Last week I stumbled on a tweet that questioned whether Tasktop was an “Obsession with integration or new paradigm of working?” The answer is both. The tricky part in bringing about a fundamental simplification in the way that we work is providing an incremental transition to the new paradigm. For the past year, our focus at Tasktop has been on expanding the ecosystem of Mylyn ALM integrations needed to get the benefits of the task-focused interface into the hands of the majority of developers using Eclipse. With this release, over 50 integrations exist and the majority of ALM solutions used by Eclipse developers are Tasktop Certified, including 70% of those covered in Forrester’s Agile Wave.

Tasktop’s developers and farm of interop testing servers are working tirelessly for one reason. To bring about the migration away from file, folder and search-based navigation, which does not scale to the volumes of information that we deal with today, to the focus and control that comes from the task-focused collaboration paradigm. While a few key connectors are still in the works, with Tasktop 1.7 we have crossed a threshold in the reach of integrations building on Mylyn. We have measured that more than half of enterprise developers’ time is wasted on constant interruption recovery and context switching. By integrating all of your tasks into a single Task List, anchoring of your collaboration around those tasks, be it file, comment, email or Twitter based, and then automatically focusing and restoring the context of your source code, files and web navigation, Tasktop eliminates all of that waste.

Bringing about this fundamental change in the way we work is impossible to do in isolation. During the past year of the Eclipse Helios release train, we have worked closely with both Agile and ALM partners such as Rally, VersionOne, ThoughtWorks and CollabNet, as well as leading application development vendors such as SpringSource/VMware, to ensure smooth integration between application development, deployment and lifecycle management tools. In the features listed below, you will also notice the results of projects that we undertook in order to make Eclipse be a better platform for this next level of ALM integration that we are driving. We worked with IBM to define OSLC-CM 1.0 spec for REST-based interoperability of change management tools and brought that implementation into Mylyn. We worked with Microsoft to enable Eclipse to leverage new features in Windows 7, the results of which you will see in our contributions to the Eclipse Platform’s New & Noteworthy and the Tasktop RCP screenshot below. Not wanting to neglect our users on Mac OS X, we also resolved one of the biggest performance problems in the Cocoa port. For the Eclipse Foundation, we created the Eclipse Marketplace Client, which uses the simple install technology that we moved into the Eclipse P2 project earlier this year. Finally, we restructured the Mylyn project to bring in new contributors bringing about the next phase of ALM integrations ranging from continuous integration support to code review tools.

It has been a busy 12 months since the Galileo release, and Tasktop 1.7 marks the third major Tasktop release in the past twelve months. For the full details on this release see the New & Noteworthy documents, and for some key highlights see below.

Twitter integration for the task editor

Tasktop 1.7 introduces Twitter integration for all Mylyn connectors. Developers can now view all tweets related to a task and quickly broadcast the currently active task. This is useful for promoting social collaboration and awareness in community-driven development, such as open source projects. While Twitter provides public social communication, integration with tools such as ThoughtWorks Studios’ Murmurs provides project-specific social communication.

Task Editor with Twitter section for social collaboration

IBM Rational Team Concert Connector

Tasktop’s new Rational Team Concert (RTC) Mylyn Connector provides the task-focused interface and Agile task management capabilities to developers using RTC. Developers are now able to instantly resume their coding session when switching work items, automatically track and update time estimates on user stories, and link between RTC and more than 50 ALM integrations provided by the Mylyn ecosystem. The RTC Connector is included with Tasktop Enterprise and available now through Tasktop’s Early Access program. Contact us to evaluate the RTC Connector in your environment.

IBM Rational Team Concert Mylyn Connector

Updated connectors

Tasktop includes the leading Mylyn connectors, and Tasktop 1.7 includes key enhancements to connectors such as IBM Rational Team Concert and ClearQuest, ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle, VersionOne, Perforce, Rally, JIRA and Bugzilla.

Eclipse updates for Microsoft Windows 7

The Eclipse 3.6 Helios release includes enhancements for Windows 7 developed by Tasktop in collaboration with Microsoft. These improvements benefit all Eclipse users on Windows 7 including developers using the IDE and end users who run Eclipse RCP applications. One of the notable enhancements is the ability to display task repository synchronization progress in the task bar, and create and activate tasks from the task bar in both the Eclipse-based and standalone Tasktop application.

