The August 2011 issue of MSDN Magazine contains an article that I wrote about how to utilize TFS work items and Exchange Web Services to build a simple ticketing system. The title of the article is: Team Foundation Server and Exchange: Build a Ticketing System Using Exchange and Team Foundation Server.
The journey from the point I pitched the idea of the article to the point it was published was a cool journey that I have enjoyed quite a lot.
I would like to recognize the few folks that contributed to making this a pleasant and smooth journey, and in particular to make the end result an article that I was proud to put my name on.
Sharon Terdeman did all the heavy lifting and took my initial draft and converted it from a long and boring technical article to something very well organized and readable by humans. I was really impressed and amazed by the transformation her work made to the article. Thank you, Sharon. You are awesome!
Bill Heys, a VS ALM Ranger, did a phenomenal job thoroughly reviewing the article and left his stamp all over it. He made a big number of useful suggestions and improvements that helped further improve the material of the article as well as the diagrams. He also gave recommendations for improving the code provided with the article to minimize any issues readers might encounter with the code.
Finally, the creative folks at MSDN Magazine did an amazing job transforming the Visio diagrams into the cool ones found in the published article. My version of the Visio diagrams was just blah.
After the article was published, Sharon caught up with me and presented a new idea that they were working on at MSDN Magazine to further engage the authors with the readers via a series of questions and short answers that sort of build a context around the article. I loved the idea and was glad to be part of it. The result was a blog post on the MSDN Magazine Blog titled Five Questions: Build a Ticketing System Using Exchange and Team Foundation Server.
I really hope many folks find the article and the Q&A useful and that it inspires other scenarios for utilizing the TFS work item tracking functionality.
[EDIT - 9/14/2014]: I've just realized that the source code that is linked in the article is no longer available at the original Code Gallery location. So, I have attached it to this post in case someone reads the article and needs the code.