Had one of the ALM MVPs note that not a lot has been happening on this blog lately.  The reason for this lack of posts is the fact I migrated the team to the ALM https://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/ blog a year ago - but apparently forgot to add a post here letting the subscribers know- DOH.

Please accept me apologies for this oversight!!!! 

The reason for this change is an effort to reduce the number of places you need to search for ALM Content including Diagnostics, Testing and Lab Management we have combined these blogs to one location:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/

Come on over tell us what you think!

Here are some of the QFEs that deal specifically with Test Case Management in MTM.

1. Hotfix Rollup Package for Microsoft Test Manager 2010

In October 2010, 6 months after Visual Studio 2010 was shipped, we released a rollup Hotfix package (available here) to address reported issues and to improve performance.

This package included fixes for the following issues:

1.1 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.

In this scenario, a Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client.TestManagementValidationException exception occurs, and then you receive the following error message:

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.

1.2 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.

1.3 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>.

2. Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 was released in March 2011 to enhance features made available in Visual Studio 2010 and fix reported issues. This Service Pack can be downloaded here.

This Service Pack addresses the following bugs in Microsoft Test Manager:

• The "Configure Diagnostic Data Adapter-Event Log" page is truncated in different language versions of Microsoft Test Manager.
• Analyzing test results causes the result to become the most recent result in the test point trend.
• The Right-To-Left language settings do not persist across MTM sessions.
• Query-based test suite repopulation takes longer than expected for large suites.
• A crash may occur you select the browser type for Firefox playback in the Microsoft Test Runner.
• You cannot collect Intellitrace data if the application that is being tested is started as a part of action recording for the test case.
• The attachment count for test results returns 0 when iterating through large amounts of test results.
• You cannot bind the "parameter to password" field when you create action recording.

Additionally, Visual Studio 2010 SP1 contains the following improvements:

• The test case description can be shown in Microsoft Test Manager.
• Performance improvements for Microsoft Test Manager are provided.
• Support for Expression Encoder 4.0 in manual testing is added. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 2160831 (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2160831/) Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Video Data Adapter

Performance has also been improved, specifically in cases where the Team Foundation Server and Microsoft Test Manager client are geographically separated, with a high latency network.

More details on fixes available as part of Service Pack 1 are available here.

3. Multi-line support for editing test cases in Microsoft Test Manager

An often reported complaint in Visual Studio 2010 is that MTM does not support multi-line editing of test cases.

This issue has been addressed by the Visual Studio 2010 TFS Compatibility GDR (available here). Multi - lines in test steps are supported – use Alt + Enter while editing test cases to go to the next line.

4. Reduce the size of test data saved to the TFS Database

Scenario:

While publishing the results of automated test runs to TFS, MTM would upload all the binaries and the deployment items of the run. These uploaded binaries would be used later if the user wants to re-run  tests and analyze failures.

Issue:

1. The TFS Database becomes bloated after a while, typically in cases where users had large deployment items.
2. Also when a tester tries to open the published test run results, MTM would download all the deployment items locally, which resulted in a performance hit on the end user experience.

Fix:

   

1. MTM does not upload the deployment items or test binaries of a test run, while publishing results to TFS, by default. MTM would only upload the trx and other data collector attachments. Similarly on the client side (VS), the option to “Re-run” tests would be disabled for such runs.

 2. We have exposed a new Boolean attribute in test settings - “UploadDeploymentItems”.  The tester can explicitly set it to true in order to override the default behavior and upload deployments items.

3. If code coverage is enabled for the test run, test binaries would always be uploaded, since they are required for doing code coverage analysis.

 This QFE is available here.

TCM Reporting - FAQ - Part 1

Continuing on with series, here are the next set of frequently asked questions related to Reporting with Test Case Management (TCM) in Visual Studio 2010.  

FAQ List - Part 2

1. I would like to create custom test reports in Excel based off the Analysis Services cube. How should I go about it?
2. What are the different Test related measures in the Analysis Services cube that I can use to create my custom test reports?
3. What are the different Test related dimensions in the Analysis Services cube that I can use to create my custom test reports?
4. Can I control what information makes it into the warehouse/cube? If so, how?
5. I don’t see any way to report on what steps were passed/failed during manual testing using the warehouse/cube. How can I achieve this?
6. I want to write a custom 3rd party warehouse adapter, how should I go about it?

