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How to: Track Your Bugs Using Microsoft Test Manager

Using Microsoft Test Manager, you can track the status of both bugs that are assigned to you and bugs that you created. You can also track the bugs for your whole team project to determine the overall quality of areas of the application under test. You can triage bugs by viewing the details of the bug and determining whether the bug should be fixed or not. You can assign the bug to another user to provide more information, decide to fix the bug, or determine whether it is actually a bug.

Requirements

  • Visual Studio Ultimate, Visual Studio Premium, Visual Studio Test Professional

When a bug is fixed, it can be assigned to the tester to verify that the bug has been fixed. In the Verify Bugs view, you can view bugs that are assigned to you and have to be retested, as shown in the following illustration. Or you can create a custom query to track all bugs that have to be retested.

Track Your Bugs

Note

You can customize any of the queries in the Verify Bugs view. These queries for Assigned to me, Created by me and Custom cannot be shared with other users. These custom queries can only be used to list bugs.

You might want to create multiple custom queries to search based on different criteria. For example, you might want a query for all active priority 0 bugs and another query for all priority 0 bugs that must be verified because they have been fixed. You can use the Queries view to create multiple custom queries. You can save these queries to use later. These queries are available in both Microsoft Test Manager and Visual Studio.

There are two types of queries.

  • Team Queries   These queries are available to everyone in your team project. Team Queries can be created and modified only by people who have been granted permission to create them by your team project administrator.

  • My Queries   These queries are available only to you.

Use the following procedures to track your bugs:

  • Track bugs assigned to me or created by me

  • Track bugs using a custom query from the Verify Bugs view

  • Create customized queries for tracking bugs using the Queries view

For more information about how to manage queries and folders, see How to: Create and Manage Queries for Searching Using Microsoft Test Manager.

Track Bugs Assigned to Me or Created By Me

To track bugs assigned to me or created by me

  1. Open Microsoft Test Manager.

    Note

    To display the Microsoft Test Manager window, choose Start, and then choose All Programs. Point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and then choose Microsoft Test Manager.

  2. To run the automated test, choose the down-arrow on the center group selector and then choose Testing Center.

  3. On the center group menu bar, choose Test.

  4. To view the bugs assigned to you, choose Verify Bugs.

    The Verify Bugs view is displayed. It lists all the bugs that are currently assigned to you.

  5. (Optional) To view the bugs that you created, choose Created by me.

  6. (Optional) To reassign any bugs, or change the state of a bug, select the bug and then choose Open.

    The details of the bug are displayed. You can edit any of the details for the bug, and then choose Save and Close. The changes to the state of the bug or who it is assigned to are reflected in the list of bugs.

    Note

    If you want to edit multiple bugs at a time, you can open a query using Visual Studio and then you edit the results using Microsoft Excel. For more information, see Modify Many Work Items at a Time.

Track Bugs Using a Custom Query from the Verify Bugs View

You can edit each of the Assigned to me, Created by me or Custom queries for the Verify Bugs view.

To track bugs using a custom query from the Verify Bugs view

  1. Open Microsoft Test Manager.

    Note

    To display the Microsoft Test Manager window, choose Start, and then choose All Programs. Point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and then choose Microsoft Test Manager.

  2. To run the automated test, choose the down-arrow on the center group switcher and then choose Testing Center.

  3. On the center group menu bar, choose Test.

  4. To view the bugs assigned to you, choose Verify Bugs.

    The Verify Bugs view is displayed that lists all the bugs currently assigned to you.

  5. Choose Assigned to me.

  6. To edit this query, choose the down arrow next to Filter.

  7. Select Edit 'Assigned to me'.

    The Assigned to me query dialog box is displayed.

    Important

    The first clause shown for the query ensures that only work items with a work item type of bug category are selected. The second clause shown for the query makes sure that only items from your team project are returned in the results of the query. Do not change these two clauses.

  8. To add a new clause to your query to select only work item types in the bug category, choose Choose here to add a clause and select the following values for each field:

    And/Or

    Field

    Operator

    Value

    And

    Work Item Type

    In Group

    Bug Category

  9. To add more clauses to your query to customize the bugs that are returned, choose Choose here to add a clause.

    You can now add the clauses that you require for this query. For more information about how to specify the criteria for your query, see Specify Query Filter Criteria.

  10. To view the results of your query, choose Run to run the query.

  11. When the query that you created returns the bugs that you want to view, choose Save query.

    Note

    To see the results of this query when you open the Verify Bugs view, select Assigned to me.

  12. To go back to the default view settings, choose the down arrow next to Filter, then select Reset Assigned to me.

  13. To modify the custom query for Created by me, select Created by me and then follow steps 6 through 11.

  14. To modify the custom query for Custom, select Custom and then follow steps 6 through 11.

Create Customized Queries for Tracking Bugs Using the Queries View

When your team project is created by your team project administrator, there are pre-existing bug queries that they can add. For example, Active Bugs is a pre-existing query that will return a list of all the bugs in an active state.

To create customized queries for tracking bugs using the Queries view

  1. Open Microsoft Test Manager.

    Note

    To display the Microsoft Test Manager window, choose Start, and then choose All Programs. Point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and then choose Microsoft Test Manager.

  2. To create queries, choose the down-arrow on the center group switcher and then choose Testing Center.

  3. On the center group menu bar, choose Track and then choose Queries.

    The Queries view is displayed.

  4. To create a team query, right-click Team Queries folder, and then choose New Query.

    - or -

    To create a personal query, right-click My Queries folder, and then choose New Query.

    Note

    You can create a subfolder and store your queries there. For more information, see "Create a Subfolder to Store a Query" in How to: Create and Manage Queries for Searching Using Microsoft Test Manager.

  5. To enter a name for this query, type the name.

    Important

    The first clause shown for the query makes sure that only items from your team project are returned in the results of the query. Do not change this clause.

  6. To add a new clause to your query to select only work item types in the bug category, choose Choose here to add a clause and select the following values for each field:

    And/Or

    Field

    Operator

    Value

    And

    Work Item Type

    In Group

    Bug Category

  7. To add more clauses to your query to customize the bugs returned, choose Choose here to add a clause.

    You can now add the clauses that you require for this query. For more information about how to specify the criteria for your query, see Specify Query Filter Criteria.

  8. To see the results of your query, choose Run to run the query.

  9. (Optional) To change the columns or the sort order for the query results, choose Column options.

    1. In the Column Options dialog box, select the columns to add from Available columns, choose the arrow to add these columns to the Selected columns.

    2. Choose Sorting and select the columns that you want to sort by.

    3. Choose OK.

  10. (Optional) To group the query results by a column, drag a column header in the query results table to the title bar of the query results.

  11. When the query that you created returns the bugs that you want to view, choose Save on the toolbar.

    The query is now saved.

  12. (Optional) To reassign any bugs, or change the state of a bug, you can select the bug and then choose Open.

    The details of the bug are displayed. You can edit any of the details for the bug as necessary, and then choose Save and Close.

    Note

    If you want to edit multiple bugs at a time, you may want to open this query using Visual Studio and then you can edit the results using Microsoft Excel. For more information about this, see Modify Many Work Items at a Time.

See Also

Concepts

Tracking and Verifying Bugs