Automatic e-mail sending is not included on the default features of Team System. The encryption used on the Assigned To Mail Sender Utility service was first compiled by Mariano Szklanny of Team System Visual Studio at Southworks. The web service was modified and generalized by Vertigo Software to adapt to the Team System work environment.
Using the Assigned To Mail Sender Utility web service, the user can set the SMTP user name and password to be used. The snippet of the utility’s web.config contains customizable values to be supplied by the sender of the work item. These values include the name and e-mail address of the sender, SMTP server used, MailXSL, filename of the log file, SMTP password and the e-mail address of the SMTP user. The snippet is used to adjust the settings to be used by the Assigned To Mail Sender Utility program.
The program is subscribed to the Eventing Service through the WorkItemChanged event. A bissubscribe utility, which is commonly found on the web tier of the Team Foundation Server Setup, should be used to subscribe to the service. The web service is utilized to listen to the WorkItemChanged event. The configured web service is called every time a work item is modified along with an event notification. This information includes the changes on the values on the work item’s fields. The web service prompts the event to be subjected to business rules. After the rules are checked, the web service searches for the e-mail address of the recipient on the Active Directory. The notification e-mail is sent once the e-mail of the assigned user is verified.
The e-mail notification sent by the Assigned To Mail Sender Utility application is recorded on a log file. The log file is located on the temporary folder of the Team Foundation Server web tier. The log file is saved as the AssignedToMailSender-log.txt file. It contains diagnostic information on data used by the web service. The recipient may then view the log file to find out the new work items or changes the changes made on an a specific workitem.