Microsoft Testing Stuff Meetup Group

We have just launched a Meetup group for all of those interested in testing in and with Microsoft technologies. Aptly, we have called in Microsoft Testing Stuff :)

This group has been created to allow testing professionals who are working with Microsoft technologies to discuss topics, share ideas, learn and network with their peers. If you are using Visual Studio testing tools such as Microsoft Test Manager, Coded UI, Web Performance and Load Test or are working with Microsoft technologies such as .NET, Azure, SharePoint, Dynamics etc. then this group is for you.

We will be having meet ups every few months where we can share experiences and provide a friendly and supportive environment for members to present relevant topics that are of interest to them and that other members might want to hear about. We will also have top speakers and thought leaders in this space presenting and there will be opportunities to network and ask questions over a drink.

We have just held the first one, but will be scheduling another one for June soon. If you would like to come along please register on our Meetup page and you will be notified as and when the Meetup becomes available.

We have put together a little video about the Meetup which you can watch below:

New web test case management features in TFS 2012

Just got back from the ALM Summit in Redmond and we watched Anutthara's talk about Agile testing, she demo'd some of the new Update 2 CTP 2 test features that Brian Harry announced a couple of days before and so I thought it might be good to put a walkthrough together for the new Web test case management features in TFS 2012 Update 2 CTP 2.

The purpose of this feature is to provide light weight test case management via a browser and this is something that a lot of our customers have been asking us about. We have been working with this feature for a while now, helping Microsoft with the testing of it and the prioritisation of their backlog and I have to say that we love it :)
To start with, if you are using Team Foundation Service, you have had it enabled from 29th Feb, but if you are using an on-premise TFS then you will need to install Update 2 CTP 2 in order to enable the feature.
So here we can see if we have logged onto Team Web Access you will see the new link “Test” hub:

From here we can interact with Test Plans that have been set up using Microsoft Test Manager (MTM). There are a number of things that you won’t be able to do like creating new test plans, creating test suites. Test Plans and Test Suites are pretty easy to create in MTM, then you will be able create new test cases and execute those test cases, let’s take a look at the experience for creating new test cases.
To create a new test case, ensure that you are positioned on a suite on the left hand side of the Test Hub, click the “New” button which is in the centre of the screen:



Test Hub

This will bring up a new test case window, which is the same type of form that you would see in MTM. We won’t go into all of the fields here other than to say we will complete the test case with a Title and a series of steps by typing in the area that says “Click or type here to add a step”. One other thing to notice that is particularly powerful is the Tags functionality at the top, notice here that I have added a “Functional” tag and a “Regression” tag. This is new functionality that is not specific to just the “Test Case” work item and is such a good feature because we can add attributes to a work item without the overhead of modifying the process template. I have seen many organisations who overload the Title field with attributes to avoid modifying the process template but this approach can get very messy. Here is another example of Microsoft listening to customer’s needs. Only thing left to do is click the “Save and Close” button:



New Test Case

Once we click save the test case is created and brought to life in the test suite in the current test plan. From here we can choose to Reset to Active/Pass/Fail/Block or make the test case “Not applicable” without having to execute each of the test steps, which is great if you are in a hurry, know the steps that need to be executed and just want to show progress. Also note the filters that are present top right, along with the ability to change whether the test case pane is displayed at the bottom, the right or invisible.
If you want to execute the test case long hand, then that is covered too. All we have to do is select our test and click the “Run” button.



Test Suite

This brings up the Test Runner which docks to the left hand side of the window and displays all of the test steps for the selected test case.
Using this test runner, we can click through each test step, performing the action, checking the expected result and passing or failing the test step. If we find a bug, we can chose to fail the test step, make a comment and click the “Create Bug” button.



Test Runner

This will bring up the Bug form in a similar way to the test runner experience in MTM. The new bug form is already populated with the information about the steps, what the user did, what was observed, what passed and where it failed. All that is left is to complete a title and perhaps a severity, hit save and close and we are done.



New Bug

We are back at the test runner and TFS has “filled in the blanks” and worked out that the test result is probably a failure. It is also possible to View a summary of the bugs that have been raised using the button at the bottom of the screen, the titles of the raised bugs appear in the resulting pop-up. To update TFS with the results, simply click the “Save and Close” button at the top of the Test Runner.



