As part of a project tracking workflow we have various points in the lifecycle of a project where we want to poke data into TFS, and have that data exposed through eScrum.

In particular, we need to:

1. Create a new eScrum Product (at the inception of the project)
2. Create eScrum Product Backlog items (on a weekly cycle)

After a bit of digging and dissassembling it turns out that it is not that hard to do. The first of the two above tasks implementation is as follows:(note that the eScrumRootAreaPathURI is the URI of the eScrum Team Project - you can find this URI in the team explorer in VS - it will look something like vstfs:///Classification/TeamProject/a1bac9db-c321-4fe6-8a12-fa19b4c2abab):

public static void CreateEScrumProduct(string name, string eScrumRootAreaPathURI, string tfsurl, string username, string password, string host)
{

    NetworkCredential account = new NetworkCredential(username, password, host);
    TeamFoundationServer server = new TeamFoundationServer(tfsurl, account);
    server.Authenticate();     /**
     * first the area path for the product must be created in the eScrum team project.
     */
    ICommonStructureService ics = (ICommonStructureService)server.GetService(typeof(ICommonStructureService));
    NodeInfo[] ni = ics.ListStructures(eScrumRootAreaPathURI);

    foreach (NodeInfo n in ni)
    {
        if (n.StructureType == "ProjectModelHierarchy")
        {
            ics.CreateNode(name, n.Uri);
            break;
        }
    }

    /**
     * now a new eScrum product details work item must be created referencing the above
     * area path. note that this can fail due to the tfs warehouse not refreshing
     * so it is brute forced until a better way is apparent.
     */
    Thread t = new Thread(delegate()
    {
        bool cont = true;
        while (cont)
        {
            try
            {
                WorkItemStore store = new WorkItemStore(server);
                WorkItem item = new WorkItem(store.Projects["Escrum"].WorkItemTypes["eScrum Product Details"]);
                item.Title = name;
                item.Fields["Area Path"].Value = @"Escrum\" + name;
                item.Fields["Assigned To"].Value = "Escrum Team";
                item.Save();

                cont = false;

            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Trace.WriteLine("failed saving... attempting again in 1000ms");
                Thread.Sleep(1000);
                cont = true;
            }
        }
    });
    t.Start();
}