Details

1. I would like to create custom test reports in Excel based off the Analysis Services cube. How should I go about it?

There are 2 ways of doing this, start from scratch or use one of the existing out-of-the-box Excel reports as a starting point.

Start from Scratch: You can always start creating a new Excel report by adding a new data source, as mentioned below:

a. From “Data” tab, click on “From Other Sources->From Analysis Services” option

b. Provide the name of your TFS server.

c. This should connect you to the TFS_Analysis database. If your data warehouse for Visual Studio ALM is using SQL Server Enterprise Edition, the list of cubes will include Team System and a set of perspectives. The perspectives provide a focused view of the data so that you do not have to scroll through all of the dimensions and measure groups that are defined for the whole Team System cube. Choose the CUBE or the TEST perspective to create test related reports.

d. Save the connection information locally or it can also be saved on a SharePoint.

e. Select where you want to create the PivotTable Report or PivotChart

f. Drag and drop various dimensions and measures from Pivot table field list to construct your custom report.

Use existing out-of-the-box Excel reports as a starting point: You could also start with any of the existing out-of-the-box Excel reports and then customize it to suit your needs by dragging/dropping the different measures/dimensions.

The simplicity of Excel reports (of just using drag/drop of dimensions/measures) is one of the main reasons why you will see a lot more out-of-the-box reports for Excel rather than Reporting Services based reports.

2. What are the different Test related measures in the Analysis Services cube that I can use to create my custom test reports?

All the test related measures present in the Analysis Services cube are shown below:

Description for each of above measures can be found here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244708.aspx#measures

A list of all the perspectives and measure groups present in Team Foundation Server can be found here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244710.aspx

3. What are the different Test related dimensions in the Analysis Services cube that I can use to create my custom test reports?

All the dimensions present in the Analysis Services cube are shown below:

Description for all the Test specific dimensions can be found here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244708.aspx#dimensions

4. Can I control what information makes it into the warehouse/cube? If so, how?

Here is a quick primer on the different components of data warehouse and how data moves from the Operation store to Warehouse to Cube using the warehouse adapters.

Components of the Data Warehouse for Team Foundation

Yes, you can control what goes into the warehouse - refer to below topic for details around work item specific fields:

Adding and Modifying Work Item Fields to Support Reporting

Note that you can use the above to control Test Case Work item field customizations. However, since the other test artifacts (Test Suites, Test Runs, Test Results etc.) are not work items, it is not possible to use the above approach.

5. I don’t see any way to report on what steps were passed/failed during manual testing using the warehouse/cube. How can I achieve this?

That is correct - Test Steps along with expected results and the passed/failed information is not present in the warehouse/cube. The entire Test Steps (including Step and Expected Result) is a HTML based custom control, hence this information is not pushed into the warehouse. As a result you cannot create reports for the same using the cube.

However, there are couple of ways of getting this Step related data:

TFS APIs: You could get this information using the TFS APIs  

Refer to a sample Test Steps Report, which was created using the TFS APIs.

https://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2011/10/02/mtm-testing-scorecard-using-tfs-api.aspx

Since this sample also has source code, you could customize it to suit your organization needs.

Test Scribe: You could also use Test Scribe tool to generate a document containing Test Steps.

There are 2 modes of generating the document using this tool -

"Test Plan Summary" view which you can use to review/sign-off the Test Plan & its associated test cases along with individual test steps/expected results/iteration values.

"Test Run Summary" view which you can use to get detailed Run level information - however it does not provide a breakdown of individual test results within a particular test run.

6. I want to write a custom 3rd party warehouse adapter, how should I go about it?

You can find a Sample custom warehouse adapter below, that you can use as a starting point:

https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Tfs2010SampleAdapter

-Ravi Shanker

Original: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2011/10/19/multi-line-test-steps-available-in-microsoft-test-manager-among-other-things.aspx

"The biggest “news” is the addition of support for multi-line test steps in Microsoft Test Manager. It’s mentioned in the #1 suggestion for Visual Studio Test and Lab Management. I’m super excited about being able to bring this feature out quickly."

