I am testing web based products, and I am new to Microsoft tools. I am trying to figure out how test plan creation works, or can work depending on what configuration of Visual Studio tools I am using. I find a lot of conflicting info online.
I have the three tools below installed right now, but I can request something different if I need it. (Feel free to suggest). Any advice from pros more experienced with this tool set would be GREAT.
I access Team Foundation Server 2012 via my browser, where I can view and add product backlog items, bugs, sprints, the board etc. I cannot add test plans here, but I can add test cases to them.
I have Visual Studio 2013 installed on my PC. This seems like pretty much the same thing as the browser accessible tool, and I don't use it much because I find it easier to work from the browser for testing web.
I have Microsoft Test Manager 2012 installed on my PC. This appears to be the only place where I can create test plans, cases, and can create and utilize shared test case steps.
Questions:
How can I create test plans using the browser tool?
Is it possible to update the TFS 2012 Browser Tool to 2013, and how is that done?
Additionally to the #jessehouwing answer I would highly recommend you this free ebook:Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012
Team Foundation Server 2012 update 2 adds Web Based test Case Management to TFS 2012, this is a smaller step than an upgrade to TFS 2013 all the way. You cannot just upgrade the Web Access part of a TFS installation, it would require a complete upgrade of the cluster. You also cannot just install this to your machine, it has to be installed on all the TFS servers in the cluster.
Traditionally Test Manager is the place to go to to do Test Suite Management and to view the results of a test run. Microsoft has started to move the functionality traditionally found in Test manager to the Web portal, It seems you're not the only person who found that easier to use. This transition started with TFS 2012 update 3 and was further expanded with TFS 2013.
So your options are:
Use Test Manager (you'll have to use it to manage certain things you cannot yet do on the web anyway).
Ask your Server Administrator to upgrade TFS 2012 to at least Update 2 (I'd recommend he upgrades to TFS 2012 update 4 or TFS 2013 in any case).
Ask your Server Administrator to upgrade TFS 2012 to TFS 2013.
The following resources can be very helpful in understandign how to use the tools to their fullest potential:
Visual Studio ALM Rangers' Test Guidance
Patterns & Practices' Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 (as mentioned by #Elena)
Microsoft Virtual Academy Software Testing with Visual Studio 2012 (exam 70-497 jump start)
Related
Currently I have lots of projects that are in TFS 2012 and would like to migrate them to TFS 2018, maintaining source code history as well as WIT status if possible. I realize that lots of things under the sheets has changed with versions prior to 2018. I would like to know what the proper upgrade path is. Various web sites have mentioned articles and upgrade paths, but none has answered the true question.
Do I have to do TFS 2012 -> 2013 -> 2015 -> 2018 and use the upgrade option at install time. Or can I skip any path all together. Also does the upgrade do the DB modifications in place, or can I copy the DB's somewhere and point to them at TFS version install time? If I am forced to upgrade in place will I loose current TFS functionality. This cannot happen.
Any rules guidance, steps or past experience in this matter would greatly be appreciated.
NOTE: We have made some changes to the standard WIT templates for the 2012 Agile process (TASKS, USER STORIES).
Sorry, afraid you will not find one complete guide in doing this for now. But suggest you could first go through the Requirements and compatibility page. This will help you know the server operating systems, support SQL Server version for each TFS version.
There are different considerations depending on your configuration,
e.g. do you use SharePoint, Reporting Services etc.
One thing that you
need to deal with, is that TFS 2012 and TFS 2018 does not support the
same versions of SQL server, so you will need to upgrade SQL during
the upgrade or move your collection(s) to a new server with the
appropriate version of SQL (see here).
Back to your question, not sure if you could upgrade directly from TFS 2012 to TFS 2018. Just find a related chart which showing the recommended upgrade paths from various TFS versions (For 2017). However, you definitely not have to do TFS 2012 -> 2013 -> 2015 -> 2018. The worst situation you need two paths.
