I’m excited about returning to TechEd for the first time in 3 years. In 2011, I attended my first TechEd in Atlanta. It was an exciting time for Tasktop; we had just announced Visual Studio support for Tasktop Dev and were a couple months away from announcing Tasktop Sync, our flagship integration hub for the DevOps stack.
Maude Hejna, Program Manager for Visual Studio Partner Program (VSIP) at Microsoft, and Neelan Choksi, President of Tasktop
TechEd is particularly interesting this year because Microsoft is embracing interoperability between Microsoft and other technologies under Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella, the same Nadella who offered Linux on Azure and, in his first activity as CEO of Microsoft, rolled out Office for Apple’s iPad. I am personally rooting for success for Nadella, who, like me, is a graduate of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (now the Booth School of Business). At Tasktop, we are especially pleased to see the trend towards interoperability. To that end, we are excited to show a Technology Preview of Tasktop Sync’s support of Visual Studio Online (VSO) at TechEd today. This Technology Preview highlights Tasktop’s strong and long-standing relationship with Microsoft:
| Tasktop Dev integration with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) |
| Tasktop Sync integration with Microsoft TFS (including sim-shipping with TFS 2012 and TFS 2013 when they were released) |
The demo video above highlights integration between Visual Studio Online and Atlassian JIRA. This extension is currently a Technology Preview (closed Beta) with the GA of this functionality coming this summer. In this video, we demonstrate a Visual Studio Online-to-JIRA integration. You’ll see a defect created in JIRA sync to Visual Studio Online. Tasktop Sync will create the corresponding defect work item in Visual Studio Online and set up ongoing bi-directional synchronizations.
During the demo, the work item in Visual Studio Online is updated and the defect in JIRA is updated in real-time. The video also shows the opposite workflow– a bug created in Visual Studio Online is automatically created in JIRA. This is just one example use case. The great news is that the entire ecosystem of Tasktop integrations now works for VS online. As we head towards GA this summer, we expect to be solving additional business challenges based on our upcoming release with support for VSO. For example:
| Connecting VSO to Microsoft TFS on-premise and other on-premise tools. As organizations determine what they will move to the cloud and what will remain on-premise, this integration will provide important functionality. |
| Connecting cloud-based development tools like VSO to other cloud-based DevOps technologies currently supported by Tasktop Sync e.g., ServiceNow, Zendesk, Rally, VersionOne, and others. |
| Connecting cloud-based development tools like VSO to other on-premise DevOps tools currently supported by Tasktop Sync e.g., HP Quality Center, IBM Rational, ThoughtWorks Mingle, CA Clarity. |
To see the full list of DevOps tools currently supported by Tasktop Sync, please check out the list at http://tasktop.com/connectors. If you are in Houston this week at TechEd, do not hesitate to contact us about meeting up.