FAQ List - Part 1

1. I am using Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) for my testing activities - what type of reports can I see within MTM?
2. I would like to create reports in Excel using Work Item Queries, but I cannot do so for all the Test artifacts such as Test Suites, Test Runs etc? Why?
3. The reporting information shown within MTM is very basic in nature - are there any other Test reports that ship out-of-the-box that I can use?
4. I am connected to my Team Project within Team Explorer, but I don’t see any of the Reporting Services based Reports listed above. Why?
5. I am connected to my Team Project within Team Explorer, but I don’t see any of the Excel Reports listed above. Why?
6. We don’t plan on installing SharePoint - is there no way of getting the "out-of-the-box" Excel reports, primarily for Test related reports?
7. What are the steps involved in changing the data source of an Excel Report?

Details

1. I am using Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) for my testing activities - what type of reports can I see within MTM?

You can view basic reporting information within Microsoft Test Manager:

- Test Run status at a Test Plan level:

This provides a status of all the tests that have been run, along with their current outcomes, within that specific test plan. This data is aggregated across all suites within the Test Plan. You can view this from the Test Plan Properties page.

- Test Run status at a Test Suite Level:

This provides a status of all the tests that have been run, along with their current outcomes, within that specific test suite. This information can be seen on both the Test Activity Center (as shown below) or Plan Activity Center.

Note: The data shown at a suite level includes the tests that are explicitly within that suite node only - it does not include all the child suites within that suite.

        

2. I would like to create reports in Excel using Work Item Queries, but I cannot do so for all the Test artifacts such as Test Suites, Test Runs etc? Why?

Creating Reports in Microsoft Excel by Using Work Item Queries

You can use the above method to query for any TFS "Work Items". So, you should be able to create a report for "Test Case", "Bug", "Task" work items.

However, all the other Test artifacts, such as Test Plan, Test Settings, Test Configurations, Test Suites, Test Points etc are not "work items". Hence, you cannot use the work item queries for them.

All the test artifacts which are enclosed within the black box (in above diagram) are not work items but they are stored directly within the Test Case Management store.

3. The reporting information shown within MTM is very basic in nature - are there any other Test reports that ship out-of-the-box that I can use?

Most of the out-of-the-box TFS reports, including Test related reports, can be accessed from within Team Explorer.

There are 2 types of reports that can be viewed from Team Explorer - Excel Reports and SQL Reporting Services Reports.

1. Excel Reports: These reports use Excel to connect to the TFS warehouse/Analysis cube to display the reporting data. The figure below shows the list of all Excel reports that ship out of the box. Depending upon the process template (Agile, CMMI) you used at the time of creation of the project, the respective reports are created at project creation time.

All the test specific reports are highlighted in the above diagram.

Details of each of the Test related reports can be found below:

Test Management Reports

• Build Quality Excel Report

• Test Team Productivity Excel Report
• Test Team Progress Excel Report
• Testing Gaps Excel Report (Agile)

• Testing Gaps Excel Report (CMMI)

Failure Analysis Excel Report

Test Activity Excel Report

Test Case Readiness Report

Test Plan Progress Report

User Story Test Status Excel Report (Agile)

Requirement Test Status Excel Report (CMMI)

2. Reporting Services based Reports: The figure below shows the list of all Reporting Services based reports that ship out of the box. Depending upon the process template (Agile, CMMI) you used at the time of creation of the project, the respective reports are created at project creation time.

All the test specific reports are highlighted in the above diagram.

Details of each of the Test related reports can be found below:

• Build Quality Indicators Report

• Stories Overview Report (Agile)

• Requirements Overview Report (CMMI)

• Test Case Readiness Report
• Test Plan Progress Report

4. I am connected to my Team Project within Team Explorer, but I don’t see any of the Reporting Services based Reports listed above. Why?

If you want to use the reporting feature (Excel Reports or Reporting Services Reports) in Team Foundation Server, you must have an installation of SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services. These features can be installed on the same server or different servers.

Team Foundation Server requires a report server that is dedicated only to its use. You cannot share the report server with any other application.

