Upgrading Testing Efforts from Earlier Versions of Visual Studio

This document describes the migration process for test projects, test types, lab environments, and the .NET Framework from previous versions of Visual Studio to Visual Studio 2012.

Migrating testing efforts from Visual Studio 2010

Migrating your testing efforts from Visual Studio 2010 involves upgrading various components:

  • Client-side components: Visual Studio and Microsoft Test Manager and test projects (unit test, coded UI test, Web performance test, and load tests).

  • Server-side components: Team Foundation Server, Test and Controllers, Lab Environments, and Build-deploy-test automation workflows.

You can choose to upgrade just the client-side components and upgrade the server-side components at a later point of time. Or, you can choose to upgrade the server components and upgrade the clients at a later point of time. At any given time, Team Foundation Server, test controllers, lab environments, and build-deploy-test automation workflow definitions must all be the same version—either Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012.

If your team upgrades one of the two groups listed above, and not the other, a small set of features don’t work as described in this document. Similarly, if your team has some users using Visual Studio 2010 clients, and others using Visual Studio 2012 clients, there are some compatibility issues that you should be familiar with, and these are described as well in this document.

Migrating manual tests from versions of Visual Studio prior to 2010

Using Visual Studio Ultimate, Visual Studio Premium, or Visual Studio Test Professional you can create manual test cases as work items in your team project. You can enter the required test steps, and any other information that you have to have in order to run the manual test, as part of the work item. This includes attaching files to the manual test case. For more information about this new manual test case, see Creating Manual Test Cases.

If you have existing manual test cases that you created by using versions of Visual Studio prior to Visual Studio 2010, you can migrate data from these test cases into a manual test case using Microsoft Test Manager. For more information, see Migrating Manual Tests from Versions of Visual Studio Prior to 2010.

Task

Associated Topic

Upgrading test projects and test types from Visual Studio 2010: To upgrade your existing test projects and test types—unit, coded UI, Web performance and load—that you created in Visual Studio 2010, you must follow specific procedures. Additionally, you should be aware of the client-side and server-side changes that will impact your existing testing efforts.

Migrating testing efforts from version of Visual Studio prior to 2010: If you have existing manual test cases that you created by using versions of Visual Studio prior to Visual Studio 2010, you can migrate data from these test cases into a manual test case using Microsoft Test Manager.

Upgrading lab environments: You can migrate your existing lab environments from previous version of Visual Studio.

See Also

Reference

What's New for Application Lifecycle Management Testing in Visual Studio 2012

Concepts

Testing the Application

Creating and Managing Tests

Update an Upgraded Team Project to Access New Features