Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog

Final ALM Certification Jumpstarts May 28th and May 29th

Charles Sterling — Tue, 21 May 2013 22:00:23 GMT

Earlier this month Anthony Borton, Lead ALM Consultant at Enhance ALM, and Steven Borg, Co-founder and Strategist at Northwest Cadence, delivered a very successful Jumpstart for Microsoft Virtual Academy. This FREE day-long online session helped prepare attendees prepare for exam 70-498: Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management. The JumpStart was attended by over 626 unique individuals from 72 different countries. If you missed the session, I’m pleased to announce it is now available on-demand at http://t.co/Qlcwj92Eg3. From the evaluations it was one of the highest rated online events of the year – Great Job guys!

Not to rest on their laurels they are offering two more of these Jumpstarts next week!

Two New FREE JumpStart Sessions

Software Testing with Visual Studio 2012 (exam 70-497) Jump Start

May 28^th, 2013 9am-5pm (PDT)

Some of the major topics covered include:

Create and Configure Test Plans
        - Create Test Plan Properties
        - Define and Configure Test Settings
        - Create and Configure Test Suites
Manage Test Cases:
        - Create Test Cases and Steps
        - Define Parameters
        - Manage Shared Steps and Requirements
Manage Test Execution:
        - Run and Analyze Recommended Tests
        - Perform Exploratory Testing and Analysis
        - Manage Bugs and Work Items

Administering Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 (exam 70-496) Jump Start

May 29^th, 2013 9am-5pm (PDT)

Some of the major topics covered include:

Install and Configure Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server
Manage Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server
Customize Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server for Team Use
Administer Version Control

Anthony Borton | ALM MVP & Scrum Trainer | @AnthonyBorton

Anthony Borton is an ALM trainer and consultant for Enhance ALM, an Australian based company specializing in helping organizations successfully adopt ALM best practices. He is a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio ALM as well as a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Anthony is an engaging speaker with experience presenting at conferences around the world including Microsoft TechEd in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He is the author of eight TFS 2012 training courses and delivers the most comprehensive range of TFS courses in the world today. Anthony was Australia’s first Professional Scrum Developer (.NET) Trainer and has completed over 58 Microsoft certification exams. He was one of the first people in the world to earn the new Microsoft Certified Solution Developer: Application Lifecycle Management certification. You can find out more about his courses at ALM Training.

Steven Borg | Co-Founder and Strategist | @stevenborg

Steven Borg is the Co-Founder and Strategist of Northwest Cadence. Steven has been a Microsoft ALM MVP since product inception in 2005, speaks regularly at Software Development and Visual Studio conferences, and has authored Microsoft courseware and white papers on Team Foundation Server, regulatory compliance in software development, Scrum, and Lean. Steven has helped hundreds of organizations, both large and small, adopt Visual Studio ALM tools, improving their software development process, reducing costs, increasing quality, and speeding delivery dates. His expertise lies in bringing successful lean and agile adoption to companies currently using traditional project management techniques to manage software development projects.

Announcing the ability to Test Windows Phone 8 applications with Experitest SeeTest

Charles Sterling — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:17:47 GMT

For testing Heterogeneous and mobile environments we have relied on world class partners. SeeTest from Experitest now enables Microsoft developers test mobile applications inc WIndowsPhone8, iOS, Android and Blackberry.

Experitest is a recognized leader in mobile testing and touts several powerful benefits with the latest release of SeeTest:

As far as I know the first testing tool in the world to offer full Windows Phone 8. It is important to note this support is not a brittle OCR based system but a full native implementation.
Seamless integration into with the Microsoft development platform including Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server and Microsoft Test Manager
The same benefits SeeTest has always offered their customers –and areas that set them apart in this field:
- Support for real devices (the devices should be developer enabled) and emulators
- Devices need not be altered in any way(i.e. jailbroken)
- Recorder enables testers to simply and quickly create theirs tests
- Objects are identified by native ID or by web properties (in web/hybrid apps)
- Object Spy provides the ability to inspect the objects’ Native or Web properties
- Integration into the full application testing cycle inc. installing the application, launch it and uninstalling it
- View results inc. screenshots with UI elements are highlighted.

