Add, run, and update inline tests in Azure Boards and Azure DevOps

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Similar to task checklists, you can quickly define inline tests, or a set of manual tests cases, for a backlog item from your Kanban board. Not only can you add tests, you can run them and update their status. If you're new to working with the Kanban board, see Kanban overview. If you're new to testing, see Exploratory and manual testing scenarios and capabilities.

In this article, you'll learn:

• How to add inline tests to a backlog item from your Kanban board
• How to run tests and update the status of tests
• How to expand or collapse inline tests
• How to reorder or reparent inline tests

Tests you create from the Kanban board are automatically linked to the user story or backlog item.

Prerequisites

• You must connect to a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one.
• You must be added to a team or project.
• To add work items and exercise all board features, you must be granted Basic access or higher.
• To view or modify work items, your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. For more information, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
• To view or run tests, you must have Basic access or higher. Users with Stakeholder access can't view or run tests.

Open your Kanban board from the web portal

1. To view your Kanban board, open your project from a web browser and choose (1) Work, (2) Boards, and then (3) select the team's board from the selector.

   

   To choose another team's board, open the selector and select a different team or choose the Browse all team boards option. Or, you can enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.

   

   Tip

   Choose the star icon to favorite a team board. Favorited artifacts ( favorited icon) appear at the top of the team selector list.

Add inline tests

1. To start adding tests, open the menu for the work item.

   

   Adding inline tests is the same as adding test cases to a test suite. A default test plan and test suite are automatically created under which the manual test cases are grouped.

   For example, a test suite is created for each user story, and all inline tests are added to that suite. Below, user story 152 is highlighted which has three manual tests defined with IDs of 153, 155, and 161.

   

   To learn more about test plans and test suites, see Plan your tests.

2. If you have many tests to add, keep entering each title and select Enter.

   

   To add details to the test case, open it. You can select the title, double-click the inline item, or open the context menu and choose Open.

   

See Create manual tests to learn more about defining tests.

Before running the test, you must add details.

Run the inline test

Run the test by selecting Run test from the actions menu for the inline test.

Microsoft Test Runner starts in a new browser instance. For details on running a test, see Run manual tests.

Update the status of an inline test from the action menu

You can update the status of the test from the actions menu.

Updating the status of tests enable you to track test results.

Why doesn't the Kanban board show the status for test suites and plans already created in Test?

Expand or collapse inline tests

Upon first opening the Kanban board, you'll see an unexpanded view of checklists.

Select the inline test summary to expand a collapsed set of tests. Select the same summary to collapse an expanded list.

Copy or reparent a test

To reparent a test, drag and drop the test onto a different user story.

This action automatically changes the linked relationship of the test to point to the new user story.

To create a copy of a test to add to a different user story, select the test, press the CTRL key, and then drag and drop the test onto the card of the user story.

Related articles

Use inline tests for lightweight traceability and to manage manual tests for user stories or other backlog items that they support. To learn more about test case management, see Create manual tests.

If you find that you don't use this feature, you can disable it from the common configurations dialog.

Other ways you can quickly add linked items and objects to user stories from the Kanban board:

• Add tasks or child items as checklists
• Create a new branch, drive Git development

To start web-based exploratory testing for a user story, you need to install the Test & Feedback Marketplace extension. For more information, see Install the Test & Feedback extension.

Test status in the Kanban board

Test integration with the Kanban board makes it easy for teams to get started with manual testing and then take advantage of the full testing capabilities in Test Manager later, when required. When test cases are created from the Kanban board and updated afterwards in Test Manager, or the other way around, when users create requirement-based suites with Test Manager and update them in Test Manager, the Kanban board shows the correct status. However, the Test status in Kanban board doesn't work if the requirement-based suite has more than one configuration assigned to it. In such scenario, the Kanban board only shows the test outcome for the default configuration. As such, it's recommended to use Test Manager to manage/track the testing progress across multiple configurations.