Using PowerPoint to create UI mockups and storyboards with Visual Studio “11”

One of the new features in Visual Studio "11" (Visual Studio 2012) is the ability to use PowerPoint to create user interface mockups (rough sketches) and storyboards. I've been in many projects where PowerPoint has already been used for this task, so it's great to finally have some official support for this, *and* some integration between Visual Studio, TFS (Team Foundation Server) and PowerPoint.

The feature is called "PowerPoint Storyboarding" and there's a nice blog post showing you briefly how it can be used.

When you use the feature, PowerPoint gets a new ribbon tab called "Storyboarding", which in turn contains new shapes and commands to support your efforts. Then, you can link the PowerPoint slides to your TFS work items using the "Storyboard Links" command, which is highly useful.