Test Runner

What is great about this is that not only has TFS allowed us to simply execute a test case from the web and given us a very efficient way of creating the bug but it has stitched everything together for us so that we have full traceability, the User Story PBI is linked to the test case, the bug is linked to the test case, the test result is linked to the test case and to the bug that was raised. Below we can see the updated results being displayed in the Test Hub:



Test Suite Results

So to summarise, this new Web test case management feature of TFS allows us to plan, manage and execute upon our testing effort from a machine that does not have to have any client software installed. It may not provide all of the features that MTM can offer the tester but there is enough to make it powerful and agile at the same time.
Nice work Microsoft, yet again we can see that a more frequent cadence of release which means that users will not have to wait before they get updates with additional functionality. The fact that Microsoft uses their own tools to manage their own application lifecycle and they can release at this cadence only goes to show that TFS and Visual Studio really enables great ALM with Build.Measure.Learn loops :)

Exploratory Testing with Visual Studio 2012 on a Surface device session overview

This is a video summary of Danny's session "Exploratory Testing using a Surface device" at a recent Microsoft event.

The event was called "Tools for Windows 8: Tips and Tricks on Visual Studio 2012 to inspire beautiful app development" and was held at Modern Jago on 23/01/2013.

Exploratory testing session on a remote device at ModernJago yesterday

Had a great time at the Microsoft event today held at @ModernJago. The demo on exploratory testing went well although I did get tripped up by my phone's wireless sharing. Thanks to everyone that came along and thanks to Microsoft for arranging the event. For app development, good exploratory testing is essential as often these projects are short, low budget and agile in their nature. The great news is that TFS and Visual Studio totally support development and testing in this way as proved by AJ from @dlalastudios - http://dlalastudios.com AJ – Great inspiring talk, you Rock!

Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 – Final CTP

Okay, some interesting things are on the horizon for Visual Studio 2012 with Update 1 having reached CTP final. That means that we will be getting the update real soon. But what does this mean for test?? 

Chuck's Post on the ALM blog shows the full list but thought that I would run this as a series of blogs on each of the bits relevant to test and what they mean to us but as a starter for 10, here is what we can look forward to: 

New Features in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1

(ordered by what we hear customers asking for regularly)  

• Cross browser testing support for coded UI tests 
• The ability to pause and resume manual test sessions in Microsoft Test Manager  
• Edit Test Case properties directly from the test runner of Microsoft Test Manager  
• The ability to create coded UI tests for SharePoint 2010 Applications  
• Create an image action log from exploratory tests  
• Populate Test Suites using hierarchical queries in Microsoft Test Manager.  
• Command line functionality for copying entire test suites and all the containing test cases (Deep copy)
• Data collectors populate trait information for Visual Studio unit test grouping  
• Usability improvements for coded UI tests  
• The ability for the Test Explorer to group and filter tests 
• Publish test results to TFS from the command-line  
• Web and Load testing support for SharePoint applications  
• Automatic updates for Microsoft Test Manager and Microsoft Feedback Client  
• IntelliTrace collection for SharePoint Applications  

 

Now there is some cool stuff coming with regard to Test Case management on the web which can be found on Brian's blog post but later he took this back in this post which is disappointing but is very much something to look forward to in Update 2. I can tell you that we have been beta testing this and it is very exciting :) 

 

Danny

Visual Studio 2012 Testing Launch Event

This month (October) nFocus will be hosting a Visual Studio 2012 Testing Launch Event in both Birmingham and London! This event will demo the valuable testing tools currently available within Visual Studio, as well as the new functionality available within the 2012 release. Following the sessions, we will be holding a drinks reception with canapés to celebrate the launch.

The event also features Giles Davies, Developer Tools Technology Specialist from Microsoft.

The agenda:

13:00 –13:30	Registration and coffees
13:30 – 14:15	Manual Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012 by Danny Crone, Technical Director, nFocus Testing
14:15 – 15:00	Performance testing in Visual Studio 2012 By Scott Summers, Director, nFocus Testing
15:00 – 15:30	Coffee break
15:30 – 16:15	New exploratory testing functionality within Visual Studio 2012 By Giles Davies, Developer Tools Technology Specialist, Microsoft
16:15 – 17:00	It’s not just pie in the sky, it's testing in the clouds By Danny Crone, Technical Director, nFocus Testing
17:00 – 17:30	nFocus and Visual Studio Quality Tools By Scott Summers, Director, nFocus Testing
17:30 – 19:00	VS2012 launch celebration drinks reception and canapés

If you would like to attend please click the appropriate venue below:

Birmingham 22 October

London 23 October

 

Creating build and test labs in the sky

Thought I would share a great blog by fellow ALM Ranger Mathias Olausson. In his blog, he talks about how to use the power of Azure and the Hosted TFS Service - "Team Foundation Service" to execute Build-Deploy-Test scenarios.

The article is essentially about using Team Foundation Service to manage the build and deployment of a solution to an Azure test environment and then have an Azure test client run tests against that environment. The benefit here is that the only on-prem requirement is having a client workstation to orchestrate the scenario using Visual Studio 2012, I suppose you could even put that in the cloud too...

You can read the full article here : Using Visual Studio 2012 Lab Manager to Create a Build Lab in the Sky