Windows 7 task bar with synchronization progress
indicator and Tasktop actions

Managed Connector Install

Connector install, update, and compatibility are all managed by the Tasktop application. Regardless of what commercial or open source integrations you have installed, Tasktop Certified tools are guaranteed to interoperate with each other and with your vendor-supported server install. This provides seamless interoperability no matter how diverse your ALM stack is, and ensures that you always have the latest and most compatible version of Tasktop, Mylyn and relevant connectors installed.

Managed Connector Installation Dashboard

New task list presentation

A key new feature in Mylyn 3.4 is the redesigned scheduled presentation, which now serves the purpose of showing what’s most important when working with a large Task List. Important tasks appear near the top based on when they are scheduled and whether they have unread changes made by colleagues or outgoing changes such as draft comments. Be sure to try the presentation with the Focus on Workweek button enabled if you are using scheduling, as an additional benefit is that it does not duplicate tasks, since tasks that show in a container will not reappear in a container below it.

New task list presentation reduces overload

  Read the Tasktop 1.7 press release   See more new features and enhancements   Download Tasktop 1.7

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My experience with Mylyn began shortly after it was released in 2006 as a way to access bug reports from my IDE. It didn’t take long for me to discover how radically my effectiveness and productivity were affected by Mylyn’s ability to track the context of each task and trigger my situational memory. Mylyn’s effect on my work was so profound that over the following years I was inspired to create several extensions for Mylyn, including automatic creation of task contexts for model-driven development (MDD) tools, context-driven domain diagrams, and WikiText. It was through these projects and others that I came to know a world-class team, the creators of Mylyn at Tasktop. Mylyn’s frameworks and Tasktop’s products have become the hub of a new movement in software development, focused on integrating Agile methodologies and ALM tools to provide the groundbreaking productivity gains of the task-focused interface. It’s with great excitement that I join the team at Tasktop as Vice President of Engineering. I look forward to working with one of the most innovative software development companies that exists at the center of the Agile and ALM space and leading edge of the Eclipse community. Read the full press release here.

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Sign up for the Tasktop Newsletter (at right).

The Tasktop and Mylyn community has continued growing at a staggering pace and we’re pleased to announce new integrations for IBM Rational Team Concert and Perforce. Tasktop’s innovations and leadership have also been recently recognized with several accolades including the Gartner “Cool Vendor”, SD Times 100, and Eclipse Community awards.

Read on for more details, news, events, and tips.

Introducing the Rational Team Concert Mylyn Connector

Tasktop’s new Rational Team Concert (RTC) Mylyn Connector brings the benefits of task management to the growing number of developers using RTC. This enables developers to instantly resume their coding session when switching RTC work items, automatically track and update time estimates on user stories, and link between RTC and more than 50 ALM integrations provided by the Mylyn ecosystem. This “Ready for IBM Rational Software” validated connector complements Team Concert’s Eclipse integration by re-organizing the development environment around RTC tasks, such as work items.

The RTC connector will be available for early access on June 7th. Contact us to evaluate the RTC Connector in your environment.

Tasktop named a Cool Vendor by Gartner

Tasktop has been named a “Cool Vendor” in Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Application Development, 2010″ report. Gartner’s “Cool Vendor” reports are designed to highlight companies that offer technologies or solutions that are innovative, have business impact, and enable users to do things they couldn’t do before. Learn More.

Tasktop wins SD Times 100 award

Each year the SD Times 100 recognizes organizations for their innovation and leadership. This year SD Times named Tasktop a winner in the “Tools & Frameworks” category. We’re honored to join VMware/SpringSource and the Eclipse Foundation in receiving this prestigious recognition.
Learn More.

IBM Innovate Conference - June 6-10th

Meet us at Innovate 2010 - the Rational Software Conference in Orlando, Florida. Mik Kersten, creator and lead of the Eclipse Mylyn project and CEO of Tasktop Technologies, will deliver a talk titled “Eclipse Mylyn: Redefining the “I” of the IDE.”

Be sure to check out the Tasktop booth or contact us to schedule a time to meet with a member of the Tasktop team.

