TFS 2010: Email Notification List for Work Items?

Question

Our previous work item tracking system had a feature called "notification list". In addition to the individual who is assigned a work item, any user included in this list would also receive an email when the work item was updated. This made it very easy to keep apprised of changes to specific work items. Especially for those of us who work out of our inboxes.

Is there any way to set something up in TFS that works in a similar fashion?

Note: Our TFS guru did set up a similar mechanism, but whoever updates a work item must specify the list of users to be notified every time they update a work item. That unfortunately is not a very effective solution. We're hoping to be able to define a global list of recipients once (or update it as needed) and have updates automatically emailed to users on that list.

Answer 1

Side note: We are presently using the Alerts Explorer that comes as part of the power tools installation and it is very effective... perhaps there's a way to get this to work using some of the custom fields we have created in TFS: http://screencast.com/t/QEq6RHUAiJp

Answer 2

check out:

http://fszlin.dymetis.com/post/2011/03/22/Event-Notification-Plugin-for-TFS-2010.aspx

http://tfswiwatcher.codeplex.com/

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My blog: blog.jessehouwing.nl

Answer 3

Jesse, these are great leads, thank you! We will be investigating them shortly and I'll report back here on our findings.

Answer 4

We're currently using an addon called notify me, but I can't find any documentation on it or where it came from. These seem pretty well documented. I'm interested in your findings as this is a common request.

Also, for the people managing from their inbox, you might want to look at TeamPrise (http://www.teamprise.com/) Team Companion (http://www.teamcompanion.com/) which integrates Outlook with TFS.

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My blog: blog.jessehouwing.nl

Answer 5

Yes indeed, the Work Item Watcher is working perfectly for us.

http://tfswiwatcher.codeplex.com/

Our TFS guy had some communication with the developer and we got it working. We now have a new tab in our work items called "Observers". Any email addressed included on this tab receives an email notification when the work item is updated.