Visual Studio Feed

I know, many people uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or 2008. There is the very first page called 'Start Page'. If you have a look to options, you'll notice that it is possible to replace the standard news feed in the center of screen with your custom one.

Today I gonna describe how to put TeamCity feed there.

TeamCity is able to create feeds for notifying one about selected build configurations. It is easy to construct the feed you like. For doing that you may simply click on any feed icons on the Web UI, or build you own feed using feed builder page in 'My Settings & Tools' tab.

First of all you need to switch TeamCity feed generator to use RSS 0.93. We have posted an issue in our tracker for making this easier. But now, follow the instructions:

On the server open <teamcity data directory>/config/default-feed-item-template.ftl. Replace there '<#global feedType="atom_1.0">' with '<#global feedType="rss_0.93">'. You can also modify template as you like. Save the file to <teamcity data directory>/config/feed-item-template.ftl. You do not need to restart the server. All changes will be loaded automatically.

Now go to Visual Studio. Open Tools\Options\Environment\Startup. Write the link to TeamCity feed in the 'Start Page news channel'.

Enjoy looking to TeamCity news in you VS start page.

I'd like to say thanks to Jonathan Harley for good idea written in forums.