Using SeeTest couldn’t be easier either with a simple two-step process:

Step 1: Build your test in Visual Studio

Using the SeeTest template in Visual Studio Project you create a SeeTest project…

Step 2: Click on the SEETEST menu in Visual Studio you can import tests and view execution results

Alternatively: You can run also run these mobile Tests and view test results from Microsoft Test Manager:

Some screenshots of the latest SeeTest tools below:

Objects are identified by native ID or by web properties (in web/hybrid apps)

View results inc. screenshots with UI elements are highlighted.

Download now (free trial): http://experitest.com/

Online manual: http://experitest.com/studio/help2/WebHelp/Connect_Windows_Phone.htm

I am meeting with the development team this week and am hoping for more content on this exciting topic!

Enabling seamless integration with Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Test Professional and HP ALM with Opshub v5.3

Charles Sterling — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Today I am happy to announce that in addition to the bi-direction synchronization between the HP ALM - TFS systems, OpsHub’s newest release v5.3 has added integration with test case management and tracking features.

Easy 3 step configuration

OpsHub Integration Manager (OIM) provides for easy configuration, mapping and integration between HP ALM and TFS systems in simple three step process.

Maps can be defined at the project level enabling project consolidation. You can also define your information map from where you are to Team Foundation Server enabling complete data integration between the two systems.

If you choose to migrate from HP ALM to TFS, OIM makes use of the same mappings that you used to integrate. The polling date allows you to choose a moment in time to begin migration from.

Bi-directional synchronization

The OpsHub Solution provides for bi-directional synchronization between the two systems. Synchronization of attachments, traceability relationships and history between TFS and HP ALM systems ensures rich accurate information is available to everyone. During the sync process OIM properly sync’s the history so that not only the current state of the asset is synced but also the history of the activities which lead to that state is synced.

New release v5.3 offers additional benefits of test case management and tracking

OpsHub Integration Manager enables syncing of all major assets in TFS and HP ALM, including Requirements, User Stories, Test Cases, Test Results, Shared Steps, Test Scripts etc.

Using OpsHub Integration Manager it is now also possible to execute HP QTP test scripts from within TFS.

In my conversation with Sandeep Jain, CEO, OpsHub mentioned that in both scenarios whether considering migration from or integration with HP ALM, the OpsHub solution allows for a much easier adoption of Team Foundation Server.

OpsHub unifies the two systems enabling development shops to continue to use legacy HP systems and have them to operate seamlessly, bringing agility at scale to the ALM Lifecycle management process.

For more information about our Visual Studio 2012 launch partner OpsHub, visit them at http://www.opshub.com.

Known Issue and Workaround for TFS 2012 Update 3 RC1

AndreaMS — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:24:00 GMT

This post is to report a known issue with alerts in Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 3 RC1. There is a partial workaround, which should be applied to the configuration database BEFORE upgrade to RC1 if possible. This issue will be fixed in Update 3 RC2.

Description

This bug causes some alert subscription evaluations in TFS to fail with an exception (an XPathException), even though they are actually valid. Upon receiving the exception, the exception handler will treat the corresponding subscription as invalid and delete it. The alert will not be sent, and will be removed from the system incorrectly.

We believe this problem is fairly widespread, and customers who use their server regularly can expect to see the bug arise almost immediately after upgrade. It will occur as soon as an event (such as a check-in, creation of a work item, etc.) is triggered on the server.

Those affected by this bug will see errors in the following form:

[EntryInfo]
Message: TF53010: The following error has occurred in a Team Foundation component or extension...

Detailed Message: The subscription for contained an invalid condition ""PortfolioProject" = 'XYZ AND "CoreFields/StringFields/Field[Name='Created By']/NewValue" = '@@MyDisplayName@@' AND "CoreFields/StringFields/Field[Name='Authorized As']/NewValue" <> '@@MyDisplayName@@'" which could not be evaluated.
Exception Message: 'USER' as an invalid token. (type XPathException)

Workaround

If you are thinking of upgrading your server to Update 3 RC1, please contact Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) or TFCare a*t Microsoft d*ot com for a SQL script that should be applied to your configuration database first. This script will not stop the alert evaluation exception from being thrown, but it will prevent the TFS notification job from deleting alert subscriptions. Instead, the alert will simply be skipped.