I would recommend setting up a new server with SQL Server 2016 sp1, where you can migrate your databases using SQL backup. Then first install TFS 2017.1 followed by TFS 2018 and finally updating SQL Server to 2017 (if you need).
Highly recommend doing a trial migration first to validate that things work of and sort out the process before attempting it on your production server.
If I am forced to upgrade in place will I loose current TFS functionality.
Actually some old features will not support any more in TFS2018, such sharepoint, XAML build(the most important missing feature), old work item form. More details please take a look at changes to requirements for TFS 2018
For work item part, we recommend that you review handling a TFS 2018 upgrade from old form to new form for further guidance.
Besides if your TFS2012 installed on a not support system, you may have to first set up a new operating system.
Even though there is not a complete tutorial for TFS 2012 to TFS 2018 upgrade procedure by now. You could refer this article aims to expand on the Upgrade overview and give a step by step walk-through of the upgrade to TFS 2017. You just need to take care of some notes mentioned above.
The general process for upgrading an existing deployment of Team Foundation Server is to:
Prepare your environment. Such as upgrade your SQL sever
(required), operating system...
Expect the best, prepare for the worst. The single most important step you can take here is to ensure you have a complete and consistent set of database backups.
Do the upgrade!
Configure new features.
One can now upgrade from 2012 to TFS 2018 since the release Update 2 earlier this year. See the documentation for the updated upgrade paths.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/tfs-server/upgrade/get-started
A key challenge was migrating from older XAML builds to the new builds, but with the release of Update 2 and later you can utilize the XAML build controllers as they are now supported. See the compatibility guide for details.
Plan for downtime - this upgrade is certain to take longer than one from a more recent version!
We have TFS2015 and I am trialling Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 (no installation disk).
I am now looking for an ISO with Microsoft Test Agents for Visual Studio 2015.
Documentation for VS 2015 states that these ISOs should be available:
I can get the web installer (exe) for the Agents from here, but where can I get the ISO?
Please note: I need the ISO to get hold of Test Controller 2015 to run Load Tests, so just having the Agents is not enough.
Also, I have tried using Test Agents 2015 with Test Controller 2013, and my Agent configuration fails with a time out (whilst attempting to restart the service).
And finally, I have tried using Test Agents 2013 with TFS2015, which fails with a "Registry lookup failed" error on the "Agent Deployment" build step in our build definition (the powershell scripts used in this step assume that there is a path for an installed Test Agent 2015 in your registry). This problem is fixed by providing a path to Test Agent 2015 installer in "Test Agent Location" property of that build step.
So, I am now trying to locate the ISO with Test Agents for Visual Studio 2015 - does anybody know where I can get it from, please?
It was announced that Test Agent 2015 no longer needed a Test Controller, as the agent orchestration now is managed by the server (TFS or VSTS). You can also refer this post.
Q: Will the Test Agent 2015 support all the scenarios supported by
Test Controller and Test Agent of Visual Studio 2013?
A: We recommend you use Agents for Visual Studio 2015 in all the new automated testing scenarios. You can use the Deploy Test Agents task in a build definition to download and install the test agents on your machine. The following table shows the scenarios supported by Agents for Visual Studio 2013 and the alternatives for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2015 and Team Services (TS).
For your situation, seems you are using on-premises Load Test , you need to use Test Controller/Test Agentes2013 Update5 . More information, please refer Using a Test Controller and Test Agents in a Load Test
As for ISO files, it seems agent for VS2013
are using the .iso including test agents and test controls in download center. But for agent for Vs2015 are just using .exe in download center.
Yes, of course, go to the page below:
https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/older-downloads/
at the scroll down the page you will see VS2015, after clicking download you will need to sign in,
then could choose the corresponding version you want to download:
do remember to sign in to Microsoft for downloading agents.
https://my.visualstudio.com/Downloads?q=Visual%20Studio%202015%20Update%203
My team has several Selenium Unit Tests that we run locally. Selenium opens a browser and runs through our application. This works fine locally. Now, management wants to run the tests, on demand, via TFS. Should be easy, right? WRONG!
