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Visual Studio Team Services Feature Slated for Removal

The Visual Studio Team announces the end of the Team Room feature in upcoming sprints, as the feature is deprecated.

With the new year, it's all hands on deck at Redmond. And one of the first announcements to come from the Visual Studio team is to simplify Visual Studio Team Services by deprecating the Team Room feature.

Deprecation is the first step, with removal the ultimate goal. A post from Microsoft's Ewald Hofman notes that the move is a recognition of many of the various ways that developer working in team environments are using to collaborate, and notes, in particular, the Slack collaboration tool that has been gaining fans.

"With so many good solutions available that integrate well with TFS and Team Services, we have made a decision to deprecate our Team Room feature from both TFS and Team Services," said Hofman. He also noted that Microsoft had also announced in November its own Microsoft Teams Integration extension that already works with VSTS.

While the Team Room feature is deprecated, developers who go to it in any project will see a yellow banner with a warning that links to the blog post that discusses the deprecation plans.

About the Author

Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.

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