Note: If you have already upgraded to Update 3 RC1 and seen this issue occur, you will still benefit from applying the workaround. It will be too late to recover any deleted alerts, but the script will prevent any further subscriptions from being deleted. At this point it will be safe to re-create any alert subscriptions that were deleted.

We greatly appreciate the feedback we've gotten so far from those who have installed our RC's and hope you will continue to do so. Your input goes a long way towards ensuring our RTM releases are of great quality. For step-by-step assistance applying the workaround, you should contact CSS. If you have experience applying SQL scripts to your TFS databases, you can simply email the product team at tfcare a*t Microsoft d*ot com for a copy of the workaround script. As always, if you find any additional issues with this release, please email the product team or open a bug on Connect.

Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 now available

Charles Sterling — Tue, 07 May 2013 22:00:00 GMT

The Visual Studio Updates are a new mechanism we are using to provide ongoing value throughout the year to our Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server customers. These updates will provide features to support the latest software trends in the market, and also offer an easy way to deploy bug fixes. To download this latest update please see: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=290979

For Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 we focused on your requests on the Connect site and addressed ~20 of your issues/requests. For the list of all these changes please see:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2835600

If it seems like we have slowed down our efforts around the updates, it is because many of the feature teams are now working on the next version of Visual Studio. That said we still managed to add two frequently requested features.

Enabling continuous integration for Git

Once we released the Git for Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server it was not long before we started receiving requests for enabling continuous integration for Team Projects using Git and the ability to pick the specific branch in the repo you wanted built. In update 3 you will see a new source settings dialog in the build definition wizard enabling exactly this!

Preserving build settings on upgrades

Another often heard request was for the Team Foundation Server 2012 upgrade wizard to pick up the build settings from the previous install while loading the configuration database. In Update 3 we now have this functionality!

For any questions please use the Visual Studio Forums or for issues please file them at Connect

Cloning test plans using Microsoft Test Manager

niveditabawa_MSFT — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:39:00 GMT

In Visual Studio Update 2, we introduced the capability to clone test plans in Microsoft Test Manager. This feature lets you clone test plan artifacts within a given team project, by creating copies of all the test cases, shared steps and requirements, recreating the same suite structure and applying the same test settings, environments, builds, configurations and other plan properties(test results and bugs are not cloned). Read through this post to know more about this functionality.

We have often heard requests from our customers about being able to clone test plans while working across sprints or releases. While we already had the functionality to clone test suites through the tcm.exe command line, in Visual Studio 2012 and had enhanced it further in VS Update 1, we have added the capability to clone test plans and suites from the MTM user interface, in VS update 2.

To access this feature, I can go to the test plan properties page(Testing Center-> Plan -> Properties) and click on the 'Clone' option.

Let's say that I want to clone the current sprint's (sprint 1) test plan, to use it for the next sprint (sprint 2). I click on the 'Clone' option which shows the following dialog:

I can specify the suites that I want to clone by specifying the suites in the 'Clone from' area. If I don’t select any suite, a blank test plan will get created with the source test plan's properties applied to the new test plan.

Selecting a node will select all its children recursively and vice-versa. I have selected all suites except the 'Regression tests' suite since I do not want to clone that.

After the suite selection, I also have an option to specify whether I want to clone the requirement work items (associated to the requirement based suites in my selection) as part of this operation. If I don’t check this option, static suites will be created corresponding to the requirement based suites selected by me, and the relevant test cases will be cloned and put inside the static suites.

For the destination test plan, I need to specify its name, area path and iteration path in the 'Clone to' area. All the test cases that get cloned as part of this operation will also use the same area and iteration paths.

Once done with specifying the fields, I can click on the 'Clone' button. This will initiate the test plan clone operation and show me a progress view of the same.

Once completed, the status will change to 'Succeeded' and the details like duration, date started, date completed, total number of test cases, shared steps and requirements cloned, etc. will get updated.

