Here's some code that returns a list of comments for a card using a class to encapsulate the comment, the name of the user and the date the comment was posted. The Mingle object is an IMingleServer.

public IEnumerable<CardComment> GetCommentsForCard(int number)

{
    string url = string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "/cards/{0}/comments.xml", number);
    var comments = new List<CardComment>();
    XElement.Parse(Mingle.Get(ProjectId, url)).Elements("comment").ToList().ForEach(c => comments.Add(
        new CardComment(c.Element("content").Value, c.Element("created_by").Element("name").Value,
                        c.Element("created_at").Value)));
    return comments;
}

public CardComment(string comment, string name, string date)
{
    Comment = comment;
    Name = name;
    Date = Convert.ToDateTime(date, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

}

Hi Kapil, the reason basic_authentication is required is so that Mingle will accept requests through its RESTful API. The Excel Add-In uses this API. Here's the documentation. There are no real side effects of this so long as Mingle is using SSL if its traffic is over the internet.'

Good to hear. Please post your thoughts and comments. We're actively working on this and posting new versions roughly weekly. The next major line of attack is to add some more direct integration into the VS menu system. I am *particularly* interested in feedback on performance. Thanks!

The extension is now properly trapping the case where Mingle authentication fails during startup and displaying a message.

We just uplaoaded a new version of the extension with a fix.

Once Visual Studio finishes launching you can use the Settings button in Mingle Explorer to fix your settings.

Hi Shane,

The Add-In does not do anything with Excel functions or calculations. All it does is stuff data into a worksheet. If there is a lot of data with your own formulae in play then it's probably the interaction between adding data and the calculation engine that's slow for you. If the calculation engine re-calculates the whole sheet each time we move from cell to cell loading data then, well, things might be slow. :)

Your suggestion for a "refresh the workbook" function is a good one. It would not be hard to do this. All the queries in a workbook are in one well-hidden worksheet.

Thanks for all your feedback It' invaluable.

Shane, you need to make sure basic authentication is enabled on the Mingle server. Depending on the version of the Excel add-in that you have it is possible that the connection error from Mingle (an http 401) is being eaten by the add-in and not reported to you. When you click Fetch Cards you shuold see a dialog where you enter MQL. The latest version of the add-in on this thread should report this error.

To enable basic authentication, you need to set the basic_authentication_enabled configuration option to true in the Mingle data directory/config/auth_config.yml file, where Mingle data directory is the path to the Mingle data directory. This is on the Mingle server.

E.g.

 basic_authentication_enabled: true

I might be wrong, but I believe that my experience has been that even when logged in as a domain admin one still needs to contend with he UAC for some things. For this I'm speculating that you installed Mingle using a domain admin account, so Windows is enforcing the strictest possible security on the Mingle directory and demanding everyone "runs as administrator", even the admin account. That's pure speculation though.