The excitement is high, the tech-Ed is around the corner…

I have a session in the up coming tech-Ed about Lab Management and its features.

Coby Peled and myself will show you how Lab Management will save you time in your development and test efforts.

Meni Zalsman from Microsoft R&D will show you a real Customer Story in our session.

I hope to see you all in our session…

Have Fun!!!

Finally it is here!

I have writen about the feature pack 2 in my post: “New Feature Pack For Testing Is About To Be Delivered Including Silverlight Support!”

You can download the feature pack only if you are a MSDN Subscriber and you have Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition Premium Edition or Test Professional from here.

The Feature Pack 2 is already including Feature Pack 1.

Have Fun!!!

The SP1 Beta of Team Explorer Everywhere is now available with a Must Features and more…

Just a reminder, Team Explorer Everywhere is an Eclipse and Cross Platform TFS Client for developers.

Team Explorer Everywhere has started his way as TeamPrise made by a Microsoft Partner and was purchased by Microsoft, you can read more about it: “No More TeamPrise From Now On Team Explorer Everywhere”

There are many cool new features but the most significant features as I see it are:

1. Build and Gated Check In features (Based on ant builds too)
2. Custom Controls support
3. Rich Text Support

Now Microsoft is releasing SP1 of this product with the following features: (Taken from Brian Harry’s post: “Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 SP1 Beta is available for download!”)

Localization

The initial Team Explorer Everywhere release was pretty good at globalization – the current plug-in will sort and displays dates etc in the users locale and handle a localized version of Team Foundation Server.  But all the UI strings were hard coded in English.  After shipping the initial release, a major engineering effort was undertaken to correctly externalize all these strings and prepare the product so that it can be translated into other languages.  This is done using the add-in language pack model used for many Eclipse projects.  After we’ve shipped the beta release we will work on a Japanese language pack and make that available before the end of the year.  After we ship the final release of SP1 we will make available Japanese, French and German language packs.  Depending on interest we may look at translating to other languages over time.  The model used also supports community created language packs if there is demand for them.

Gated Check-in Support

We had Gated check-in for the RTM release but it was more like the experience that we give to developers using Visual Studio 2008 with a 2010 server. The new release will give the Eclipse developer the same rich experience as Visual Studio 2010 developers get today. When you check-in code affected by a gated build definition you get a prompt as to what you would like to do

Assuming you request a gated build, the changes will be shelved and a build submitted on your behalf.  When the build completes you will be notified right inside of Eclipse.

However – we haven’t forgotten folks using the cross-platform command line client.  There we have a new “reconcile” command (only available in the cross-platform version of tf) that will allow you to check on the status of your gated build from your terminal window and reconcile your workspace with any changes checked-in on your behalf from the build server.

Combined with the Build Extensions Power Tool that was also recently updated, we have a very powerful build solution for your Java developers.  The team have been using gated check-ins with the build extensions to build Team Explorer Everywhere for a number of months now and are very happy with how it works for them.

Private / Buddy Builds

Alongside Gated Check-in we did the work to enable private builds from Eclipse.  Again, this works in the same way as in Visual Studio 2010.  If you want to perform a build on the build server then you can manually queue a build passing in a shelveset. That way you can validate your changes work on the build server before checking them in.

Build Explorer Refresh

We also took the opportunity to catch up on some of the improvements that we’d made to build explorer in Visual Studio 2010.  You now have icons showing you the type of build that you have submitted and you are more easily able to find builds belonging to you.

Rich Editing of Work Item Descriptions

In the new process templates that ship with TFS 2010 we make more use of HTML fields to provide a rich text field to enter information about that work item.  These are used extensively by the Microsoft Test Manager tool to help a tester create a bug with a nicely formatted repro steps.  The problem was that Team Explorer Everywhere didn’t have a nice way to edit these fields as we did in Visual Studio.  Eclipse 3.5 and above gives us better support for embedding a web browser control inside of an Eclipse dialog cross-platform and so we made use of this in the beta release to provide a rich HTML editing control inside the work item.  For developers using older versions of Eclipse we fall back to the HTML editing control that we shipped in original version.

