How to: Change the State of Shared Steps to Closed

  • Article

If you accidentally create shared steps, or your team no longer needs shared steps, you can change the state of the shared steps to closed using Microsoft Test Manager. Closed shared steps still exist in your team project, but only appear in the results list for queries that specifically search for closed shared steps. You can change the default query to only show open shared steps.

Note

You cannot delete shared steps from your team project by using Microsoft Test Manager.

Use the following procedures to:

  • Change the state of shared steps to closed

  • Customize the shared steps manager view

To change the state of shared steps to closed

  1. Open Microsoft Test Manager.

    Note

    To display the Microsoft Test Manager window, click Start, and then click All Programs. Point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and then click Microsoft Test Manager 2010.

  2. From the Testing Center, click Organize and then click Shared Steps Manager.

    The Contents pane is displayed.

  3. To open the shared steps to change the state, double-click the shared steps that are listed in the Shared Steps manager pane.

  4. Click State and then click Closed.

  5. (Optional) In the History tab, type Shared Steps No Longer Required to explain why the shared steps are closed.

  6. To save your changes, click Save and Close.

    The list of shared steps is displayed in the shared steps manager. The closed shared steps are still displayed.

  7. (Optional) To hide the closed shared steps, you can add the state column and filter by state.

    1. Right-click in the columns header of the shared steps manager.

      A drop-down list of fields is displayed.

    2. To select the state field, click State from the list of fields. Click outside the drop-down list to close it and to add the field to the columns.

      Note

      You can select multiple fields from the drop-down list.

    3. To add a filter to the column to hide the closed shared steps, click the drop-down arrow in the column header. Select Active to show only the active shared steps.

    Note

    You can also create your own query to view only active shared steps. For more information, see How to: Search for Test Cases from Microsoft Test Manager.

Customize the shared steps manager view

To customize the shared steps manager view

  1. Open Microsoft Test Manager.

    Note

    To display the Microsoft Test Manager window, click Start, and then click All Programs. Point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and then click Microsoft Test Manager 2010.

  2. To open the Test Case Manager, click the down-arrow on the center group switcher and click Organize.

  3. In the center group menu bar, click Shared Steps Manager.

    The Shared Steps Manager is displayed and all the shared steps are shown in the list.

    Note

    All active and closed shared steps are displayed in this view.

  4. To change the query that is used by default to show all the shared steps, click Unfiltered and point to Edit filter.

    The Edit filter view is displayed.

  5. To add a new clause to the default query for the Shared Steps manager to only show the shared steps that are not closed, click Click here to add a clause and select the following values for each field:

    And/Or

    Field

    Operator

    Value

    And

    State

    <>

    Closed

  6. To add more clauses to your query to customize the shared steps returned, click Click here to add a clause.

  7. Click each column in the query clause to fill in the clause. If a column has a list of accepted values, a drop-down arrow appears when the column is selected. Click the drop-down arrow to select from the list. The following columns are available:

    Query Column

    How to complete

    And/Or

    Select And if this clause and the previous clause must be true to match a result. Select Or if either this clause or the previous clause must be true to match a result.

    Field

    The list for this field contains all the searchable work item fields used in the current Team Foundation Server. Use as many clauses and fields as you have to have in order to obtain useful results. Press ALT+DOWN ARROW or type the field name that you want to select.

    Operator

    Examples of operator choices are = (equal), <> (not equal to), > (greater than), < (less than), >= (greater than or equal to), <= (less than or equal to), In, Was Ever, Was Never, and Contains.

    Value

    Specifies the value that you are looking for in the specified field. If there is a list of values to select from, click the drop-down arrow to select the one that you want. Team Foundation work item tracking includes some query variables to dynamically add values to your query. For more information, see Query Variables.

  8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 to add all the values for which you want. Then click Save query to save this query as the default query for the Shared Steps manager.

    Note

    To clear this query and reset to the original query, click Filtered and point to Reset filter.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Share Common Test Case Steps Using Shared Steps

Concepts

Creating Manual Test Cases