P4Mylyn: Perforce Mylyn Connector

P4Mylyn automatically tracks the context of Perforce-managed assets related to each Perforce Job or task in any defect or project management system with a Mylyn connector. This makes it easy to commit to Perforce only the relevant changes when working on multiple tasks. Automatically generated commit comments link to the active task, creating seamless code-to-task navigation and traceability. P4Mylyn also supports ‘Jobs’, Perforce’s built-in defect tracking system, making it a first class part of the IDE. P4Mylyn is available now and will be installable with one click in the next release of Tasktop Pro. Learn more.

ThoughtWorks Studios Cruise and Twist Connectors

Check out this post on connectors for ThoughtWorks Studios’ Cruise release managment and Twist test automation products. The Cruise Connector allows developers to access and manage their Cruise continuous integration servers from within the Eclipse IDE. The Twist Connector bridges ThoughtWorks Studios’ Twist test automation tool with the Eclipse IDE and the Mingle and Cruise components of the Adaptive ALM product suite. This allows developers to manage Twist scenarios, Cruise builds and Mingle cards without leaving the development environment.
View the full post.

Twitter: Follow Tasktop, Follow CEO Mik Kersten
User Forum: https://tasktop.com/forum/

You can also submit bugs or feature requests directly from your Tasktop software via the “Help > Report Bug or Enhancement” menu item.

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We’ve seen a steady stream of requests for Perforce integration and we’re pleased to join Perforce in announcing P4Mylyn, a Tasktop Certified Mylyn connector for the award-winning Perforce Fast Software Configuration Management System.

P4Mylyn is both a full-featured SCM connector and a task repository connector for “Jobs”, Perforce’s built-in defect tracking system. With the connector, Perforce teams can now take advantage of Mylyn’s SCM capabilities such as organizing commits by task, auto-generating comments, and navigating from code to the relevant task. Furthermore, thanks to the connector, Perforce can now be seamlessly integrated with the growing ecosystem of more than 45 compatible defect trackers and project management systems.

Perforce Jobs in the task list and modified files grouped by task in the Synchronize view

Key Features

  Automatically track the context of Perforce-managed assets related to each task. This makes it easy to commit to Perforce (or revert) only the relevant changes when working on multiple tasks.   Generate commit comments with links to the active task, creating seamless code-to-task navigation and traceability.   Integrate Perforce with defect tracking and project management tools that have Mylyn connectors, such as Atlassian JIRA, Bugzilla, CollabNet TeamForge and ScrumWorks, IBM Rational ClearQuest and ClearCase, Rally, ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle and VersionOne.   Access ‘Jobs’, Perforce’s built-in defect tracking system, using Mylyn’s task-focused interface. This gives developers complete visibility into the tasks their team members are working on and automatically links their own pending work to the Perforce job being fixed.   Display only the changes relevant to a given task when using graphical differencing tools.

Perforce participation in the Mylyn project

Perforce has actively engaged with the Mylyn project and taken a key role in driving innovation in the Mylyn SCM APIs. This is great news for the entire Mylyn and Tasktop community as developers using any of the various Mylyn SCM connectors will benefit from the API upgrades, which make the SCM experience better integrated and more robust for everyone.

Get the P4Mylyn connector

P4Mylyn is included in the Perforce Plug-in for Eclipse. View installation instructions or install from within Eclipse using the Mylyn Connector Discovery via New Task > Install More Connectors…

Need Perforce? Download and evaluate Perforce free from the Perforce website.

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Mik Kersten, Tasktop CEO and creator of the Eclipse Mylyn project, will be presenting at JAX 2010 in Mainz, Germany this week. Mik’s talks will cover new features in the latest Mylyn release and discuss the impact of Twitter and other forms of social collaboration on software development. Steffen Pingel, Senior Software Developer at Tasktop and Mylyn Committer, will deliver a talk on his experiences with bringing a Firefox-style install experience to the Eclipse platform. Here is the complete list of Tasktop and Mylyn related sessions.