Links:

Installing Team Foundation Components

Configuring Resources to Support Team Projects

Add a Report Server to Your Deployment

Add a Report Server to a Team Project Collection

Add Reports to a Team Project

5. I am connected to my Team Project within Team Explorer, but I don’t see any of the Excel Reports listed above. Why?

If you want to use the reporting feature (Excel Reports or Reporting Services Reports) in Team Foundation Server, you must have an installation of SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services. These features can be installed on the same server or different servers.

Team Foundation Server requires a report server that is dedicated only to its use. You cannot share the report server with any other application.

In addition, for Excel Reports, you also need to enable SharePoint on the Team Foundation Server because all the Excel reports, by default, get copied and stored in the SharePoint Document Library at the project creation time.

Links:

Installing Team Foundation Components

Configuring Resources to Support Team Projects

Modify or Remove Access Between a SharePoint Web Application and Team Foundation Server

Add a SharePoint Web Application to Your Deployment

Configure a Default Location for Team Project Portals

6. We don’t plan on installing SharePoint - is there no way of getting the "out-of-the-box" Excel reports, primarily for Test related reports?

You can copy the Excel Reports from a different Server/Project where SharePoint has been configured and use them for a server without SharePoint.

If you don’t have any installation of Team Foundation Server with SharePoint, then you can download the 2 attachments (Dev10-Agile-ExcelReports.zip and Dev10-CMMI-ExcelReports.zip) at the end of this post, change the data source within Excel to point to your TFS server and start using them.

7. What are the steps involved in changing the data source of an Excel Report?

For changing the Data source on the Excel reports (Dev10-Agile-ExcelReports.zip and Dev10-CMMI-ExcelReports.zip), follow the steps mentioned below:

1. Open one of the Excel Reports file, go to the “Data” tab in Excel, then click on “Connections”

2. It should open up the following window, Click on “Properties”

3. Connection Properties window opens up, click on “Definition” tab

4. In the Definition tab, update the connection string and then keep clicking on OK all the way back.

Change the Connection String

FROM:

Provider=MSOLAP.3;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=True;User ID="";Initial Catalog=Tfs_Analysis;Data Source=ravidev10tfs;Location=ravidev10tfs;MDX Compatibility=1;Safety Options=2;MDX Missing Member Mode=Error

TO:

Provider=MSOLAP.4;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=True;User ID="";Initial Catalog=Tfs_Analysis;Data Source=<yourtfsserver>;Location=<yourtfsserver>;MDX Compatibility=1;Safety Options=2;MDX Missing Member Mode=Error

This should start getting the reporting data from your TFS Server.

-Ravi Shanker

Dev10-ExcelReports.zip

At our team, we use Microsoft Test Manager 2010 to manage our automated test cases. It provides great flexibility to compose test suites based on a static set of tests (static suite) or based on a TFS query (query-based suite). However, after using the system for a while, we find ourselves hoping for even more flexibility to compose query-based suites based on test categories or test suite membership. The default “Test Case” work item template does not have fields to capture these information, so they are not available for query out of the box. With some work item template customization and custom tools written using TFS API, it could all be implemented with a few hours of work! In this blog post, we would like to share with you our customizations, so you can extend them to further enhance your test management experience with Microsoft Test Manager.

Here is what we are trying to accomplish:

• Enable creation of query based suites based on test category (annotated by “TestCategory” attribute)
• Example: all tests with test category of "Daily Smoke"

• Enable creation of query based suites based on a combination of static test suite membership and other work item attributes

• Example: a subset of tests belong to “Test Suite A” whose owner is “John Doe”

• Enable creation of tracking query or query based suites based on automation test execution statistics

• Example: tests with average pass rate below 30%
• Example: tests with average test run time over 20 minutes 

Here is the elements of our solution:

1. Customize the “Test Case” work item template to add a set of fields to capture the additional information: test suite membership, test categories, and test execution statistics, etc.
2. A command line program that updates the TFS TCM periodically to keep the information in #1 up-to-date

Work item customization 

Let’s first look at how the “Test Case” work item customization looks like. Below is a screenshot of our custom fields in the “Process Editor” power tool.