Apple Keychain and Gnome Key Ring Support

In previous versions of Team Explorer Everywhere if you are on a non-windows machine that is not joined to your Windows domain using Kerberos then you had the option of storing your TFS credentials in a file managed by Team Explorer Everywhere in your local profile.  The problem is that the password was stored in plain-text – and just relied on your file permissions to keep this data secure.  In the beta release we will make use of the keychain on Apple or the Key Ring on Gnome systems to store these credentials in a more secure manner.  That said if people are really concerned then we still support the ability to log-in via single-sign-on or not store your password at all and just be prompted when you need to log-in.

Work Item Custom Controls

We’ve had custom control support for work items in Visual Studio since day one.  Over time we also introduced the ability to create a custom control for web access users.  In the RTM release of Team Explorer Everywhere we included some code to help with custom work item controls with the plan being that we’d create some examples out-of-band.  However, once we started looking at these examples we realized that the experience was less than ideal so we introduced some fixes in SP1 to improve the experience.  After the beta is released the team will publish more details on how to create custom controls for Eclipse.  It will be a third control implementation – this time in Java – so we will be looking for feedback as to how useful this is for you.

.tpignore Improvements

The Eclipse plug-in has several features to help in ignoring files from the local file system from version control by the use of a special file called “.tpignore” that is checked in at the project root.  This is especially useful for Maven developers, but others teams sometimes need to use it as well.  For more information on the mechanisms available for ignoring files check out this post (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tfsxp/archive/2010/05/04/excluding-eclipse-project-resources-from-version-control.aspx) over on the Team Explorer Everywhere team blog.  We heard some feedback in the forums that this file wasn’t easy to use so we’ve added some UI for it in Eclipse to make it easier to ignore files and folders straight from the Team context menu in Eclipse.

Internal Merge Support in Eclipse

In previous version of the Eclipse plug-in you were required to use an external tool to resolve merge conflicts.  We’ve fixed this to properly support the internal merge tool if available in Eclipse including support for 3-way merging.  You can still use external merge tools if you prefer, but at you have more choice now.

Synchronize Perspective Decorations

Eclipse developers commonly make use of the Synchronize perspective when comparing their local workspace with the server version.  For tools like Subversion or CVS that work in an offline model this is an essential part of the developer workflow.  We’ve been proud to support Synchronize in Eclipse not only because it is an Eclipse specific feature (the closest we have in Visual Studio is folder compare), but also because Synchronize support is one of the features that is often ignored by other tool vendors less committed to Eclipse as a fully supported platform for developers.  In the beta release we improved the label decorating of files in Synchronize making it easier to determine what the changes are that you are looking at.  We also make use of new server functionality in TFS 2010 to improve the performance of Synchronize.

Shelve and Unshelve UI improvements

We use shelving and unshelving extensively as part of our own internal use of Team Foundation Server.  A shelveset is the primary mechanism that we use for code reviews for example, and we do these before every check-in.  The team came up with a subtle improvement to the shelve and unshelve dialogs to help you re-use data in these controls.  For example, if you unshelve a shelveset from a colleague then you will find their user-id in a drop down of recently used id’s next time you search for the shelveset.  Similarly if you regularly shelve with the same name (i.e. “In Progress”) then you will find this getting autocompleted for you as you type.  It’s just a small change but an example of one that we are trying in Eclipse first to see what people think.

Have Fun!!!

A few days ago Brian Harry has announced the New Features and Testing Capabilities that will be released in what the call “Feature Pack 2” that is dedicated to the Testing World.

Between these features there is the one thing that many are waiting for: The Recording for Silverlight!

Below you can read more about the grate features that will be released with “Feature Pack 2”, the list is taken from Brian Harry’s post that you can read here.

Has Soon as this pack will be released I will let you know...