  From Tasks to Tweets: Social Collaboration for Software Developers
Mik Kersten, Wednesday, 4:15pm
Developers are increasingly relying on social technologies to get work done. Some worry that constant real-time communication will bring productivity to a halt. But new technologies and practices are forming in order to help organizations harness social collaboration as part of an Agile process and integrated tool set. This talk will demonstrate how we can use the latest social tools alongside established ALM technologies to promote productivity instead of procrastination.   Mylyn 3.4: from Stack Trace to Scrum
Mik Kersten, Wednesday, 10:15am
The rapid adoption of Mylyn has made next big evolution of the IDE clear. Stories and tasks are more central than sourcecode, focus is more important than features, and integration with the Agile workflow is the biggest productivity boost since code completion. This talk will review how new features in the latest Mylyn release and new integrations can make the entire Agile team more productive.   Bringing easy Extension Install to your RCP Applications
Steffen Pingel, Tuesday, 4:45pm
Eclipse P2 is a powerful tool for managing plug-ins but lacks a UI that matches the ease of use of the Firefox extension installer which has helped to perpetuate the browsers success. To bring the Firefox install experience to RCP applications and Eclipse-based tools the Mylyn project has developed a reusable component on top of P2 that provides a simplified installer.

If you’d like to meet with a member of the Tasktop team at JAX 2010, contact us and we’ll arrange a convenient time.

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“For many years, ColdFusion’s highest requested feature was an IDE” (Fusion Authority). With the recent release of ColdFusion Builder Adobe has met this need head on. Because ColdFusion Builder is built upon Eclipse developers can leverage many standard Eclipse plugins, and we have recently seen an explosion of interest in Tasktop Pro and Mylyn amongst the ColdFusion community. For ColdFusion developers this recent interest results in newly recorded webinars, blog posts, videos, and articles to help get started with this powerful toolset. Here’s a collection of some of our favorites.

Installing Mylyn onto ColdFusion Builder by Mike Henke Mike’s recent post walks users through the steps necessary to install Mylyn into ColdFusion Builder, including a five minute screencast illustrating each step. Know your tools: Productivity Tips/Tricks for CFEclipse/CFBuilder by Marc Esher Mark Esher shares his knowledge of ColdFusion productivity tools with The Online ColdFusion Meetup. You can either watch his recorded presentation to this virtual group or review his presentation summary.
Mylyn - A Task-Oriented Approach to ColdFusion by Mike Henke In the The Fusion Authority Quarterly Update you’ll find Mike Henke’s article entitled “Mylyn - A Task-Oriented Approach to ColdFusion”. Mike, a longtime Mylyn user, explains the advantages of working task-focused to ColdFusion developers.
This Week in ColdFusion by TWICF.com This Week in ColdFusion is a weekly podcast for ColdFusion developers. While this week’s version of This Week in ColdFusion was not focused on Mylyn the broadcasters take a minute to explain how Mylyn impacts their productivity (about 11:15 in the video).
Upcoming Mylyn Presentation at UK ColdFusion User Group by Kevin McCabe Kevin McCabe with be presenting Mylyn at the UK ColdFusion User Group at the start of June. See the group’s webpage for details on this upcoming meeting.
Mylyn in Bite-Sized Chunks by David Shepherd This collection of some of the best of Mark Esher’s posts from the past few months is an excellent resource for using Mylyn to improve your productivity as a ColdFusion developer.

Do you have news for the task-focused community? Send news to news@tasktop.com

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CollabNet is hosting a free virtual conference this Thursday, April 15th. The event is sponsored by Tasktop and we invite you to check out the Tasktop booth. The booth is a great source of information on Tasktop’s integrated solution for CollabNet’s TeamForge, ScrumWorks Pro and Subversion.

While the conference is virtual, we will have real members of the Tasktop team available to answer any questions you may have, including Mik Kersten, Tasktop CEO and Eclipse Mylyn project lead.

What’s also real is a chance to win $50 in Starbucks coffee. Just register to attend and complete a short survey on the development tools used in your organization, then click the “Giveaway” button as shown in the screenshot below.

Tasktop Booth

We’re excited about the show because Tasktop is now playing an even more important role in tying together CollabNet’s products for Eclipse developers. With the recent acquisition of Danube, CollabNet now offers ScrumWorks Pro for Agile project management in addition to it’s flagship project management product, TeamForge. With the ScrumWorks Pro Connector and TeamForge integration, Tasktop provides a seamless way to access both CollabNet products through integrated access in the Eclipse IDE or from a standalone desktop application for project managers.

To learn more about Tasktop’s solutions for CollabNet and chat with the Tasktop team, register for the conference.