And with “Process Editor”, we also customized the form to show these new fields on the UI. Here is how they look like in our template:

Information Update Tool

 We wrote a tool using the TFS and TCM API to enumerate through the test plans and test suites and update the information in the test cases if they have changed. Only static suite membership is collected, otherwise the results might be unpredictable. The tool also looks for test assemblies in the latest build drop folder and reads the metadata in the assembly to get a list of test categories. If the test categories have changed, the tool will update the test case custom fields. Finally, the tool queries and computes the automation execution statics and write them to the test case so you can easily query for them. This is an area that you might want to further customize from the sample code. For example, you might want to be more selective about what tests you want to count as part of your average test run time. A test may run into failures very quickly and results in a much shorter test runtime that would skew the results.

We use a Windows scheduled task to run this tool every 30 minutes. You can determine what would be an appropriate interval for your team. The TFS connectivity information and custom field information is configured in the app.config file, and you would need to run the tool with a credential with appropriate TFS access.  

The sample code is attached with this blog post. They are provided as is and for illustrative purpose only.

Conclusion

Here is a glance of what you can do with the added fields. We hope this information would help you get some ideas on how to better organize and tracking your tests. We hope you could see that TFS offers a very flexible platform and a robust set of APIs that gives you the freedom to implement a process that works best for your team. I would like to thank the VS ALM Team for giving me access to this forum to share this with the community.

Joe Chiu

Software Design Engineer in Test, Interactive Entertainment Business

TfsTestcaseUpdaterSample.zip

It is a thin layer developed on top of Microsoft Visual Studio Team Test's Coded UI Test engine which helps reduce code, increases readability and maintainability, while also providing a bunch of cool features for the automation engineer.

This tool is built by Suresh Balasubramanian and his team and is used by multiple teams internally. Try it out.

The full list of issues fixed by this QFE can be found in this article and you can download this patch from MSConnect. Note that Service Pack 1 (Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1) is a pre-requisite for installing this patch.

Here is a summary of the list of issues fixed by the QFE, to help you decide whether you should apply the QFE:

Issue 1

Consider the following scenario:

• You use Microsoft Test Runner in Microsoft Test Manager to run a manual test.
• You create a bug or run a test.

In this scenario, Test Runner may crash, and then you may receive the following error message:

Issue 2

Consider the following scenario:

• You run some unit tests on a test agent in Test Manager.
• You edit the Local.testsettings file for the unit tests.
• You use a custom batch file in a startup script.
• The batch file starts a web service before a unit test is performed.

In this scenario, the unit test does not start as expected after the web services runs.

Issue 3

In some cases, Test Manager crashes, a System.StackOverflowException exception occurs, and a Clr20r3 Dr. Watson error is generated. The Blamed Symbol field of the Dr. Watson error contains a value resembling the following:

Here is the exact scenario that one of the customer asked:

Testers want to pause some test case and want to resume it later point of time since they don’t have the required data to proceed with the test case and they don’t want to mark them as pass/fail.

Here is the brief description:

1. Test cases are in active state

2. Running the first test case and stopped in between since lack of data.

3. Return to MTM, 1st test case will be “In progress”

4. Select 2nd test case and run that with-out disturbing the state of first test case. (But here MTM prompt to save/don’t save, on click of save, MTM marks the test case as pass. )

5. Later point of time, when he got data he want to resume the paused first test case. 

unfortunately MTM doesn't support the step 4 here. When the first test case is “In Progress” and want to execute 2nd test case, MTM pop-up a dialog asking for save/don't save. On click on save, saves the result and marks the test case as pass. 

The closest thing that tester can do is to mark that test case as blocked (after going through some steps, say step#1 as passed) and pick it up next time.

The Test result will show that certain steps (step#1) were marked passed, but the test case was marked as Blocked. However, the next time around will be a new run and will have to start again from step#1 – you can not start over from middle of a test case.

Well, we now have an avenue for you to add and vote for your favorite suggestions. The UserVoice site for Visual Studio ALM is here: https://visualstudio.uservoice.com It is simple to enter your idea, and if a lot of people agree with you, chances are high you'll see your idea incorporated in the product.

Note that User Voice is really not the best avenue for reporting bugs in the current version of the products. https://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio is really the best avenue for that. It’s got a direct connection to our internal bug database and increases the possibility that it will get fixed. UserVoice is really better for larger feature suggestions.

So, get started, vote for your favorite ideas, and help us make the product better!!