Extending the Team Members feature in the VSTS 2008 TFS Power Tools October 2008 Release. For example, adding Skype support…

Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje - Skype Collaboration Provider for TFS

“The Team Foundation Server Power Tools (October 2008) introduced a new "Team Members" node, which offers the ability to quickly identify which subteams and actual team members belong to a TFS team project. Additionally you can see their online status.

Support for Office Live Communicator and Windows Live Messenger is already built-in. There is an API to extend this to other IM software as well.

Nico Orschel from our team used this API to implement support for Skype …” [Post leach level: 95%]

CodePlex - TFS Collaboration Providers

“Project Description

The Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools enable rich integration with other team members via IM and VoIP chat. Out the box the power tools integrate with Live Communicator and Window Live Messenger (MSN). This project is for community contributed providers for other systems.

Current Providers

• Skype (Initial version is now available)

…”

How cool is that? Heck I didn’t even think to ask if there was an API for this…

While I can’t use Skype (comment deleted about how I’m told it’s “banned” software) I can use Windows Live Messenger. That’s already supported you say? Yep, you’re right, we have our own personal ID’s and not work ones (another long story). So the TFS accounts don’t map. Well I’m thinking that with this sample, I might be able to jury-rig something up (lol… about a million years ago I wrote an MSN Messenger add in for VS… but doing it this way would be much cooler ;)

(via Team System News - VSTS Links - 11/17/2008)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
VSTS 2008 TFS Power Tools - October 2008 (aka 2.3) Released – Manage Source Files via Windows Shell/Explorer extension, new PowerShell extensions and Team Members tool