Telerik, a provider of end-to-end solutions for the software development lifecycle, today revealed specifics of its latest update to TeamPulse, its popular agile project management suite. Immediately available, the Q3 2010 release offers a host of new features, like its unique Ideas Management tools, which helps teams better capture and preserve contextual meaning for concepts and ideas. Also presented as part of Q3 2010 are highly anticipated Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) synchronization capabilities and the announcement that key functionality allowing TeamPulse to work with Microsoft Lync 2010 will be included in a commercial release set for early 2011.
A centerpiece of the Q3 2010 release, Ideas Management provides an innovative means for the development and communication of new ideas and concepts. By enabling users to easily record and share ideas via rich text formatting, attachments, and user-assigned properties, Ideas Management saves critical contextual meaning from being lost, capturing the rationales and motivations driving team decision-making processes. Once collected, ideas can be effortlessly evolved into the concrete features and functionalities that form the basis for active projects.
“We’ve found that when capturing text only, much of the perspective and contextual meaning behind an idea can quickly get lost. This is a rich media world and project teams shouldn’t be bound to text only,” said Joel Semeniuk, Executive Vice President, Telerik Team Productivity Tools Division, Telerik. “Ideas Management enables those nuances and context to be expressed in a much more vivid and resonant way, without losing all the tactile information that you have with just text.”
Also announced with Q3 2010 is the addition of Lync support. The presence-aware notification system powered by Microsoft Lync, alerts the user as to when and where other team members are online and available. The user can then open up an instant chat or voice session to discuss and collaborate on those specific elements in the project that are being worked on. With greater opportunities for this more relevant, contextual interaction, TeamPulse and Lync streamline workflow and project processes, improving team dynamics, minimizing redundancy, and eliminating waste.
“The use of presence and real-time communications powered by Lync into TeamPulse will enable teams to function more efficiently and effectively,” said Ashima Singhal, group product manager, Microsoft Lync. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to work with Telerik.”
With support for a variety of real-time communications such as instant messaging and VoIP, Lync is a strong complement to the array of collaboration and interaction tools that are a fundamental component of the TeamPulse suite. Lync opens up new avenues for contextual team-wide and cross-project communication and collaboration.
“TeamPulse truly unleashes the power of teams by helping them achieve peak performance and productivity. By enabling real-time harmonized, contextualized communication, Lync pushes TeamPulse to the next level, further boosting its effectiveness and adding value,” said Telerik’s Semeniuk. “We are pleased to be again working with Microsoft and look forward to our continued success.”
Q3 2010 further incorporates numerous enhancements, such as highly-anticipated bi-directional TFS synchronization support. With its addition, developers gain direct integration with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server, providing clearer perspective of project requirements, progress, and work flows without disrupting ongoing TFS processes. Other new features also being integrated into the release include Comma Separated Values (CSV) data import capabilities, and user interface improvements.
For more information about Telerik and TeamPulse, please visit www.telerik.com/teampulse or follow @Team_Pulse on Twitter. For more information on Microsoft and Microsoft Lync, please visit www.microsoft.com/lync.