Virtual Conference Main Hall - Register

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Mylyn fully supports task-focused programming for a growing number of languages and frameworks such as Java, C/C++, and Spring. Support for PHP development with Mylyn is now available as well. In the upcoming webinar Code at the Speed of Thought with Task-Focused Programming Mik Kersten, creator and lead of the Eclipse Mylyn project, and Roy Ganor, Zend Studios and Eclipse PDT project lead, will team up to demonstrate task-focused programming tools and techniques for PHP developers.

Mik and Roy will demo using the state of the art IDE platform for PHP development: Zend Studio with Tasktop Pro. The webinar will cover the basics of accessing bug and project tracking systems from inside the IDE and focusing the interface on only the PHP code relevant to the current task. While the webinar is aimed at developers who are new to Mylyn, it will also include a taste of more advanced programming productivity features such as task-focused version control and automated time tracking. Learn More

When: April 14, 2010: 9:00 am PDT Presented by: Mik Kersten, Tasktop and Roy Ganor, Zend Recording: Online

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The new 2.0 release of the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse provides the latest and most complete access to Atlassian’s development and collaboration tools from within the Eclipse IDE. This provides developers with an integrated platform for managing issues, source code, builds, and code reviews. Combining the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse with Tasktop Pro delivers a further productivity boost by integrating more of a developer’s workflow including time tracking, email, calendars, and web browsing. To illustrate the benefits of this tooling I’ll walk you through a day in the life of a developer using the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse and Tasktop Pro.

8:00 am

Organize the Day - When Developer Dave arrives at work his first order of business is to organize his workday. First he reviews updates to his tasks (JIRA issues) using the Task List (pictured). The notification icons, blue arrows, give him an overview of which tasks have changed and detailed change information is just a click away. Next Dave selects tasks to work on today using the “Schedule for” action. These tasks then appear in blue at the top of his Task List. As he organizes his Task List Dave also checks Tasktop Pro’s agenda view, noticing that his first meeting isn’t until 10:30 am.

8:30 am

Work! - Once Dave has organized the workday he activates the next task at the top of his Task List, reviews his notes on the task, and begins working. As he works Mylyn tracks which files he uses for his task. In addition, Tasktop Pro tracks the web pages he views, and when he returns to the task later all of his files and web pages are automatically opened (see 1:30 pm).

While working his Task List remains visible so that he can quickly respond to time-sensitive tasks. The change notification icon on a critical task will prompt him to respond quickly. He will process updates to less critical tasks in a batch when it is convenient.

10:30 am

Perform Code Review - As Dave is working Tasktop Pro’s calendar notifies him that his team’s code review starts soon. He remembers that he wanted to add one more comment to the file under review and so he activates the review task, which in turn opens the file he was previously reviewing. He uses the normal code editor to add a comment to the review (pictured) and then heads off to the team’s review.

11:00 am

Triage Public Bugs - Dave is in charge of triaging public bugs for his project. As he processes new bugs he will often assign the bug to an upcoming sprint. However, because these bugs are public, he may choose to use the “Send To” action to create an internal bug to mirror the public bug, thus allowing an internal discussion among developers. Tasktop Pro’s Associations (pictured) allows him to link these bugs even though they are in different repositories. This Associations Feature significantly smooths the developer’s experience.

12:00 pm

Eat Lunch - Dave takes a break to eat at his favorite lunch spot.

1:00 pm

Put Out a Fire - Dave is also in charge of monitoring the health of his project’s build. The Atlassian Connector for Eclipse provides a Build View, which Dave always has visible as a Fast View, allowing him to monitor builds without leaving Eclipse. When the Build View decorator goes red (pictured), indiciating a failed build, he opens the Build View to investigate the problem. From within the Build View he can create a task from a failed build and, more importantly, assign this task to the person responsible for breaking the build.

1:30 pm

Resume Work - After fire-fighting Dave is able to immediately recapture the flow of his earlier task. He reactivates the task and the relevant files are automatically opened, the Package Explorer shows only those relevant files (pictured), and his private notes on the task remind him of the next step. Features like focusing, or showing only the files and elements relevant to the active task, saves Dave from having to remember which few files out of thousands were relevant to his task. When using Tasktop Pro Dave has the added convenience of linking any folder on his computer, thus extending this focusing to all of his file system.