Testing Silverlight Applications

Now you can test your Silverlight apps as well as your other desktop applications.  We’ve added support both for coded UI tests and for record and playback in Microsoft Test Runner (part of Microsoft Test Professional).  You are able to record the execution of your Silverlight app and gather rich bug data (including action logs, video, environment info and more).  Unfortunately, you can’t get Intellitrace logs at this time.  We’ve tested it on a range of Silverlight apps, including ones with customer controls and apps generated by LightSwitch.  We are waiting on a few fixes for LightSwitch issues we discovered – they should be available in the next LightSwitch pre-release.

Perhaps the biggest limitation is that, for now, our Silverlight testing support only works for Silverlight 4.0 applications hosted in IE.  In the future, we will add support for desktop Silverlight applications too.  There are a few other restrictions that you can read about in the docs that accompany the release but all-in-all, it’s a big step forward for testing Silverlight apps.

Recorded test playback on FireFox

With our Visual Studio testing tools today, you can record and playback web applications in Internet Explorer.  With Feature Pack 2, you can play back those recordings on FireFox as well.  As with our Silverlight support, it applies to both Coded UI tests created with Visual Studio and automation recordings created with Microsoft Test Professional.

Among other things, this will enable you to create a set of tests once and use them to regression test on both IE and FireFox!  Now you can make sure your changes don’t break apps across multiple browsers.

Coded UI Test Editor

Managing your coded UI test has just gotten easier.  In VS 2010, a coded UI test is generated as an XML description and some code.  Neither is particularly easy to approach if you want to make some minor tweaks to your test – like change how a control you are testing is identified or remove a superfluous UI gesture, etc.  The new coded UI test editor in Feature Pack 2 makes tweaking and customizing your recorded tests MUCH easier.

The test editor is accessed by opening the UIMap.uitest item in solution explorer (the coded UI test editor is the designer for it and opens automatically).  Below is a picture of the main designer window.  On the left is a list of the actions that were recorded.  You can edit them and their properties.  On the right is a hierarchy of all of the controls that were used.  You can edit those too (for example, changing the properties used to identify the controls).

Have Fun!!!

Microsoft has gathered some Crash Issues with the Test Manager and has released a patch that fix these issues.

The link to download: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2387011

The issues target in this fix are: (Taken from Microsoft Site)

Crashes and exceptions

Issue 1

When you perform operations to work items in Test Manager, Test Manager may crash, and then you receive the following error message:

The specified Visual is not an ancestor of this Visual.

When this issue occurs, the stack trace resembles the following:

at System.Windows.Media.Visual.TrySimpleTransformToAncestor()

at System.Windows.Media.Visual.InternalTransformToAncestor()

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.WpfControls.WindowsFormsHostEx.GetViewport()

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.WpfControls.WindowsFormsHostEx.ClipContentToScrollViewer()

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.WpfControls.WindowsFormsHostEx.Invalidate()

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Controls.WpfWorkItemControls.WpfWorkItemTabControl.
<>c__DisplayClass2.<InvalidateLegacyControls>b__0()

Issue 2

When you try to edit an invalid query by using Test Manager, a Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.Runtime.VisualizationCannotBeCreatedException exception occurs, and then you receive the following error message:

Failed to create the UI element of following type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Activities.SelectWorkItemsPartView.

Additionally, you have to restart Test Manager to recover from this issue.

Issue 3

When you try to close a test case dialog box, Test Manager may crash after you select Don't Save in the test case dialog box.

Issue 4
After you update the Properties settings of the test plan, the data becomes corrupted. For example, the information in the Owners combo box might be incorrect.

Issue 5

Consider the following scenario:

• You delete a configuration variable. The configuration variable has no value for the Allowed Values field.
• You try to open the configuration in the Test Configuration Manager page.

The test variable contains a value that is not valid.

Issue 6

When you try to delete an iteration of a test case by using the shortcut menu in Test Manager, Test Manager may crash.
Note If you debug the problem, a System.Data.DeletedRowInaccessibleException exception occurs, and then you receive the following error message:

Deleted row information cannot be accessed through the row.

