##Chrome TFS Extension I’ve written an extension for Chrome to deal with some shortfalls I’ve found while using TFS from both a testing and management viewpoint. So far, this is a great issue tracking and testing tool (maybe secondary to Jira in its web interface) but it has a number of failings, but these can simply be worked around with some code. Some of these are: Lack of human readable old/new entries in the test case audit log Lack of a diff to quickly scan and see what a tester changed in a test case, in said audit log Ditto for parameters Parameters in iterations being listed under a test step, not entered inline for readability
As such, I’ve written an extension to address these issues and make my life a little easier from a management and use standpoint. First things first is the audit logs for test cases. I approached this by running an htmldecode on the test steps, to make them human readable, since they’re mostly formatted, just simply htmlencoded and plopped into the page.
After which, a diff is performed, and the result is inserted in a row under the rest of the table. This process is also completed for the parameter audit entries, minus the htmldecode, since these logs are just text placed in the table; the parameter entries lack the formatting, but it may be a worthwhile exercise to apply some heuristics and format out the parameters for readability. The diff is reasonably clear from a management standpoint to see what changed though.
The second major issue is TFS’ handling of parameters. When running a test in the web interface, the parameters are merely left as their variable in their test step, with the values listed under the step. When running a test case potentially with a number of parameters, this is very unfriendly and slows down the testing process.
To remedy this, this extension will parse the actual parameters out into an array, and replace the formal parameters in the test steps, so the test case directions flow more smoothly. The actual parameters are inserted as italicised text, with a hover of the parameter name:
Please check out the project on github. It hasn’t been added to the Chrome store yet for easy install, but if there’s an interest, of course that’s doable as a free extension. Please post any issues, concerns, requests, bugs and I’ll see what I can do about feature requests and the like. Hopefully it can be of use.
EDIT 26 Feb 2014: It has now been added to the Chrome store as TFS Helper for easy install, updating etc.