{"id":3641,"date":"2011-09-19T05:44:32","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T05:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/bharry\/2011\/09\/19\/the-new-team-explorer-in-tfs-11\/"},"modified":"2024-05-22T13:42:31","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T20:42:31","slug":"the-new-team-explorer-in-tfs-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/the-new-team-explorer-in-tfs-11\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Team Explorer in TFS 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve seen snippets of the new Team Explorer in previous posts I\u2019ve done on version control improvements<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 In this post, I\u2019m going to focus on the new Team Explorer experience, talk a bit more about what overall changes we\u2019ve made and why.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll recall that the Team Explorer window in TFS 2010 and before is a pretty standard tree control \u2013 it looks a bit like the solution explorer.\u00a0 For a long time now, we\u2019ve felt that the model that everything we wanted to do in Team Explorer would have to fit into a tree was overly constraining.\u00a0 When I built the Team Members Power Tools a couple of years ago, I very much wanted to have a richer way to show people, including pictures, etc. \u2013 but the Team Explorer window didn\u2019t support it, so I just added another tree node.\u00a0 As we started looking at some of the TFS 11 features we wanted to create, like code review, it became clear that we needed a new approach.\u00a0 An alternative, of course, is to just keep adding new tool widows for everything.\u00a0 The problem is that we already have quite a lot of them and we get feedback that people are overwhelmed with them.<\/p>\n

We decided to experiment with a new kind of tool window.\u00a0 I tool window that is, in essence, a frame that houses many other tool windows (or pages, we call them) and provides a browser inspired navigational model around them.\u00a0 We felt this would give reasonably easy access to the breadth of functionality while not polluting the IDE with 10 more tool windows.<\/p>\n

As we entered the design, there were other problems we wanted to tackle as well.\u00a0 They include, but are not limited to\u2026<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Move to modeless experiences in more places.\u00a0 All the modal dialogs we had for presenting information was creating ugly stacked UI.<\/li>\n
  2. Move to more async experiences and have a common way to display progress\/cancelation.<\/li>\n
  3. Improve startup\/connect speed by not populating all the Team Explorer info (documents, reports, work items, builds, \u2026) on startup, but rather loading them on demand.<\/li>\n
  4. Streamline common scenarios.<\/li>\n
  5. Give Team Explorer a fresher look.<\/li>\n
  6. Provide much richer extensibility.<\/li>\n
  7. Enable a more scenario oriented organization rather than the artifact classification we\u2019ve had for a while.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To refresh your memory, here\u2019s a picture of what the Team Explorer looks like in TFS 2010:<\/p>\n

    \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Meet the Home Page<\/b><\/h3>\n

    The new Team Explorer in TFS 11 uses page navigation to provide a lot more functionality in a single tool window.\u00a0 The \u201croot\u201d of the page navigation is the Home page and is quickly accessible via the \u201clittle house\u201d button on the tool bar.\u00a0 It contains links to most of the pages and links to the most common actions associated with those pages.\u00a0 You’ll also see forward and back buttons to navigate through the stack of pages you’ve visited and a search box you can use to search for work items.<\/p>\n

    \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

    The search box work similar to search in Outlook or Team Web Access (in 2010).\u00a0 In this example, I’m searching for work items with the word “Create” in the title or description that are currently assigned to me.\u00a0 The drop down on the search box gives you some options to filter by specific fields.\u00a0 You can double click on a work item to open it, or you can use the “Open as Query” link to open your search as a full work item query where you can further refine your criteria, export your results to excel, etc.\u00a0 The search feature only supports work items for now, but we’re hoping to expand on that in the future.<\/p>\n

    \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Managing Your Work<\/h3>\n

    In TFS 2010, your workflow might have gone something like this:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Open a solution<\/li>\n
    2. Make some changes<\/li>\n
    3. Find the work items (if any) associated with your changes<\/li>\n
    4. Enter a comment describing the changes you made<\/li>\n
    5. Check-in your changes<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      In TFS 11, we’re tuning that flow a bit. The “My Work” page gives you a place to review the work that’s currently assigned to you and keeps track of what you are working on.<\/p>\n

      \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

      Once you’ve decided what to get started on, you can use a context menu on the work item (drag and drop will be enabled in the Beta release) to mark them as “in progress.”<\/p>\n

      \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

      Those two work items are now “in progress.”\u00a0 Since you haven’t made any changes yet, you see a “Finish” link rather than a “Check In” link.\u00a0 In the Developer Preview, all that happens when you do this is that the work items are associated with your pending changes.\u00a0 For Beta, this gesture will also transition these work items to the next logical state in their workflow.\u00a0 For example, if you’re using the Scrum template, it would transition them from “To Do” to “In Progress” and that change would also be reflected on the web-based task board.\u00a0 Of course, you can also remove work items from the “In Progress” section using a context menu (for Beta, this would revert them back to their previous state).<\/p>\n

      \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

      Once you make some changes to your solution, you’ll see some different links.<\/p>\n

      \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

      When you have pending changes, you have the following options:<\/p>\n