For those of you who read my blog and don’t know (anybody out there?) I work for Notion Solutions.  Today Notion announced v1.1 of the Notion Tools for Team System. In addition to a few bug fix, support in the primary tools (e.g., Timesheet and the Work Item Control Library) for VS 2005, we’ve added a new tool targeting prioritizing work based on business objectives and a web version of Timesheet for the non-Visual Studio users.

Development and testing of this new release has been one of our team’s primary focuses over the past few months.  We do all of our time tracking and much of our other planning and work item activities using it.  If any of this sounds slightly interesting, check out the formal release: http://www.notionsolutions.com/Products/Pages/NotionToolsforTeamSystem.aspx

It is relatively inexpensive and you can get free trials if you’re interested.  Hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor!

If you attended the “VSTS Big Event” in Phoenix last week, I promised anyone interested a copy of the slides.  So, here they are!  If you’d like the complete day’s contents, check out Steve Lange’s blog.

The Team System User Group (TSUG) is proud to welcome the TFS Product Unit Manager, Brian Harry.  You may have read Brian’s popular blog or seen him present on the big stage.  This is the opportunity to hear him speak and ask him questions in a more intimate user group setting.

Brian will be presenting on Visual Studio Team System Internal Adoption at Microsoft during the online EMEA TSUG-VE meeting.  Come hear how one of the largest software companies in the world is using VSTS from one of the biggest names!

TSUG-VE is a free online user group catering to Visual Studio Team System.  Participation is through Second Life and/or Live Meeting, so you can attend from your desk, your house, or even your local coffee shop.  All that is required is a compatible computer, a decent Internet connection, and membership at TSUG-VE.com.  You may have noticed that this specific meeting is in our EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) time zone.  That doesn’t limit attendance to that geography…  it just means that the meeting is held after work for EMEA participants, during the work day for the Americas and in the middle of the night for Asia/Pacific.

Feel free to email info@tsug-ve.com if you would like more information.

Effective this month, the TSUG-VE monthly meetings targeted at Europe / Middle East / Africa (EMEA) participants is being moved from Saturday to Thursday.  This should make it easier for Team System enthusiasts across Europe and through related time zones to more easily attend and participate.  Even if you aren’t able to participate, sign up to gain access to the recorded Live Meeting presentations portion of the meetings.

The meetings for this month include:

For both meetings, the pre- and post-meeting participation will be available in Second Life. Meeting presentations will be simulcast on both Second Life and Live Meeting. Demonstrations will be provided solely in Live Meeting. The Live Meeting content will be recorded for future review by TSUG members.

Sign up for future TSUG at: http://www.tsug-ve.com

Install Live Meeting from: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90703

Install Second Life from: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22

“See you there!”

If you’re interested in Visual Studio Team System and you live in the western United States, you should consider attending the Team System Big Event!  Steve Lange and other Microsoft Tech Specialists, Microsoft Evangelists and community specialists are coming together to bring a great full-day event at several locations, including: Denver CO, Mountain View CA, Irvine CA, Portland OR and Phoenix AZ.  I’m planning on attending and speaking in one or more of the different events.  It should be a great time to learn more about Team System and ALM.  Registration is being handled through Microsoft events.  See Steve’s blog for more information, to download the related PDF and for the registration links.

Last Saturday, members of the developer community in Colorado put on a fantastic event.  It appears that over 400 people convened in downtown Denver to participate in the Rocky Mountain TechTrifecta. The event featured great speakers such as Scott Hanselman, Kathleen Dollard, Tim Huckaby, Joe Mayo, ... over 30 in all.  Congratulations to Julie Yack and all the organizers for a great day.

If you attended my Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008 presentation, I promised the slide deck for anyone interested.  So, here it is... UnitTestingWithVS2008.zip

This week, the online Team System Users Group (TSUG-VE) is hosting two great events focused on MSBuild and Team Build.  If you’re interested in how automated builds can help your team, plan to attend both!  Don’t forget… TSUG is an ONLINE user community focused on Team System and development practices.  You can attend regardless of where you are in the world!

The first meeting features Canadian Team System MVP Wes MacDonald focusing on Deployment Strategies with Team Build.  The second meeting features Team System consultant and trainer Steve St. Jean who will focus on the foundation of .NET builds with his Introduction to MSBuild.  Both sessions will include a quick introduction to custom work item controls with Israeli Team System consultant, Shai Raiten.

February Evening Meeting

Meeting Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009
Time: 5:00PM PST/SLT (UTC-08:00)
Location:  Microsoft Island in Second Life
Intro Session:  Introducing Work Item Custom Controls with Shai Raiten
Keynote: Deployment strategies with Team Build with Wes MacDonald
Second Life URL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22
LiveMeeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=RFR4H7&role=attend&pw=g6%22q%29mK6n

February Weekend Meeting

Meeting Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009
Time: 9:00AM PST/SLT (UTC-08:00)
Location:  Microsoft Island in Second Life
Intro Session:  Introducing Work Item Custom Controls with Shai Raiten
Keynote: Introduction to MSBuild with Steve St. Jean.
Second Life URL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22
LiveMeeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=TG29DD&role=attend&pw=swp%5DMm4%26H

Denver is hosting a great tech event this weekend…  the Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta!  The event is being held from 8:30AM to 5PM this coming Saturday, February 21st.  I’m going to be presenting on Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2008, but don’t let that stop you.  There are separate tracks for .NET development, SQL and Windows Server with many great speakers including Scott Hanselman, Kathleen Dollard, Tim Huckaby and many more.  If you’re in the area, this is a not—to-miss event.  If you’re not in the area, this is a great excuse to hop a plane, stay an extra day and hit the slopes!

Hope to see you there!

If you’re someone who (like me) makes extensive use of Team System’s ability to send emails when work item’s change, you might like a new Outlook add-in that a friend of mine, Shai Raiten, has released.  This free VSTO add-in for Outlook 2007 allows you to directly view or edit work items referenced in alert emails in one of three ways:

1. Using a standard Work Item Tracking edit form – just like you’d see in Team Explorer
2. Using a browser to directly view the underlying event XML
3. Using Team System Web Access to view or edit the work item in a web browser.

The add-in is extremely easy to install and use.  It is configurable to handle many (perhaps all?) alternate TFS configurations .  Here is a screen shot…

I expect Shai will post more details on how to use it soon!  But for now, here is the download link: Wit-It! Outlook 2007 addin

UPDATE:  Here is Shai's own post describing WIT-It.

Sorry I’ve been so lax in posting for awhile.  I have a few nice posts drafted but never managed to hit the publish button…  But I do have a time-sensitive post for you.

Are you interested in Scrum and/or agile development practices? Are you using a Scrum-like process or trying to adopt one?  Perhaps you’re wondering which of the available Scrum-based process templates is right for your team? If so, or even if you’re just mildly curious, plan to attend the Team System User Group (Virtual Edition) in Second Life.  Trent Nix is giving a repeat performance of his VSLive presentation on real-life Scrum and TFS.

The meeting is at 5PM Pacific time, 8PM Eastern time online in Second Life.  Refer to my previous post for information on how to attend or the official TSUG Website.  In addition we’re going to do a repeat at 9AM (Pacific time = UTC-0800) on Saturday for people outside of the Americas in different time zones.

As an added bonus, Steve St. Jean will briefly introduce us to something few mortals attempt with Team System - - How to extend the TFS Data Warehouse through custom adapters!

We hope to see you there!