The new version of manual testing in Test Manager 2012 has addressed a few issues compared to the previous version of Visual Studio and has also added a number of new features. The testers can now use the Microsoft Test Manager application independently and start testing applications even without Visual Studio. Shared steps and test recordings are great advantages for manual tests. As Test Manager is integrated with Team Foundation Server, the Test Plan and test cases can be directly created within Test Manager. Directly creating the defect from the Test Result will make the tester's job easier; maintaining the traceability also becomes easier by linking test cases with requirements or defects.

The next chapter explains the details of recording user actions in the user interface and then generating code out of it. This helps the testers to customize the generated code and automate the testing with parameters and rules. The coded UI Test Builder in Visual Studio 2012 provides features that record the actions and generate the code.