triage meeting.
At the triage meeting we estimate the effort needed to complete the work item and assign start and finish dates. This allows us to manage the work within Microsoft Project very easily, but that will need to be another blog post. We also assign the iteration that the work will be completed in. The iterations are generally a month long, depending on the project. The work item state is set to scheduled and ready for a developer to begin work.
The developer uses TeamLook to view their work items and sort them based on the priority and importance. After choosing the most critical work item the state is changed to in-progress signaling that work is underway.
When the developer has done their code review and checks in the changes, the work item is associated with the changeset, and TFS changes the work item state to resolved.
A continuous integration build is fired off and an email sent to the team informing them of the state of the build. A nightly build runs that incorporates all of the changes checked in during the day and those changes are pushed to the test environment.
The tester reviews the previous day’s changes and validates the work. Upon approval the changes are pushed to the staging environment and the work item state is changed to verified.
The project manager uses TeamLook to aggregate the verified work items and sends the list to the customer to notify them that their requests have been staged. The customer can confirm the changes meet their expectations to the project manager, who then changes the state of the work item to reviewed.
When the iteration’s release date arrives the deployment lead verifies that all work items are set to reviewed and can be released to production. We’ve created an internal tool that can pull out the changed code from source control based on a team query. This simplifies checking what changes need to be pushed to production.

That’s a lot to read, so where’s a pretty picture instead?

TeamSpec/TeamLook for VSTS 2010

Joe Buys — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:38:00 GMT

There have been many great emails to our info/support alias asking about TFS 2010 support. Here are the common questions/answers that we get...

First Question: Will TeamLook/TeamSpec be supporting TFS 2010?

The answer is finally here -- YES! TFS 2010 has always been on our roadmap for supporting and extending TeamSpec and the rest of the TeamSolutions product suite for quite some time. The changes that are being released for TFS 2010 are a great compliment to the feature set already existing in both our products.

Second question: Will TeamLook/TeamSpec support TFS 2010 Beta 1?

Unfortunately, the answer is No. There are two reasons for this. Primarily its because we are not ready to release support for the applications yet. We haven't completed our internal testing and we don't want to prematurely release something that isn't "Show Ready". Secondly, there are some compatibility issues with how we build TeamLook/TeamSpec (using VS 2008) and how MS built some of the new controls for TeamExplorer 2010 Beta 1 (requiring applications to have been built targeting the .Net 4.0 Framework). We have been told by Microsoft that they are fixing this in future releases of TeamExplorer 2010, however for now we cannot load some of the controls on the Work Item Tracking screen.

Third Question: Can I be part of a beta pilot program when you are getting close with TeamSpec/TeamLook for TFS 2010?

We are working with select customers that absolutely have to have support for TFS 2010. If you are interested in joining this group, contact info@teamsystemsolutions.com.

Cheers,
~Joe

Welcome to TFS Tips and Tricks

eric — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:47:00 GMT

Having worked with Microsoft's Team Foundation Server since TFS 2005 was pre-beta we have gained a deep knowledge of the API and its inner workings. Starting with the Outlook Starter Kit back in 2005 as an example of how to interact with the work item object model, we have had the opportunity to work with many of the methods and objects exposed through the TFS API.

I'd like to use this blog to share some of the tips and tricks we have found over the years. Hopefully it will be helpful for other developers working with the TFS API as well as a repository of tricks and helper apps so we can find them later as well. J

I will also share some of the ways we have modified the Agile process template to work with our internal methodologies at TeamSolutions as well as its sister company, Personify Design. The extensibility of TFS is really one of its core strengths, and I think we've managed to do some substantial "extensions" (including TeamLook and TeamSpec!)

Thanks for stopping by!
Eric

Facebook Developer Garage and Methodology

Juan — Tue, 06 May 2008 05:19:00 GMT

I attended the Seattle Facebook Developer Garage tonight and kudos to the folks who organized the event! It was a fantastic event that was literally bursting at seams with people. There must have been over 200 people at the event from all over the Pacific Northwest. I have used facebook for some time and get how pervasive it has become, however, there was a large number of people coming up with very elegant/simple solutions to interesting problems. Maybe I’m late to the party here, but these social networking platforms are enabling real businesses that are services thousands to millions of users.

Onto the point of the post: At the event, there were a serious of developer and some business oriented talks (each talk was about 10-15 minutes). All was fun, the crowd was laughing and listening- doing what happens at most of these user group type talks. Then we got into a design oriented session that included the word “beautiful” in the title. Although the speaker had some great points, people did not react the way they had reacted to the other sessions – this was a talk based on subjective characteristics and a series of “steps” that we could follow to achieve these attributes.