4:45 pm

Triage Email - While most of his development tasks are tracked via a bug tracker, Dave must often interface with external contacts who do not have access to a shared JIRA instance. They often send him “tasks” via email. Fortunately, when using Tasktop Pro, Dave can tag email which will then appear in his Task List. In the screenshot he’s tagged the “[get] cruise icons” email as a task. Using this system, he hardly ever drops an email.

5:00 pm

Leave the Office - The countless small savings of the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse and Tasktop Pro have added up, and while other developers are still catching up on change notifications or manually creating tasks from email Dave is finished. He uses Tasktop Pro’s Time Tracking Dashboard to review his activity for the day (pictured), submit his time to the repository, and then he leaves.

Re-energize Your Workday

The Atlassian development stack is a powerful approach for managing the software lifecycle. With the release of the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse developers can integrate this stack into their daily workflow. As we saw with Dave the developer, the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse and Tasktop Pro removes many daily friction points, allowing developers to focus on high-level problems. To re-energize your workday add the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse and Tasktop Pro to your IDE today!

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In December we launched the connector for ThoughtWorks Studios’ Mingle agile project management system. Today, we’re pleased to announce availability of additional connectors for ThoughtWorks Studios’ Cruise release managment and Twist test automation products. With innovations such as Murmurs and the upcoming Google Wave integration, ThoughtWorks Studios has been innovating at a rapid pace and we’re excited to be extending the reach of the entire ThoughtWorks Studios Adaptive ALM product suite into the Eclipse IDE.

Cruise Connector

The Cruise Connector allows developers to access and manage their Cruise continuous integration servers from within the Eclipse IDE. Cruise servers are easily configured in Eclipse much like Mylyn or Tasktop task repositories. Once configured, the build view provides facilities to initiate builds and monitor build status. Integration with the Mingle Connector makes it easy to create and assign new tasks in Mingle to correct build failures.

Cruise Builds View in Eclipse

When developing in Eclipse, screen real estate is precious. This means that the Cruise Build view won’t always be visible. A best practice is to use a fast view as shown below to minimize the view while not in use. The fast view icon indicates the current build status and clicking the icon restores the full build view.

The Cruise fast view icon indicates build status
without occupying screen space

Twist Connector

The Twist Connector bridges ThoughtWorks Studios’ Twist test automation tool with the Eclipse IDE and the Mingle and Cruise components of the Adaptive ALM product suite. This allows developers to manage Twist scenarios, Cruise builds and Mingle cards without leaving the development environment. The Connector leverages task-focused interface technology to focus the Scenarios view on only the scenarios that are relevant for the currently active Mingle card. When Twist tests fail, new cards reporting the corresponding defects can be added to Mingle from Eclipse with a few clicks.

Focused Scenarios view and enhanced Scenarios Editor    

Integrated access to Mingle and Twist

Availability

The latest version of Tasktop, version 1.6.2, is available now and includes the connectors for ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle and Cruise. The Twist connector will be available next Wednesday March 31st when Twist 2.0 is released.

Learn more about the Mingle Connector

Download Tasktop Pro with ThoughtWorks Studios Connectors

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Steffen Pingel and Shawn Minto from the Tasktop team will be at EclipseCon which is being held this week (March 22nd to 25th) at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California. Mik Kersten regrets that he won’t be able to attend until Wednesday evening due to a personal matter. Here is the complete list of Tasktop and Mylyn related sessions.

  Update, demos, and open-panel on Microsoft’s tooling for
interoperability with Eclipse
Monday, 3:50pm
Tasktop’s Shawn Minto will give a demo of the updates to Eclipse for Windows 7 that Tasktop has been collaborating on with Microsoft.   Documentation: Single-Sourcing, Crowd-Sourcing And Other Voodoo
Tuesday, 2:00pm
David Green of Make Technologies and Chris Aniszczyk of Red Hat will deliver a session on documentation best practices at Eclipse including on how to use Mylyn WikiText.   Simplifying update and extension install for RCP applications
Wednesday, 3:45pm
Steffen Pingel of Tasktop will co-present with Susan McCourt of IBM Rational on how to leverage p2 to add easy-to-use extension install capabilities to Eclipse RCP applications.   From Tasks to Tweets: The IDE is Going Social
Thursday, 1:30pm
In this talk Mik Kersten will review how communication technologies have changed the face of the IDE in the past decade and conclude with a longer-term vision of how developers will communicate around collaborative tasks.   The future of Mylyn
Thursday, 2:00pm
Mik Kersten will introduce the new sub-projects of the Mylyn project and discuss the extension, collaboration and contribution opportunities that will be created.   Mylyn Reviews - Finding a new home for ReviewClipse
Thursday, 2:30pm
Mario Bernhart and Kilian Matt of INSO will explain why ReviewClipse is set to become a sub-project of Mylyn and how it provides task-focused code review capabilities.

