Dennis van de Laar

Today i downloaded Fissum version 0.4. This is a tray icon tool for TFS to manage some of your work. This tool is created by Michel Perfetti and can be downloaded on codeplex.

Figure1

How to configure this tool? First you need to connect Fissum to one of your team projects in TFS.

Figure2

Click on configure projects then the following panel will be opend. Fill in the url of the TFS server and choose a project that is available on the server. In the panel below you will see the already configured projects. When you click the add button your selection in the top menu will become available in the panel below.

Figure3

When you click on a the servername on the left in the panel then you can configure your project settings.  See the figure below.

Figure4

When you have a project configured then you can manage it. Press the right button on the icon in the tray. the menu in figure 2 will become available. This menu contains all the out of the box queries (which you configured in the panel above). You can add new workitems. These workitems are based on the template of your teamproject. In the template you are able to configure which workitems should be available in your project. This isn’t a subject for fissum, this is part of customizing VSTS.

Two other option that are available in the 0.4 version are The iteration manager and the area manager. These options are available below in the menu of your project. below you see how the iterantion and area manager look like.

Iteration manager

Figure5

The Area manager

Figure6

I think this tool is very welcome for project managers who don’t want to install huge application to have full control of there project. You only have to install framework2.0 and Fissum and you have the control. I am not sure if this tool will be a strong component when we take a look at Teamplain, but this is a light way to manage your project. Teamplain has the possibility to show the reports that are available in TFS which a missing part in Fissum. Later this month i will try to give a summary of the possibilities of Teamplain.