I am having trouble setting up our TFS 2015 server to run these Selenium UI tests.
Everything I read tells me to run the "Test Agent for Visual Studio 2015" tool. Problem is, the tool does not exist on my machine and I cannot understand why. I have tried many things, like installing the MS Visual Studio "Agents", with no luck.
When I try to open the freshly installed "Agents" I get a message saying: "Test Agent for Visual Studio 2015 has no configuration tool".
So the VS.NET "Agents" panel never opens. Seems bizarre to me that I installed something that needs further configuration, with no way to perform that configuration.
From further reading, I think I need to provision a group machine in the TFS web administration page, but am totally unsure if that's required for my situation, as I cannot even get past the basics here.
I see other people have had this problem, with very little response or help from Microsoft. I am a little baffled at why this seems so very difficult to do on a TFS server? It runs locally just fine, like a breeze. But TFS? It's like a giant puzzle.
Once this is working, I need to configure the test agent to run in "interactive mode" so it can run the browser but I cannot even begin to figure that out yet. Where do you set it to "run interactive" because I dont see any of those options. Am I missing TFS installation components? Do I have the wrong Visual Studio? Do I need the Ultimate edition of Visual Studio to be able to perform UI tests with the browser? We have the Professional edition.
Here is someone with the same problem:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1712725/test-agent-for-visual-studio-2015-has-no-configuration-tool
Does anyone have any ideas or instructions on how to setup the "Test Agent" I need to run my team's existing Selenium UI tests in TFS2015? Seems very difficult when it should not be.
In the link you provided, Allen has explained that "There is no configuration UI with the test agent anymore. This is because we have simplified the existing remote testing scenario by doing the install and configuration for you when running via the build pipeline."
TFS 2015 Update2 now have a "Run Functional Test" task that you can use to run tests (included Coded UI Tests) against machine groups. So, first you have to upgrade your TFS 2015 to TFS 2015 Update2 if you haven't.
The tasks you need for test scenarios using Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) or Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2015:
Create environments from physical or virtual machines that you've already set up.
Set up your build to run your app and tests in the environments that you created.
After your build finishes, review your test results to start resolving problems that you found.
So, your build process template should look like the screenshot below. You need to specify every task to meet the requirement of your project. All TFS tasks can be found at this website, you can get more information for each task from it. Coded UI or Selenium tests that are running on full fidelity browsers would need Interactive Process checked.:
VS 2012 has an excellent support for comparing database projects and databases.
I'm wondering if there is a standalone version for the respective software to use on a deployment machine - or some other way to use it without having to install the whole of visual studio.
You can install just the SSDT for SQL Project bits on a machine. That does not require a full install of either Visual Studio or SQL Server. You can generally keep an eye on the SSDT Blog for the latest release news. You can find that at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ssdt/
At this time, the most recent release is the October 2013 release.
As noted in the various articles, you may need to make an Administrative Install Point if your target machine does not have internet access. Follow the instructions in the article and you should be fine.
I've written some articles about this on my blog at http://schottsql.blogspot.com if you look up the label for SSDT.
I can't find Business Intelligence Development Studio in Sql Server 2005.
I have installed Visual Studio 2008 and Sql Server 2005 Standard edition.
How can i view
You can tell if it is installed by looking at "new project" in Visual Studio. Do you have BI projects available?
If so, this is it. You can now develop BI stuff.
If not, did you check the box under client tools when installing? Run install again.
BIDS isn't a separate install but a Visual Studio plug-in
You do need to select it when installing though. You could probably run a reinstall and add it if you don't have it already.
while installing, you might have not selected the feature. in this case, re run the Installation process.
You Must Install SSDT(Sql Server Data Tools) Tools
When you Installed that , and you want Create New Project, you must see Business Intelligence Section in part of Template