I’ve been part of an on-going discussion with some other Microsoft MVPs and Visual Studio team members about some headaches with Microsoft Test Manager 2012 (MTM 2012) and Microsoft Test Manager 2013 (MTM 2013). As much as I like MTM, it can be a little frustrating to use. On the other hand, Microsoft has been adding more and more testing features to the Team Foundation Server web client and this has made the QA testing experience on the web pretty great.
Downside: all those awesome features like Action Recordings, test automation using Coded UI Tests (CUITs), and rich data attached to Bugs (IntelliTrace, Lab Management snapshots, audio/video recordings, etc) weren’t available or ever likely to be available via the web interface. I was disappointed because that’s the stuff that I really want as a tester. I want the tool to make my life easier and less tedious.
Well, just as I’m hitting the pits of despair, Ravi Shanker from Microsoft pointed out a new feature of Team Foundation Service. In the Test hub, when you open up a test suite, you now have two ways to run the test cases. 1) Run the test cases using the web version of the test runner and now 2) a new option called “Run using client”.
This feature requires you to install Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 and when you click “Run using client” it opens the test case in MTM. And it doesn’t just open MTM at the opening splash screen either. It takes you right into Microsoft Test Runner (MTR) for that test case and all you have to do is click “Start Test.”
This is a seriously great, killer feature that’s going to make QA testing (aka. Manual Testing) a lot easier because you’ll get the best of both worlds. As a tester, you’ll work in the clean and streamlined web UI for managing test cases and then you get all the rich functionality of MTM just by clicking a button on the web view of the test suite.
-Ben
— Is your testing process getting you down? Do you wonder what your testers should be doing at the start of your Scrum Sprints? Looking for suggestions on how to use MTM and TFS to get Management, Devs, and QA Testers all working together? Drop us a line at info@benday.com.
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