If I want to view the new test plan I can select it from the test plan selector dialog and connect to it. All the properties, test suites, test cases, requirements of the sprint 1 test plan have been added as desired.

For all the work items that got cloned as part of this process, a comment mentioning the clone operation ID and the source work item ID, is added to work item's history for tracking and auditing purposes.

This feature can also be accessed by using the 'Clone' option in Test Plan Manager (Testing Center-> Organize-> Test Plan Manager) or right clicking on the root node (in Testing Center-> Plan -> Contents) and selecting the 'Clone plan' option.

Hope you find this functionality useful for your test case management needs. You can also read through the MSDN guidance page or the Test Release Management Guidance for more information.

StarEast and an AMA with noted Test analyst Theresa Lanowitz this week

Charles Sterling — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 03:37:36 GMT

This week I will be at the Stareast 2013 conference manning the Microsoft Test booth, meeting testers, sneaking into Anna’s incredible Test training, doing demos of our Test tools and something that will be a first for me- I will be physically attending an AMA by one of the foremost Test analysts in the world, Theresa Lanowitz(founder of the analyst firm voke).

While I am still working on my demos for the virtual session I am thinking of doing the following:

Demo #1 Exploratory Testing

From my visit to Starwest last Fall Exploratory Testing is definitely a big ticket item and the idea of “exploring” the value checked in during the last sprint a very foreign concept. I only have 5 minutes for this demo so I think I am going to spend some time showing the back log and how it is connected to the testers efforts, bugs automatically create an image log and how we will create formal test cases.

Demo #2 Browser based test management and test execution

Enabling agile teams to easily view/edit test cases and any browser and letting both customers and testers running tests from any environment without needing to install anything was definitely top request and something I am looking forward to demoing!

Quick Tip: If you want to test a Windows 8 Store Application on a high definition monitor you can toggle auto snapping the desktop version of IE 10 the keystroke Windows Key + “.” will toggle the snapping mode.

Demo #3 Load Testing Web Applications

While load testing is one of our most mature testing tools it also appears to be one of the least well known. Last week I met with a customer who requested a meeting on Microsoft Test Manager and while wrapping they asked almost in passing….”Since you don’t have a load testing tool- which one would you recommend”…grrr!

Based on this (and several enquiries just like this) this demo will just be a basic recording of two web tests then rolling those into a load test.

See you at StarEast!

How to profile a JavaScript Windows Store App for performance problems

Haseeb Ah — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:54:00 GMT

If you are developing a JavaScript Windows Store App, you will want to measure the performance characteristics of your app. The Visual Studio 2012 JavaScript profiler can help you to identify performance issues with your app. This functionality is present in all SKUs of Visual Studio. In this post, I will demonstrate how to diagnose a performance issue in a JavaScript app.

For the purposes of this post I’m using a simple application called Water Ripples that simulates water rippling on an HTML5 canvas when the mouse moves over it.

Unfortunately I notice that the ripples animate incredibly slowly, so I’m going to use the profiler to investigate this behavior.

Here are the phases I will walk you through:

Profile the app
Use the report to identify the issue and try to fix it.
After the fix, test the app by re-running it to check if animations are smooth or not. I also look at the Profiling report for the fixed app to show what has changed in the report.
Additional views which can provide further insights into the performance of the app.

Walkthrough

Once I have the ripple solution open in Visual Studio, I use “Debug -> Start Performance Analysis” to launch the app under the Profiler. This will build and deploy my application then launch it with the profiler. If this is the first time I’ve used the profiler since I launched Visual Studio I will need to accept the elevation prompt for the collector.

After the app is launched, I move my mouse over the canvas to create ripples. I notice that the ripple animations are not smooth. I then come back to visual studio and stop the profiling which stops the app also and creates an analysis report. Please note the app will be running slower under profiling since profiling adds extra performance overhead; so you should not test performance while profiling, only use the profiler to investigate problems you have noticed during normal use.

After the report is created, the summary view is displayed. From the summary report, I can see that the createRipple function calls the Math.floor function which is taking a significant amount of the overall application time (~40% of the execution time is spent in Math.floor).

