Tasktop

With the Connector and Tasktop for the Visual Studio IDE, development teams using Microsoft’s ALM tools in heterogeneous environments now have access to Mylyn’s integration and task-focused productivity benefits.

Microsoft addresses the need for TFS integration in Eclipse with Team Explorer Everywhere (TEE), a companion product for the Visual Studio suite that provides Eclipse-based access to both the TFS source code repository and work items. Tasktop’s TFS Connector can be installed alongside TEE and augments it with Mylyn task list integration, the task-focused interface productivity technology, and interoperability with Mylyn’s ALM ecosystem. Tasktop also provides a standalone desktop application option for those who don’t use Eclipse but need to access TFS work items on Mac or Linux platforms.

The screenshot above shows the rich TFS work item editor in Eclipse. Eclipse developers can easily view what has changed since they last opened the editor and make any further edits before submitting changes to TFS. Thanks to change notifications in the integrated task list, there’s no need to leave the IDE to stay in the loop on project status.

The TFS Connector fully supports task-focused programming and captures the context of relevant source code, documents and web pages for each TFS work item. Clicking the “Attach Context” button as shown in the screenshot stores the context on the TFS server. A colleague at the next desk or around the world can download the context and focus their IDE on only the relevant code, making it dramatically easier to provide assistance or resume a development task.

The personal task list provides access to work items from TFS as well as those from Mylyn’s community of interoperable ALM systems. In this example, tasks from TFS are displayed alongside defects and requirements from HP Quality Center. Tasktop also provides facilities to create and navigate relationships across multiple ALM systems without disrupting existing server infrastructure.

The TFS Connector will be bundled with Tasktop Enterprise and is set for release on November 30th, 2010. Contact us now to schedule an on-site evaluation in your ALM environment.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 18th, 2010 at 12:19 am and is filed under Tasktop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.