How do I create test settings?

You need test settings only if you want to collect more data than the default. The default setting collects basic system information from each lab machine and your keystrokes and gestures from the local machine.

1. If the application you are testing is a website or has a server component, and you want to collect data from the servers:

A. Create a lab environment. It can be a standard environment or an SCVMM environment.

B. In the Properties of your test plan, set the test environment you want to use for manual tests.

2. Choose an existing test settings file, or create a new one.

3. This sets the default selection for performing tests in this test plan. You can override the selection when you perform individual test runs.

4. Give the test settings file a name.

5. Choose the lab environment you want to use for your tests. If you aren’t using a lab environment, choose Local.

6. Each test settings file matches one set of machine roles.

7. For each machine role, choose the data you want to collect from that machine.

8. The Local role is the client machine on which you’ll perform the tests.

9. Depending on the size of your code base, running unit tests every time a code change is made can be a daunting process. Test Impact Analysis in Visual Studio 2012 (Premium and Ultimate Editions) can speed up that process.

Test Impact

Depending on the size of your code base, running all your unit tests every time a code change is made can be a daunting and time-consuming process. Visual Studio 2012 (Premium and Ultimate Editions) provides a new tool called Test Impact Analysis to help speed up that process.

Test Impact Analysis analyzes the changes made to the code base, and determines what unit tests may be affected, or “impacted,” by the code change. It then provides the developer with a list of impacted tests. The developer has the option at that point to run only the impacted tests, in effect testing just the code changes that were made, or running all the unit tests in the solution to perform full regression testing. Providing the developer a way to only run the tests affected by the code change can help to speed up the development process.

Test Impact Analysis can be part of a developer’s testing process when they are building their application locally (i.e., hitting F5), and can also be incorporated into Team Foundation Build and Microsoft Test and Lab Management. One caveat to keep in mind is that Test Impact Analysis currently only supports managed code.

IntelliTrace

Every developer is interested in quick code and at the same time, does not want to compromise on the quality of code. Visual Studio provides some tools using which developers can achieve these goals. IntelliTrace is one such tool which can reduce the time taken for debugging an application.

Visual Studio 2013 provided this fabulous debugging tool with the Ultimate version. This tool collects data about an application while it is executing. The collected data can be stored with the help of an “.iTrace” file. This collected information can then be useful to the developer or her/his colleague for debugging. Many a times a bug that the developer receives, does not provide the steps to reproduce the problem encountered by the tester. With the help of Microsoft Test Manager (MTM),  a bug work item can be created with IntelliTrace data which can be used by the developer to understand the exact problem. Visual Studio 2013 provided IntelliTrace in production environment so that without having any of the development tools installed on the server, it became possible to collect IntelliTrace data.