The following is the stack trace when this issue occurs:

at System.Data.DataRow.GetDefaultRecord()
at System.Data.DataRow.get_Item()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.TestCase.HasDataSetChanged()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.TestCase.Flush()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Controls.TestStepsPart.set_Dirty()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Controls.TestStepsPart.SetDirtyHandler()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Controls.BaseActionItem.OnSetDirty()
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Controls.DeleteIterationActon.Perform
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Controls.TestStepsCustomControl.ContextMenuClickHandler()
at System.Windows.RoutedEventHandlerInfo.InvokeHandler()
at System.Windows.EventRoute.InvokeHandlersImpl()

Issue 7

When you try to assign a build that has an unassigned drop folder to a test plan in Test Manager, Test Manager may crash.

Issue 8

When you perform an operation in Test Manager, a Dr. Watson error may occur, and then you receive the following error message:

Application: mtm.exe
Event type: Clr20r3
Exception code: system.argumentexception
FAULT SYMBOL:
MICROSOFT.TEAMFOUNDATION.TESTMANAGEMENT.COMMON.NI.DLL!Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Common.KeyedObservableCollection_2[[System.Int32,_mscorlib]]

Issue 9

When you perform an operation in Test Manager, a Dr. Watson error may occur, and then you receive the following error message:

Application: mtm.exe
Event type: Clr20r3
Exception code: system.exception
FAULT SYMBOL:
MICROSOFT.VISUALSTUDIO.TESTTOOLS.MANUALTEST.COMMON.DLL!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.ManualTest.Common.TestPointCollectionViewModel.set_ActiveIteration

Issue 10

When you perform an operation in Test Manager, a Dr. Watson error may occur, and then you receive the following error message:

Application: mtm.exe
Event type: Clr20r3
Exception code: System.ComponentModel.Win32
FAULT SYMBOL:
MICROSOFT.VISUALSTUDIO.QUALITYTOOLS.COMMON.NI.DLL!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.Common.SingleInstance.RunningObjectTable.GetObject

Issue 11

When you insert a new step in a test case that contains some parameters, data corruption occurs. For example, an iteration of a parameter disappears.

Memory leaks

Issue 1

When you repeatedly open and close a work item that includes a webpage control in the template, the Test Manager process leaks memory.

Issue 2

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a manual test process that is in several steps in Test Manager.
• You run the manual test process for a long time while you open an instance of an application. For example, you run the manual test process for a long time while you open an instance of Microsoft Visual Studio.

In this scenario, the process leaks memory, and the process may grow by hundreds of megabytes (MB).

Issue 3

When you run a test case in Test Manager while an instance of an application is running, the MTM.exe process leaks memory and may grow by hundreds of megabytes. For example, you run a test case in Test Manager while an instance of a Visual Studio 2010 is running.

Issue 4

When you run concurrent operations for several hours in Test Manager, you may receive an Out-of-Memory exception, and then Test Manager crashes.

Issue 5

When you add many test cases to a test suite, a memory leak occurs.

Other issues

Issue 1

After you close the Test Case Manager page, the test cases continue to be downloaded from Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS).

Issue 2

When you run a test case, and when the Assigned To field in the test case is empty, you receive the following error message:

Object reference not set to instance of object.

Additionally, the test case returns no data.

Issue 3

Test Manager does not have a feature to let you type a fractional number in a Double data type field of a work item.

Issue 4

An automated test case from a build-drop path requires a long time to load.

Issue 5

When a test result is published on a test suite that contains thousands of test cases in Test Manager, the publishing operation is slow.

Issue 6

When you connect Test Manager to a Team Foundation Server (TFS) server, you may receive the following error message:

Automatic connection to the following team project failed: <project_name> on server <tfs server>.

Have Fun!!!

The Tech-Ed is coming closer, the excitement is high and preparations are now intensive in order to give you the best session in Tech-Ed!!!

I have a session together with Coby Peled from Microsoft, we are going to present the Lab Management.

An article regarding the Lab Management was published today in the Teck-Ed site: “All you wanted to know about the Lab Management and didn’t know who to ask”

I hope to see you all at our session…

Have Fun!!!