Testing in Team Foundation Service 2012

The Update 2 of the TFS was released on the 4th of April and some new ALM features were added. I liked the new testing part and in this post I am going to go through the process of creating a new test plan, do some testing and adding a bug to the project.

Microsoft is doing a great effort catching up with testing and even though it’s still really hard for SharePoint development we should also do it because the benefits in general and the peace of mind it brings in particular are worth it.

Before we start we will need to download the Visual Studio Test Professional once we have it we are ready to go. Downloading this piece of software just for allowing you to create tests in the web is definitely overkilling but it’s the way it is…

Your computer will need to be restarted, bear this in mind too.

Creating a Test Plan:
Before we start we need a plan…

The way of creating a plan is perfectly explained here, there’s no need for me to repeat the steps basically you need to open the Microsoft Test Manager, Connect to your TFS and create a plan.

You are ready to start!
Creating a New Test:
Piece of cake.

Go to your TFS web and then to the TEST tab. Click New.
You’ll have to name it and assign, so far so good.

Then I will add some steps.

Adding steps is really easy and fast. I have added the last one to make sure we can find something that fails.
Then we click Save and Close.

Run the Tests:
That was easy!, now the hard part.

In order to run the test we just have to click the run button, make sure you allow the site to open pop up windows, otherwise it won’t work.

If the test is not applicable or is on hold we can mark it so in the menu at the top right corner:

If it needs to be tested we have to manually check that every step works. After testing something we will click the green check if it works or the red x if it doesn't.

If any of the steps doesn't work we will be asked to add a commentary about it.

Then we can create a bug right there or save and close.

If we click on the create a bug button it automatically will show us a bug form with the status of the steps on the test case to facilitate the description of the issue. We will have to name the bug, assign it and we will be able to give it a severity value.

After we save the test case it will be shown as Failed in the test plan.

I’ll suppose the bug has been fixed and run the test again.

Good now every step worked and the test is marked as passed in the test plan.

Conclusion:
It was fast, nice and easy.

I don’t know to what point this will be an able substitute to the infrastructure we have already in place… but no doubt it looks nicer.