I try to fix this problem by not calling the Math.floor function and calculate the floor value directly. Code of createRipple function highlighted in red is replaced with the code in green.

I profile the app again with the change, and I notice that the ripples are now smoother. When I look at the report, I notice that the Hot Path shows the createRipple function only. The “Functions With Most Individual Work” table shows me the functions the most exclusive time is spent in.

From the summary page, I click on createRipple to get more details on this function. Function code view shows me the code for the function. I notice that 91% of the time is being spent within the function body in creating ripples. At this point, I don’t see any scope to improve this function further.

Just to make sure, the summary page didn’t miss any other important function, I select Call Tree view. This view gives comprehensive information about all of my code. When I compare the Average Elapsed Exclusive Time for before and after the changes, I notice an improvement of ~400% from 165.67ms to 43.38ms for the createRipple function.

Before:

After:

At this point, I am happy with the performance and do not see any other obvious improvements to make. So I am done for now.

In Closing

I hope this simple app helps you to see how you can use JavaScript Profiling to improve the performance of your JavaScript Windows Store apps. If you are curious, you can learn about two additional profiling tools available for JavaScript apps, the JavaScript memory analysis tool, and the JavaScript UI responsiveness tool. You can also learn about Xaml Windows Store App profiling from How to profile a Xaml Windows Store App.

If you have any comments/questions I’d love to hear them in the comments below or in our MSDN forum.

Free Microsoft Exam jump start for: Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management

Charles Sterling — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:33:31 GMT

There has been a ton of excitement around the new ALM course and exams. Responding to this two of the ALM MVPs Anthony Borton and Steven Borg are offering a FREE jump start for Exam 70-498: Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management. This Jump Start targets application development teams interested in leveraging Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) to improve their development processes and deliver continuous value with Visual Studio 2012. This fast-paced course will be team-taught by Steven Borg, Co-founder and Strategist at Northwest Cadence, and Anthony Borton, Lead ALM Consultant for Enhance ALM Pty Ltd and is tailored for seasoned developers looking to put these skills to use right away. Additionally, this course follows the criteria for exam 70-498 and will provide accelerated preparation for this important exam in the MCSD: ALM track.

This Jump Start will provide accelerated preparation for this important exam in the MCSD: ALM track. Some of the major topics covered include:

Define an Effective End-to-End Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
Role of different ALM processes
Define a Software Iteration
Define End Value for the Software Iteration
Develop Customer Value with High Quality
Integrate Development and Operations

Live Event Details

May 1, 2013

9:00am - 5:00pm (PDT)

Anthony Borton | ALM MVP & Scrum Developer Trainer | @AnthonyBorton

Steven Borg | Co-Founder and Strategist of Northwest Cadence | @stevenborg

Testing Java and Cross Platform applications with Squish and Microsoft Test Professional

Charles Sterling — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:13:00 GMT

One of the more common requests we hear from customers with heterogeneous environment is: “How do i test my Java/Cross Platform applications with Microsoft Test Professional”

Turns out the answer is a bit of a surprise: “Use the same Java test tools you are (probably) already using”

Froglogic, the creator of Squish, one of the most popular cross platform, cross device and Java Testing tools has created a plug-in for Visual Studio and Microsoft Test Manager so your test teams can do all their testing in a single environment-regardless of the platform. To make it easy to try out this new plug-in and get up and running the folks at Froglogic have created a lab built on top of Brian Keller’s VM: Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine.

Installer of Squish and Squish MS ALM integration: ISO | MSI Installer
Basic instructions to get started (after the VM is up and running): DOCX | PDF
Hands-On Lab: DOCX | PDF
More documentation of the Squish integration: Squish MS ALM Integration
General Suqish Documentation: doc.froglogic.com

During the ALM Summit I run into a team at InfoSupport using this new Plug-in for their Java Testing and according to their Technology Manager Marcel de Vries Infosupport have been extremely happy with the results- particularly in areas of functionality, integration with Visual Studio and the phenomenal performance. For a video of Squish in action please see: Squish for Mobile (Android) Demo in connection with Microsoft Test Manager

For more Squish GUI Testing information:

*Squish also works with other cross platform cross device applications