Hi!

I'm hoping someone can help.. I'm making myself crazy here!

The idea of the screenshot control got my QA guys just drooling. They want it bad! So I downloaded the source and started reading up on it. Our dev team is kind of straddled in between VSTS 2005 and 2008 here... Until we're all on the same version, I didn't fancy the thought of maintaining two versions of these fun things.. Additionally, we do a bit of off-shore work, so adding this to everyone's desktops is a bit tedious. Apparently, the 2008 version of Web Access supports custom controls, so a decision was made to make this control veiwable only through that tool.

So, I was able to open up the source and pull in the 2008 .dlls, build the source, and install on my desktop. That was fine. I brought the control into my bug template and saw it render happily on my client. Wee!

I ran that same installation on the server, modified the web.config file for TSWA to point to the .wicc path, but no luck. I am able to change the web.config to get different error messages - but the one that comes up most frequently is as follows:

Exception: {
Exception Message: Unable to load custom control manifest for 'ScreenshotControl'. (type WorkItemFormException)

Exception Stack Trace: at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking.Controls.ControlFactory.GetCustomControlType(String controlName)
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking.Controls.ControlFactory.CreateCustomControl(ControlDefinition controlDefinition)
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking.Controls.ControlElement.CreateWorkItemControl()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking.Controls.ControlElement.BuildWebControl()
}

I read through the documentation delivered with the TSWA system... According to that, the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking.dll needed to be referenced as well... Would that be true? Do these controls need to be rewritten to include the IWorkItemWebControl logic? Or is there an easier way to implement this?

Any clues? Any suggestions? Anything? :)

Thanks so much!
Jennifer:)

Hi,

Unfortunatly this control only works for Visual Studio hosted work items. In TSWA there's support for custom controls but they use a slightly different API. I might be able to work something out for TSWA if you're really interested. Otherwise you'll have to use VS for there work items.

Regards,
Mathias

Awww shucks! I was afraid that was going to be the answer.

If you would be able to throw something together that would work in TSWA, we would very much appreciate it! Our QA team is greatly concerned about application testers outside of the development department. We want to minimize the distribution of the full VS client - that really is far more application than a casual tester would require. They are telling me that since their current bug tracking software does an automatic capture of screenshots, that any replacement needs to as well. They're putting this lack of functionality in the 'showstopper' category.

So yes - any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks so much!
Jennifer:)

<--- not a developer

yes, im also looking for the same thing... desktop client + web access of the current custom controls in one installer... : )

much thanks..

Hi!

I was just wondering if any progress was happening in the effort to port this control to a format supported by TSWA?

I've been trying to do this myself, but must admit - I'm getting kind of lost. The control uses so much of the Windows.Forms library. Is there any easy way to port that to a System.Web.UI supported format? I started out just trying to implement the Team Web Access interfaces, but that doesn't seem to be as easy as it sounds. :(

Can you help? Please? :)

Thanks much!
Jennifer:)

Hi Jennifer,

I've been completly drowned in work lately. I think I'll have some time next week to look at converting the control to a web control. Would that still be of value to you then?

// Mathias

Hi Mathias,

Oooh!  Yes indeed it would be of value!  The road I've been happening down is exploring implementing an ActiveX control to pick up the image data from the clipboard.  What started out to be an easy idea is getting more complicated.  It very well could be my approach, though..

We've drawn up some work around solutions to not having the screen capture capability inside of the web browser..  But the guys aren't really happy with it.  They really want everything to be encapsulated in one neat package.  Of course - that is the ideal! :)

Any help that you could give would be most welcome and greatly appreciated!
Jennifer:)

Has there been any movement in making these controls work in TSWA? I really have a need for this the multi value control and it just doesn't work right now unless i'm missing a deployment and configuration step. I see a lot of this doesn't work comments and there was one that suggested i needed to copy the control files to the web access bin but that doesn't seem to work either. Appreciate your help. I would be willing to invest time in working on making this work for web access if you can point me in the right direction. Thanks...

 

Jacob