Visual Studio Team Explorer: Customize the "My Work" pane - visual-studio-2013

Is there a way to customize the "My Work" pane to show more groups?
For instance, I currently have In Progress Work, Suspended Work, and Available Work Items. I also have a "Code Reviews" section. How could I add a section for "Bugs ready to test" or something along those lines?
I ask this because I have work items in my queue that don't appear on this list - it seems as though Tasks do, but Bugs do not.
Thanks!

You can change the Available Work Items section to show the results of any query you want. Just create a query that shows what you're interested in, and save it in My Queries. Then in the My Work pane you can select it from the drop-down:

Related

How To Show Full Directory Name On Task Bar For Grouped Directories on Windows 10

I am using Windows 10 and frequently have a lot of directories open at once. I have always been annoyed that the directory names, when you hover on the task bar, do not show the full path. Since many of my clients have directories called docs it becomes a bit of a challenge to go searching. I was wondering how to show the full directory on hover.
I finally figured this out. I felt fairly stupid once I solved it, and for anyone out there that is hung up on this issue and not having a lot of luck Googling.
Launch Any File Explorer window.
Click The View option at the top left.
Next click the options button.
Open the "View" tab.
Finally check the box that shows "Display the full path in the title
bar" and then click "apply" & ok (NOTE: You can also click apply to all folders)
The only caveat is that it does make your user interface a bit more cluttered but once you get use to it, it is not that bad.
Here are some images I put together to hopefully help someone like me that is stuck on this simple task:
Default Taskbar Stacked View:
Open Any File Explorer Window:
Options Dialog:

Changing task to "In Progress" in TFS 2015 kanban board does not reflect in Visual Studio "My Work"

With TFS 2015, when dragging a task from "Not Started" to "In Progress" on the kanban board, the task's status is updated correctly and all is good. However, when logged into Visual Studio 2015, the task does not show under the "In Progress Work" section on the "My Work" page from Team Explorer. Instead, it still just shows under "Available Work Items".
When I do it the other way around, drag a task in the Team Explorer "My Work" page to "In Progress Work", it shows correctly on the kanban board in the web portal.
Is it supposed to work both ways? If so, any thoughts on how I can get it to work?
What you are experiencing is expected.
When we move the work item from the Available Work Items section into In Progress Work section, this will change the state of the work item to in progress and this can be shown on the Team Web Access, and so when we click finish or check in, but the vice versa is not true, that’s mean if I change the work item on the Team Web Access from To Do for example to In Progress, this will not reflect on My Work or In Progress Work.
In Progress Work section that show what you are performing right now, so it could contain tasks, code pending change, it’s very intelligent to just show only what you can do at this moment, so if there is pending change it will show a check in command, but if there is not it will not show it, if there is also any project editing, it will show the suppress button.
So to start work on a task you just select it and click start or just drag and drop it to the In Progress Work section.
Just remember if you have 10 task to do, you only can work on one task at any point of time so the story here is you will just put one task inside In Progress Work section that you will work on it right now so it should have only one task at point of time and this make it very intelligent to associate the task when you try to check in your code because that’s meaning you have pending change and the working task should associate if you are not finished or should be closed if you finished.
Check: https://mohamedradwan.wordpress.com/tag/in-progress-work/

Attaching To Work Item With Checkbox

We recently upgraded our TFS 2010 to TFS 2013. I like most of the changes, but some of them not so much. Did Microsoft really took away the feature that was in TFS 2010 where one could attach to an work item by checking a checkbox next to the work item? The way I currently do in TFS 2013 is, before checking in I run my TFS query, remember the work item number, then do 'Add By Id' or something like that, type the ID and enter. It might not seem big deal to many, but I absolutely do not like this. Is there a way to get those checkboxes next to the work item back? If not, is there a better way to do that process?
It has changed a little but I guess the closest experience is to create a personal query or add a shared query to your favourites.
In the Pending Changes Window under Related Work Items click the Queries drop down and select the relevant query.
The results will open in the main window and you can drag and drop a work item into the Related Work Items section which will link it to your changeset.
If you have VS Premium or Ultimate then you can use the My Work window in Team Explorer which will list your assigned work items in the Available Work Items section and you can just drag them into In Progress Work.

Xcode 4 - simultaneous viewing of Project Navigator and Debug Navigator and other Navigators

In Xcode 4 (4.2), is there a way to keep the Project Navigator view open and Debug Navigator view open as well. Must a user have one or the other, but not both? And the other navigators?
Apple seems to have decided that if you want to see the debug view, you don't want to see the files in your project. WTH? Am I getting this wrong? Did Apple Xcode UI guys even talk to developers before designing the UI for Xcode 4?
Sigh...
You can indeed have more navigators open at once, if you are prepared to have multiple windows open. I know it's not exactly what you're asking for, but for multiple display setups it's very handy. Xcode provides "behaviors" to help automate this process if you only want certain things showing at certain times.
For example, a common pattern that developers follow is to setup a behavior for "Run starts" that opens up a new window setup for debugging. Start by creating a new tab in your main Xcode window by pressing command-T, and double-click on the tab's title to rename is "Debug", or whatever you like. Then drag that window out (or leave it as a tab if you like), and customise the view as required - for example, for a deb window you might have the Debug area showing at the bottom (or even covering the whole editor view), and remove the toolbar at the top by right clicking and selecting "Hide Toolbar".
Next, go to "Xcode > Behaviors > Edit Behaviors..." and choose "Run starts" in the left panel. Check the box for "Show tab" and enter the name of your newly created tab. You can also ask that tab to automatically show the Debug Navigator, and show the debugger with variables and/or console view. If you like, you can then choose "Run completes" and show the original "tab" (window), which I've setup to be called "Coding", and show the required navigator (in my case, Project Navigator).
On successfully running, Xcode will now open up your new window (or bring it to the front if it's already open) with all the settings you left it with. On stopping, your main editor will be brought back to the front.
There are loads of useful behaviors, so I would really recommend looking through them and taking the time to setup Xcode to suit your style as best as possible. All software dictates to the user how to go about doing things, and the developers can never please everybody when they decide to change the UI. The best anybody can hope to achieve is to customise the interface as best as they can to fit their style of working. If it's still an issue for you, you can either adapt to it, or, if possible, move to something else.
I'm not a fan of every new interface feature in Xcode, but I've "made it mine" with some customisations and I can still be very productive. That being said there are a lot of things that I do really like about it, and for that I can forgive it for some of the less friendly features - after all, you can't please every user.

