Tasktop Pro 1.7 Arrives with Helios

DZone recently spoke with Mylyn founder Mik Kirsten, who told us that today, while the Eclipse platform gets a whole bunch of updates (including updates for Mylyn) he'd be announcing a new version of Tasktop Pro and Tasktop Enterprise.  The new Tasktop Pro 1.7 builds on the release of Mylyn 3.4 and features several new integrations with commercial agile toolsets such as ScrumWorks, VersionOne, and IBM's Rational Suite.  Tasktop Pro 1.7 also features enhancements for Windows 7 and Twitter integration.

Mylyn will be getting an update today as well.  The new OSLC specification for linking change management tools will finally be available in Mylyn as part of the project's restructuring. Mylyn supports connectors to open source ALM tools such as Trac, for issue tracking, Bugzilla, JIRA, ScrumWorks Basic, and more.  

Tasktop adds a layer that works within Eclipse and shows the developer only the relevant source code and project management information associated with a task.  It does this through various connectors that integrate the IDE with various ALM tool suites so that the planning that takes place in those environments carry over to the development environment.  

Changes in the 1.7 version of Tasktop include:

• More connectors - IBM Rational Team Concert and ClearQuest (Enterprise), ScrumWorks Pro, VersionOne, ThoughtWorks Studios, and Perforce (integrates tasks with 'jobs').  Updated Rally and JIRA.
• Twitter integration - Twitter can be used within Tasktop to announce active tasks.  These are useful for project awareness and collaboration, especially on open source projects.  Live monitoring; not stored.
• Windows 7 Enhancements - Access to frequently used functionality via the taskbar, and job and server synch progress bars.
• Installation Dashboard - all Tasktop connectors can be installed through a centralized dashboard.
• Task List Upgrade - New task list provides better team awareness and communication.  New notifications capabilities and starring-like functionality.

The updated ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle connector adds the ability to "Murmur" in Tasktop.  If you don't have TWS's Mingle, you'll be able to have similar murmur functionality with Twitter when Tweets start getting stored in a later release.  

Tasktop will also benefit from having committers in the p2 project.  The new Eclipse Marketplace client technology has been integrated into Mylyn and Tasktop to let you know when updates are available and when new connectors are available.

Here are the features, pricing, and options: