Storyboard your ideas using PowerPoint

With storyboarding, you turn your ideas and goals into something visual. Your ideas are easier for other people to understand, so they can give you constructive feedback, sooner. You can bring your ideas to life with storyboard shapes, text, animation, and all the other features that PowerPoint Storyboarding provides.

Use storyboard shapes and PowerPoint features

1. If you don't have Office PowerPoint 2007 or later, install it.

2. If you haven't installed Visual Studio Premium 2013, VS Ultimate 2013 or VS Test Professional 2013, you'll need to install one of these versions to create and modify storyboards.

   The only way to get the TFS Storyboarding add-in is by installing one of the premium editions of Visual Studio.

3. Open Power Point Storyboarding and start with a blank slide. You should see the Storyboarding ribbon and Storyboard Shapes library. If you don't see the Storyboarding ribbon, see step 2.

   

   Or, you can open PowerPoint Storyboarding from the Storyboarding tab of a backlog work item.

   

4. Add a background shape that's appropriate for your app. To add a shape, just drag it onto the slide.

   

5. Search for more shapes to complete your design.

   

6. Create mores slides to show the flow of your app. Share them with your team to get early feedback on the design.

   

Tip

• Use animation to bring your flow to life.

• Take screenshots of your apps. For example, add a screenshot as the background of a master slide.

• Use =lorem() to insert text when you don't have the actual text ready.

You can link the storyboard to a work item in TFS, too.

When you share your storyboards to a shared network location, you can link the storyboards to work items that they support. That way, your team members will be able to open the storyboards from the work items and annotate them with their suggestions.

1. Save or upload your storyboard to a shared location that everyone on your team can access.

2. If you started Power Point Storyboarding from a backlog item, then you are already linked to the initial item and you are done.

   Otherwise, open Storyboard Links.

   

3. If you're not already connected to TFS and a team project, connect now. If you can't connect, get added as a team member.

   

4. Then, link to a work item.

   

5. Select a work item to link to. The next screenshot shows how to do that using a saved query. You can also do a simple search on the title, or just provide the ID.

   

   

   

6. Now the storyboard is linked to the work item.

   

7. And, whoever views the work item can also access the storyboard.

   

With PowerPoint Storyboarding, you can illustrate a new or a modified interface. You can capture existing user interfaces and build a storyboard from a collection of predefined storyboard shapes. Also, you can customize the slide layouts for your web, client, or phone applications. And, by linking the storyboard to a work item stored in TFS, you automatically share it with your team.

Try this next

Get feedback from reviewers on working software.

Q & A

Do you want a few quick tips on using some other features?

A: You can learn the basics of creating your storyboards from the 1 to 2 minute videos posted here: Storyboarding with PowerPoint – A Few Short Videos to Get You Started.

Do you want more storyboard shapes to boost your ability to storyboard your ideas?

A: You can import storyboard shapes made available to the Visual Studio community or members of your team. Also, you can share custom shapes that you've created by exporting them to a storyboard shapes file.