I realized that we had crossed a type of boundary between things that could be proven and ideas/methods that seemed to be the speaker’s opinions. I think this is a common problem when people speak about best practices/methodologies. I have seen this reaction many times – I’ll even admit that I’ve seen it at talks that I’ve given before. I guess there’s no better way to learn something that to experience it for yourself. So what do I think this speaker could have done better when talking about his methods:

Prepare the audience for a session on “best practices.” Developers are really good at finding holes in things. It’s important for people to get in a mindset that these best practices are just one of potentially many means to the end.
Give examples. Supporting each of his principle with a number of examples. Some that clearly followed it and others that did not.
Understand important metrics. Identifying metrics allow people to track and optimize them. Not all metrics are created equal, but metrics are important in understanding the dynamics of the system/progress.
Identify stakeholders. Personas are just as important to the method/best practice as they are to the system that is being created.

In the spirit of a “best practices” blog post, I’ll be up front about my list of principles J. These are some principles that I’ve learned over my time working on software methods and it’s not intended to be an exhaustive list.

Jeff Beehler talks about the VSTS Project (planning and operations) on Channel 9

Juan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:33:00 GMT

Jeff Beehler was interviewed by Brian Keller on Channel 9 and talks about how VSTS runs their team from the highest level (Pillars), though Value Props, Features, all the way down through Tasks, which could even have sub-tasks. You'll notice that he spends a lot of time in both VSTS Reporting as well as navigating the Work Item system which is where these project management entities (Pillars, Value Props, Features, Tasks) are stored. Since Rosario has strongly typed links between work items, it's a very natural experience to dig around (both up and down) the links graph to learn about different aspects of the project.

This is a really interesting video from both a business and requirements perspective because it shows the continuum between the operations of the project at the Task level as it relates to the schedule (bottom levels) and the business value delivered to customers at the Pillars and Value Propositions (top levels). Remember, it’s not good enough to deliver quality software if you miss the target for the end-user (business) value and Jeff shows how by using TFS he can understand, not only the state, but also the dynamics of the project at both ends and everything in between.

The question that lots of people will have is “How can I get that level of visibility and project management in my team?” I think the answer has two parts: (1) What is the level of visibility you need for your project. The VSTS team is a relatively big team broken down to many sub-teams which delivers releases at a specific rate. The levers you need is a function of your team’s goals related to managing releases, quality, work breakdown, resources, etc… It may look similar to this or require more or less levers and visibility points (2) As Jeff mentioned, those reports were custom reports built by his team. I’ve yet to run into two teams that work the same way. Lots of teams say “We’re Agile” and even then there are always subtle differencse at best. That means that you’ll end up customizing reports, especially at the higher levels. At the lower level (Tasks) Jeff shows a cumulative work diagram that is very similar (if not the same, I didn’t ask Jeff if it is the same so I’ll say it’s similar) to the Remaining Work report found in MSF. Bottom line is you’ll have to have someone who knows the TFS database and warehouse build these reports for you.

Check out the Channel 9 Video at http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=391362.

TeamSpec on Channel 9!

Juan — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:44:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to demo TeamSpec to Brian Keller and the Channel 9 camera! I want to thank Brian for the opportunity to show some of the software we've been building at Personify for the last 2+ years. One thing you'll notice about the video is that it was done in one take. There was something scary about the idea of one take, but it turned out to make the session more natural.

Check out the Channel 9 TeamSpec video at http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=389257.

The folks at Channel 9 (as well as 8 and 10) are providing some really great value for the industry. I've been spending more time watching videos on all kinds of topics/areas.

Mix08 and SEPG 2008

Juan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:34:00 GMT

I will be attending both Mix08 in Las Vegas this week as well as SEPG 2008 in Tampa starting on March 17.

At Mix, I'll be roaming the sessions as well as the hands-on-labs rooms.

At SEPG, I will be at the Personify Design station of the Microsoft booth. If you are attending SEPG drop me a line or swing by the Microsoft booth. I will have some tasty demos of our recent release of TeamSpec!

Yes, March is going to be a crazy month :) You can either find me on LinkedIn or Facebook and send me a message...

TeamSpec in the community...

Juan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:20:00 GMT

It's very exciting to see the different creations that people in the TFS community are creating using TeamSpec. At the outset of TeamSpec, we set to solve the stale document problem. In the process, we ended up created an environment in Word that enables documents to stay synchronized at the item level.

Check out Willy-Peter's (VSTS MVP) post about his initial experience with TeamSpec at http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2008/02/21/teamspec-v1-0-what-a-pleasure-on-tfs2008.aspx.

