“Team for Word” hooks Word to Team Foundation Server for free (source available too, GPLv2)

Eran Ruso - “Team For Word” A TFS Word Client and a User Guide For It

“Until now I have worked with the “Team Spec” that cost a license compares to this tool that is totally free and with an open source.

In the past few days I have worked a lot with the “Team For Word” on clients sites, we have tried to see if this tool can replace the “Team Spec” and the answer is not simple.

This tool has some abilities that”Team Spec” doesn’t have like presenting all the work items from a query with links and attachments, or gives you the ability to show an attachment from a work item, but it lacks the ability to get word texts and convert it to work items or it can’t get a balk of work items from TFS to word.

The list of abilities are:

• Connection to TFS 2008 (2010).
• Adding one or more property of an item of work in the Word document.
• Notification of the changed items in the document.
• Notification of items changed on the TFS server.
• Publication of all or part of the modification made in the document.
• To update the document with changes from the server.
• Pre-defined in TFS query execution.
• Modification of the TFS server or project in the document properties.
• Creating a work item.
• Create formatting model.
• Inserting template formatting.
• Editing a block of data by the content of another element of travail
• Opening a WI from the action panel
• Management of the iteration and area
• Improved management of differences between the document and TFS
• Adding synchronization boxes identical document

Note: The tool is in French so some of the words will not look familiar, I must say that I have zero knowledge in French and it didn’t bother me at all.

…” [GD:Click through for the download links, etc]

As someone who has in the past written allot of doc’s based on information in TFS projects, I found this project interesting. I’ve thought about trying to purchase a third party utility to help me in this, but never found the will to fight that battle.

Eran has written up a great walk-through of this utility, please make sure you click through and check it out.

Also this project provides a look into extending Word (so it’s kind of a 2 for 1 deal)

Note, this is a GPLv2 licensed project, so take care when if you do use any of its code. You should also confirm that you can use it at all, even in its compiled form, on your projects. I think you should be able to use it , in compiled form, on internal/closed source projects (right? sigh…), but better safe than sorry.