Review Assistant Features

Code Review in Visual Studio - You can create review comments directly from the code editor. The Code Review Board window displays reviews and allows you to manage them. It also contains all code-related discussions. Review Assistant can also be installed without Visual Studio.

• Team Foundation Server (including TFS Cloud)
• Git (including GitHub)
• Subversion (SVN)
• Mercurial
• Perforce (P4)

Flexible code reviews - Review Assistant lets you choose a simple or strict code review workflow for your projects. Any developer can start post-commit code review on any set of revisions.

• Code author is automatically pulled from a repository.
• Multiple code authors can be assigned to a single review.
• Moderator role is available in the strict code review workflow.
• One review can contain code from multiple repositories.
• Unreviewed files are highlighted on Code Review Board.

Discussions in code - Review Assistant supports threaded comments, so team members can discuss code without scheduled meetings.

• Add comments on specific source lines, blocks of code, files, or the entire review.
• Flag comments as defects that need to be fixed.
• Provide comments on binary files, such as images.
• Start discussions in code, without creating a formal code review.
• Unread comments and replies are highlighted.

Iterative review with defect fixing - Review Assistant supports multiple comment-fix-verify cycles in one review.

• Author can instantly see open comments in the code editor.
• Defect statuses are color-coded.
• Author can restart a review by adding revisions with fixes.
• A reviewer can see exact changes made by an author according to comments.

Team Foundation Server integration - Review Assistant provides deeper integration with TFS and Visual Studio Online.

• Quickly import TFS projects together with users to Review Assistant.
• Start pre-commit code review using shelvesets.
• Use the check-in policy to prevent checking-in code without a review.
• Review all changesets of a work item in one click.
• View work items related to a review on Code Review Board.

Notifications - Set up Review Assistant server to send email notifications about code review events. Client provides additional pop-up notifications within Visual Studio.

• You choose how many notifications you want to receive.
• Custom URI scheme enables navigation from email client to Visual Studio.

Code review reports and statistics - Review Assistant provides a set of code review reports that help you steer the code review process.

• Reviews Status report provides a view of who might be holding up reviews.
• Code Coverage report helps you tracking revisions being reviewed in a repository.
• Detailed report allows exporting a review with comments to a printable format.
• Statistics reports provide you performance data about authors and reviewers.

Replacement for Visual Studio Code Review Feature - Choose Review Assistant over native Code Review feature of Visual Studio if you need to:

• Review multiple changesets.
• Hold iterative reviews.
• Set a policy to prevent checking-in code without a review.
• Enable formal code reviews with a moderator.
• View code review statistics and reports.