When I do a checkout under an activity name, the activity gets 'set' in my view. No member of my team can do a checkout using that activity name unless I 'unset' it from my view.
I noticed that immediately after checking out the file if I unset the activity from my view, I'm still able to work with the file and even while checking in the file, the activity name does not get 'set' in my view.
Since even Visual Studio 2010 does checkin and checkouts without 'setting' the activity name under my view (EDIT: I was wrong. verified from VonC's answer that the activity does get set), do you know how to do checkouts without the activity getting 'set' in my view?
Or at least any script I can use that will automatically do an unset the moment I do a checkout?
No, Visual Studio 2010 cannot do checkin and checkouts without 'setting' the activity name: if you are in an UCM view, you must have an activity set in your view to checkout.
Once the file is checked out though, its version is registered in the changeset of the activity, and it doesn't matter if said activity is set or not in the view: that version will stay in its activity, during all modifications and at the checkin stage.
It is best to have one activity managed by one resource at a time: if another developer need to work on a similar activity, he/she should create its own rather than trying to unset an existing one from another view.
Now, should you absolutely need to unset an activity after each checkout, I would recommend defining a post-op checkout trigger which would 'cleartool setact -none' in your current view.