Background search for changes in TFS source control

Question

SourceGear Vault's client app has the ability to background search for changes. This is very useful because at any time I can take a quick peek and see what changes my team members have checked in and that I need to get latest on. This is also helpful for previewing any merges that might be necessary. And on a day to day basis, it helps me get a sense of what parts of the codebase are seeing the most churn.

Is there a way to get this same functionality with Team Foundation Server, either with native features or a plugin? I know there is a Compare feature, but it takes way too long to be useful. Unless it could periodically refresh itself like Vault does, but I haven't found a way to do that. Anything new with Visual Studio 2010?

Answer 1

While this doesn't directly answer your question, I set up alerts on TFS so that I get sent an email anytime someone checks something in. This lets me see the churn that's happening and lets me see if someone is playing in a place that they shouldn't be.

Answer 2

It's easy to write a bit of C# code to do whatever you want and attach it to TFS as an event handler.

A search (e.g. "TFS event handler") will get quite a few hits e.g. this thread on MSDN and this event handler dll on CodePlex