Let us know how you're using TeamSpec. Post it on your blog or send us mail and we'll post it for you.

Oh, and by the way: We're very close to finishing Rich Text support for those work item fields that are stored as the HTML format on TFS. Rob Schlender (one of rock-star devs) is truly making magic in making Rich Text support a reality. I'll make sure to get a video together once we get closer.

TeamLook for TFS 2008 launches!

Juan — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:53:00 GMT

We're very excited (and happy) to announce the release of TeamLook for TFS 2008! In addition to support for TFS 2008, we’ve made some usability and performance improvements which also make TeamLook for TFS 2005 better. You’ll notice that we’ve now united the installer for all configurations making it much easier to install. You can download the new TeamLook bits at http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamlook/download.aspx.

For those of you that haven’t had a chance to learn about some of the exciting improvements introduced to Team Foundation Server 2008, check out Brian Harry’s blog entry on the TFS 2008 feature list.

As always, send us mail with questions and comments. We love to hear about interesting uses of both TeamLook and TeamSpec! If you haven’t checked out TeamSpec, make sure to check out http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamspec/discover.aspx.

Thank you for your continued support!

TeamSpec v1.0 (for TFS 2005 and TFS 2008) has launched and is available now!

Juan — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 01:16:00 GMT

“What does the spec say it should do?” These words can come from anyone on the IT team! We’ve heard them from testers that are verifying functionality. We’ve heard them from managers asking to understand project progress or approving a future budget. We’ve heard it from developers that are about to implement functionality. We’ve heard it from end users that ask about why it works like it does today or hoping for how it will work in the future. The reason this is an interesting and honest question is because we all expect the intentions of the software to change as we learn more and solve parts of the problem. The problem is that most teams are moving so fast that we forget to update the spec when we make decisions and implement the functionality in the code or operating environment. Without a herculean effort by someone on the team, inevitably, the spec becomes stale. It doesn’t take too long before people stop asking the question because everyone knows that the spec just doesn’t know: it’s stale!

Wouldn’t it be nice if the spec knew about the changes in the project and was able to synchronize to the current plan? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could push content from your current spec documents into a centralized database that will manage the lifetime of those requirements as they change? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had document templates that could make it very simple to create new requirements in the project? Wouldn’t it be nice to change the contents of a document spec and update the centralized database directly from the document? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could throw away old specs if the formatting and layout of the document just didn’t make sense anymore and create a new spec with the most up-to-date content and new formatting? Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to answer the “What does the spec say it should do?” question so many times that your colleagues and constituents one again believe that the spec does in fact describe how the system should work?

With Personify Design TeamSpec and Microsoft Team Foundation Server, you can!

To learn more about TeamSpec, watch the videos at http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamspec/discover.aspx.

Download the TeamSpec trial at http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamspec/download.aspx.

Thanks to everyone in the community that has provided feedback during the betas. We really appreciate your expertise and cannot wait to see the types of specs you create using TeamSpec! Send email to teamspec@personifydesign.com and tell us about how you’re using TeamSpec- we love to see your creations!

Terry Clancy to talk on Requirements and VSTS on Thursday, Jan 17th!

Juan — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Terry Clancy will be giving an online talk/webcast on Requirements and VSTS tomorrow! Apologies for the short notice, but there's still time to register.

Register at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032362264&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Event Overview: Developing precise and accurate requirements is a crucial step in the success of a development project or a new business process. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, along with Microsoft Visual Studio partner solutions, can help companies improve their requirements development process. A number of partner solutions provide the capability to define requirements and store them in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, integrating these requirements into the application development life cycle. In this webcast, we provide a detailed look at requirements solutions that integrate with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team System.

Presenters: Terry Clancy, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Videos: Managing Requirements using TeamSpec and TFS

Juan — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:34:00 GMT

The journey into creating more videos that show TeamSpec is action is DONE! Well, for now :). Visit the new 'Discover TeamSpec' page at http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamspec/discover.aspx to view the six videos that show how TeamSpec makes TFS work items a first class citizen inside Microsoft Word. The first five videos are quick (3-5 minute) where I show the core scenarios that we're enabling with TeamSpec. The sixth video is a (15 minute) feature walkthrough where I show all the parts that enable the scenarios shown in the other videos.

The videos are titled:

Using a document template and TeamSpec
Connect existing or new specs to TFS
Create specs from requirements in TFS
Manage changes in specs
Find specs from TFS work items
TeamSpec Feature Walkthrough

Please send us feedback and comments.

Oh, almost forgot - we'll be launching TeamSpec next week! Back to work... :)