Why is the Storyboarding functionality not installed when you use the Team Explorer installer

Question

(Asked this already in the "Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Agile Tools in Visual Studio Vnext" forum, but later on I found this forum and thought this forum was more appropriate)

Why is the Storyboarding functionality not installed when you use the Team Explorer installer, like is done with the Excel and Project add-ins? In my opinion this tool should typically be used by program managers, so it is overdone to install a VS Professional or higher.
So please, make it available in the Team Explorer installer.

Answer 1

Hello Jeep Mosselman,

As far as I know that in order to use Storyboarding functionality in TFS, you need to install Storyboarding for Microsoft Visual Studio ALM tool which is actually developed by stpsoft.

In addition, I think you need to contact experts in stpsoft to ask them to add some features so that when you are using Team Explorer you can have Storyboarding functionality installed automatically.

Thanks.

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Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

We are here in a vNext forum! Seems you are missing the fact that Microsoft has now its own storyboarding tool!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh301773(VS.110).aspx

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Jaap Mosselman

Answer 3

Hi Jaap,

Storyboarding is a capability of Visual Studio 11 Test Professional, Visual Studio 11 Premium, and Visual Studio 11 Ultimate.

Please see the feature matrix under "Collaboration" here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compare

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Sr. Technical Evangelist, Visual Studio

Answer 4

Brian,

The storyboarding feature is one of the most productive things I've seen in VS2012. I showed one of your online presentations to some of our business guys and they wanted to use it straight away!

How disappointed we all were when we then found that VS Premium/Ultimate was a requirement just to be able to click on a webpage link and launch PowerPoint!

I'd argue that storyboarding (as implemented in VS2012) is a feature of PowerPoint not Visual Studio - your own presentation suggests the same thing.

MS really can't expect that non-developers will buy and install VS Premium / Ultimate just so that business guys can use this feature?

I really hope this is re-considered before the product is launched.

Thanks,

Mark

Answer 5

Hi MarkdotH,

I'm glad you like the tool.

The other option for getting the storyboarding capability is to purchase Visual Studio Test Professional 2012. This is a lower-cost option for non-developers which gives them PowerPoint Storyboarding, agile planning & tracking, testing, lab management, and the ability to request feedback from stakeholders using the built-in Request Feedback option. Granted, some users won't need all of these capabilities, but in an effort to simplify the number of SKU's we have this was the direction that the marketing team took.

Also note that after you create a storyboard with PowerPoint you can share it with whomever you want to as long as they have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer. They won't need the full PowerPoint Storyboarding add-in to view, edit, and make basic changes to the storyboard.

Thanks for the feedback.

Brian Keller

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Sr. Technical Evangelist, Visual Studio