What about "front-end" artifact tie-ins that might precede the Application Designer?

I have not yet seen the “front-end” artifact tie-ins that would precede the Application Design modeling (Requirements, Use Cases, etc…)... What is Microsoft's recommendation in this area?

I recommend reading the following FAQ (under What About UML?): https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/vstsmodel.asp

In a nutshell, for V1, we recommend that user’s continue to use the Visio’s UML toolset that is shipped with Visual Studio 2005 in the following scenarios: sketching, white-boarding, documentation, conceptual drawings that do not relate to code. (i.e. Use Case Diagram, Activity Diagram, Collaboration Diagram, Sequence Diagram, Statechart Diagram)