Where do I put my Office Add-In configuration page(s)?

I'm writing a COM add-in for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This add-in has some user-configurable settings (about a page full of them actually... or perhaps even more than a single page). What is the standard way of presenting these to the user? Through a custom page under Tools->Options? (how?) Under a custom button on a custom toolbar? A specific menu for the add-in?
If it were Outlook, I would add a custom property page. I was pretty confident I could easily google something similar for the other office application, but I'm obviously not searching for the right terms. Hints to improve my searching are also very welcome!
Update:
I just realized one can figure from your question you are targeting Office versions up to and including 2003 right now, as for example the tools menu is gone in 2007.
You might still find an answer regarding your question by looking at the starting point for the mentioned migration from 2003 to 2007: access to the settings for the sample 2003 add-in is located in an add-in specific sub menu of the tools menu, as shown in Figure 7.
For current and future versions of Office (i.e. 2007 and up) your first stop regarding user interface questions should be the Office Fluent User Interface Developer Portal, specifically you'll find there the '2007 Office System Document: UI Style Guide for Solutions and Add Ins'.
Its probably worth pointing out that this guide is not on par with the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines (UX Guide) by a huge margin, which is unfortunate given the almost traditional friendly competition between the Office team and other Microsoft departments in setting the next de facto UI standard for 3rd party developers.
Still one can figure out initial directions from there, for example the recommendation regarding scenarios for custom task panes as suggested by Gary clearly is at odds with your need to offer user settings, citation:
Create a custom task pane if…
Your solution needs to present data
about a document that is required to
be visible, in a non-modal fashion,
use a custom task pane. [...]
You can find a good starting point regarding your question in section Simple Migration, where the migration of a simple 2003 add-in to the current 2007 release is explored step by step from a UI design perspective; not surprisingly this add-in features settings too, hence your requirements are addressed, albeit only on the side.
Reproducing this section here would be a bit lengthy plus I'm not sure whether it would be legal to reproduce the inline images used there, just look for Figure 9 in particular to get you started.
You can take it further from there depending on your particular scenario, good luck!
I'm pretty sure you cannot add a tab to Word, Excel and PowerPoint's Tools | Options dialog. I know you cannot do that in Word before 2007 at least.
I would recommend adding a menu item for your add-in somewhere, probably under the Tools menu. I assume your add-in does not already have any other menu items? I would put it in a menu item rather than a toolbar button, since most users don't need to change "settings" all the time, so they do need to look at the button on the toolbar all the time. My screen shots here show the menu in Word with Options at the bottom, though not the actual options dialog: http://www.amosfivesix.com/timken-business-stationery
If you're worried about people finding your menu item tucked away on the Tools menu, you can have a window pop-up the first time the app is started after your add-in is installed. Have it show a picture of where the menu item is, or just explain how to get there. Lots of apps have things like that the first time they run. One of my larger Outlook add-ins does have it's own menu on the menu bar (so it's fairly easy to find) but I also have a first run window that explains what/where it is. You can see an example of that here: http://www.amosfivesix.com/timken-electronic-business-card
Gary McGill's idea for a task pane might be good as well. I don't have any experience with task panes. I'm not sure it would be appropriate for "application settings" since taks panes are more like modeless dialogs that you work with while also working with the document content. Changing your add-in's settings probably doesn't work that way.
I don't know if there is a standard way. I have only created VBA add-ins, and I do not believe it is possible to add custom pages under Tools | Options.
In an Excel Add-In I created, I put a 'Settings...' button on the Add-Ins toolbar (the Add-In created a custom toolbar during the _AddInInstall event).
But this approach of course means your add-in must have a custom toolbar (or menu).
I did a quick check on an Office installation I have access to, that has a few Add-Ins:
The Adobe PDFmaker add-in has its own top-level menu, as well as a toolbar. The menu has a 'Change conversion settings' menu item
A custom add-in (eye-share, don't know what it is) also has its own top-level menu. The menu has a 'Settings...' menu item.
Hummingbird (some sort of document management system) has menu items all over the place, but no settings dialog. The installation program probably sets the necessary config values in the registry.
So my conclusion is:
You cannot add a custom page under Tools | Options (I guess Adobe would have done this if possible).
If your add-in has a custom menu or toolbar, add a 'Settings...' button or menu item (don't know if there is a standard icon for this)
If your add-in does not have a custom menu or toolbar, I would probably add a single menu item under Tools.
If you don't want to clutter the Excel interface, you could have an external program (created in .NET or whatever) installed on the Start Menu that updates the registry. This of course requires that all relevant settings can be represented as registry values, and are to be persisted. It also means that the Add-in should always look to the registry for settings values when performing operations - not read the setting at startup and cache it in a variable.

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