Visual Studio rarely ships “complete”. There are two sets of “Power Tools” that add important functionality that, for a variety of reasons, isn’t included in the main distribution. The first, Productivity Power Tools, deals with general code editing experience. The other is TFS Power Tools.
A significant change for this year is that TFS 2015 Power Tools supports all major editions of Visual Studio include the Express variants. Previously you need to have VS Pro or higher to use this set of extensions, and even now some features will not work in VS Express. Specifically, you cannot use the Process Template Editor on “Win10 with Express for Windows”. You will, however, be able to use the Team Explorer features,
This tool provides additional Visual Studio menu options and functions to support finding files under version control by status or wildcard, opening a folder using File Explorer from the Source Control Explorer context menu, and labeling files and folders in Source Control Explorer. Clone builds definitions easily and copy work item paths. Collaborate and share with your teammates within Visual Studio using the Team Members page in the Team Explorer tool window. You can communicate with your team through instant messaging, share queries and components, create workspace templates, and track your sprint progress.
Note: Some of the enhancements (such as the clone build definition) only work when its pane is docked. If you have undocked it (and became its own tool window), first dock it into Team Explorer. You can safely undock the pane again when you have completed the command.
Outside of Visual Studio, TFS 2015 Power Tools offers a number of features:
- Team Foundation Power Tool Command Line
- Test Attachment Cleaner
- Windows PowerShell Cmdlets
- Windows Shell Extensions