If you’d like to meet with a member of the Tasktop team at EclipseCon, contact us and we’ll arrange a convenient time.

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Over the past year I’ve been working closely with those in the Tasktop and Mylyn community at large to define best practices for task-focused programming and collaboration. My goal has been to share what I’ve learned about how the leaders in task management use Tasktop and Mylyn to collaborate effectively. To this end, I’ve created several articles on the major task management topics. My focus on major topics is necessary to communicate the full task management vision, but it also results in longer, more intense in-depth posts.

I’ve found the perfect companion series to my in-depth best practices posts. Marc Esher, a thought leader in the Eclipse and Cold Fusion community has been creating an outstanding series of articles on Mylyn best practices in short, bite-sized posts. His content includes great text and often includes a video walkthrough of the feature or concept that he is focusing on. Next coffee break skip the walk (or drive) to Starbucks, grab a home-brewed cup, and spend 5 minutes with one of Marc’s posts. You’ll save a few dollars and your new-found Mylyn knowledge could save you a few minutes (each day!).

Here are Marc’s Mylyn posts to date:

1. Why Mylyn is Indispensible
2. The Best Eclipse Menu You’ve Never Heard Of
3. Mylyn and Jira Short Tutorial
4. Mylyn and Jira Sharing Context
5. Mylyn Creating New Issues

I hope you enjoy these articles. If you have any input on task management best practices please join the dialog with me on Twitter. I love to hear from users and your input will influence our future posts.

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We’re pleased to announce that Tasktop Pro now includes a connector for the VersionOne Agile project management solution. This new connector extends the Agile offerings of the Tasktop Certified suite of integrations, and provides the full productivity benefits of the task-focused interface to users of theVersionOne Enterprise and Ultimate on-premise and on-demand products.

Watch the VersionOne Connector video

Get more done, increase project visibility
The Connector enables VersionOne development teams to take advantage of Tasktop’s task-focused interface technology. This benefits developers in two key ways:

  Spend less time checking and updating VersionOne. By integrating VersionOne with the Eclipse IDE, the Connector eliminates the need to constantly toggle between the development environment, change notifications arriving via email, and the VersionOne web client. With Tasktop, all collaboration around VersionOne artifacts happens within the development environment, reducing the friction of updating VersionOne, and providing increased project status visibility.   Multitask and recover from interruptions with one click. Tasktop reorganizes the development environment around VersionOne stories and defects and automatically tracks the source code for each artifact. When returning to work on a story or defect, a single click restores the previous state of the workspace including open editors and shows only the relevant source code. This task-focused interface technology makes it much easier to multitask and recover from interruptions, resulting in measurable productivity gains.

VersionOne tasks and task editor

Track time the easy way
Thanks to the task-focused interface, developers using Tasktop already indicate which task they’re working on to focus the interface on only the most relevant source code. This makes it possible to automatically track time spent on each story or defect and Tasktop provides facilities to adjust times as needed and upload the information directly to VersionOne. This reduces the time tracking burden on developers while improving project visibility with time tracking data that is based on actuals.

VersionOne time tracking

Going Agile? Adopt VersionOne alongside existing systems
Most organizations have one or more legacy systems for tracking bugs, feature requests, or managing software development processes. Frequently, these systems can’t simply be replaced with agile project management systems because they contain valuable historical information and have been customized to enforce a particular workflow. Tasktop eases agile adoption in these environments by leveraging the ecosystem of 45 interoperable connectors to access multiple systems from the same interface. Furthermore, stories and defects in VersionOne can be linked to dependent artifacts in other systems, making it easy to navigate between related items across different systems.

Get desktop access for product owners
In addition to the Eclipse IDE plugin, the VersionOne Connector is also included in the Tasktop Pro desktop application that provides instant and offline access to VersionOne stories and defects. Tasktop Pro also provides productivity features such as integration with Outlook and Google calendars, and the ability to automatically track web pages and documents related to a particular story or defect in VersionOne.

Download it
Tasktop Pro with the VersionOne connector is available for download now. Tasktop Pro and Eclipse Mylyn users with Eclipse 3.5 or higher can also install the VersionOne connector from within Eclipse via the Mylyn Connector Discovery (File > new > task > install more connectors).

See the VersionOne Connector overview for more screenshots and features.

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Each year the Eclipse Foundation holds an election to vote in board representatives for its committers and sustaining members. If you represent one of these member classes you have one week from today to cast your vote. I’m running as a sustaining member representative and my vision is below. Voting uses a single transferrable voting system, so be sure to read other candidates’ positions before voting.

Vision

Eclipse has reached a stage of maturity that enables Sustaining Members to play a primary role in driving the direction of Eclipse. As Sustaining Members, we represent the largest volume of the Eclipse membership. In 2010 our impact on Eclipse and the value we receive from participating are poised for substantial growth.

I’ve been closely engaged with both the technology and the business aspects of the Eclipse ecosystem since the outset in 2001. I’ve worked directly with many Solution Member companies and watched some Eclipse business models flourish while others have failed. Starting a successful company around Eclipse has given me a pragmatic perspective on how to participate in the platform while growing both product and service revenues on Eclipse-based offerings. As a Sustaining Member representative, my duty will be to apply that knowledge to help make your Eclipse-based efforts successful.

Succeeding in Eclipse means striking a balance between the member, committer and user communities. As board representative, my priorities will be to:

  Facilitate reaching users: Marketing in a vendor-neutral open source ecosystem can be far from obvious, and reaching the very broad Eclipse user base is needed for both the commercial success of members and of Eclipse as a whole. I have been closely involved in improving the install story for Eclipse solutions and the upcoming Eclipse Marketplace client. These efforts will provide the next generation of opportunities to get your solution into Eclipse users’ hands.   Lower the barrier to engaging with projects: With product releases and other pressures, too often the step of getting directly involved with an Eclipse project that you build on does not make the cost/benefit cut. But not getting involved has the longer-term cost of incompatibilities and overhead. Lowering the bar for direct participation will provide members with better access to the collaboration and contributor community that make Eclipse a great open source ecosystem. On the Mylyn project we have had over 800 bugs and feature requests resolved by community contributions. I will use my experience of making this work for Mylyn to help lower the overhead of participation with existing projects so that similar benefits are accessible to more members.   Listen to members: My job will be to represent your needs on the board, and I will work with the other representatives to actively seek out feedback from all Solution Members. I helped make the needs of individual committers heard as a committer representative on the Eclipse board, and will ensure that your needs are
represented in discussions and decisions made at the board level.

About the candidate

Dr. Mik Kersten is the CEO of Tasktop Technologies and lead of the Eclipse Mylyn project. Mik is a popular speaker on Eclipse at conferences in the United States, Germany, and worldwide. Highlights of Mik’s contributions to Eclipse include:

  Creator and lead of the Eclipse Mylyn project (since 2005)   Active member of the Eclipse Architecture Council (since 2007)   Elected committer representative on the Eclipse Board of Directors in (2008/2009)   Only Eclipse evangelist to be voted a JavaOne Rock Star (2008 and 2009)   Only Eclipse content author on the top authors of the decade list of IBM developerWorks Java   PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia that lead to the invention of Mylyn’s task-focused interface (2006)   Co-creator of the Eclipse AspectJ and AJDT projects (2002) based on his work creating of the first Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) tools, Xerox PARC (2000)

Related publications

  Symbian Blog: Mik Kersten on Transparency   Tasktop Blog: Growing open source ecosystems: the install story   Tasktop Blog: Tasktop working with Microsoft to improve Eclipse on Windows 7   How Software is Built: Interview with Mik Kersten (highest ranked in series)   Tasktop Blog: Tips on paying for free software   Tasktop Blog: Platform for Innovation, Part 1: Openness & Modularity

Read more about Mik Kersten on Wikipedia.

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