Starting this week there are amazing online sessions for Windows 8.1, it will start 25 Sep and end 11 Dec, in the below link you will find it all to regsiter
thttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/ikivanc/archive/2013/09/19/10-online-windows-8-1-sessions.aspx
Enjoy the sessions 🙂
On Tuesday 30 Jul 2013 I will be speaking at Microsoft Egypt in smart village about Software Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012, you can join us at smart village or online, waiting for you there 
In this session we cover the improvements to Microsoft Test Manager 2012 and the new exploratory testing approach offered by Microsoft Test Manager. Microsoft Test Manager 2012 can be used to organize your test plans, author and manage your test cases, and run manual tests. Also we will cover Coded UI tests that provide a way to create fully automated tests to validate the functionality and behavior of your application’s user interface. .
Please join us at the “Software Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012″
Date: Tuesday 30th of July 2013
Time: 10:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Session: “Software Testing with Test Manager 2012 (VS2012)”
Speaker: Ahmed Nasr
Venue: Microsoft building – Smart Village
Now, you can join the session online through the below links:
Note: please make sure that you are using good internet connection
https://join.microsoft.com/meet/azzae/QW29M3WP
Join by Phone
+20235393330
Find a local number
Conference ID: 66127341
See you there
Visual Studio 2012 – Update 2 RTM is officially released , you can check the announcement in Somasegar’s Blog , Also you can download it from here
Right now there is a big buzz on Twitter about this new amazing update 🙂
Feature Summary
Agile Planning
Quality Enablement (Testing)
Quality Enablement (Debugging)
Line of Business (LOB) Application Development
Developer Experience
Web Development
Fixes
For more info, please check this wonderful post by visual studio ALM Team
Happy ALM 🙂
Update: the session will be on Wednesday 20 March
On Monday 18 Mar 2013 I will be speaking at Microsoft Egypt in smart village about Planning and Tracking with TFS 2012, waiting for you there 
In this session we will show you:
-How to manage your project using TFS2012.
-How to do planning with TFS2012.
-What is Work Item Query? and how to use it?
-How to track the progress of your project/tasks.
-How to link requirement with tasks ,test cases, bugs and code.
-Excel reporting, dashboards and Adhoc reporting using very fast and easy ways.
-How to easy gather requirements from customers.
-How to get customer feedback in a very easy and interactive way.
Date: Monday 18th of March 2013 Wednesday 20 March 2013
Time: 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Session: “Planning & Tracking with TFS2012”
Speaker:Â Ahmed Nasr
Venue: Microsoft building – Smart Village
Waiting for you there, you can register from here if you want https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-EG&EventID=1032547929&IO=NWYfN%2fcmqj5P%2btes0hrNCg%3d%3d
Also you can join the session online through here  https://join.microsoft.com/meet/azzae/QW29M3WP
Conference ID: 66127341
See you there
If you are Tester, I’m sure you have been in these situations before or at least one of them.
a) You are asked to test the last changes done by the developers and it’s hard to tell how their code impact the application specially if many of their changes affect many parts of the application and not just specific part.
b) Sometimes developer may change something in a base class that is used by many functions in the application and he/she can’t tell you what you are really supposed to test.
c) After several builds and releases you or the customer finds a bug that was supposed to be fixed & tested in an old build, and after investigation, your team found that it was due to a change in an old function that was reused in the new feature in the app, but the written code affects the old feature.
With Test Impact you can overcome all the above situations.
Because simply what “Test impact” do is see what parts of the code have been called by the test cases you run. So when a new build is done and this build has code changes to the code that was already tested by test cases. You will get notified which test cases you should run again to verify those changes.
Imagine that you have about more than 400 old passed test cases and you get notified that you should run 14 test cases due to the latest code changes. I’m sure you will love that 
Here is how you do it:
1) You need to open the test plan properties then open the test settings or make a new one
2) Then on the data and diagnostics tab you need to choose the Test Impact then click finish
3) Don’t forget to always run your test cases while this test setting is used.
a. If you only need it with some test cases then don’t make this test setting as the default in the test plan and then when you run the test case you can choose run with options and choose the test settings you want.
4) Now after you run your test cases and developers changes a lot of code and you wish to know what to test. In Microsoft Test Manager, select the Track tab to open the track activity. By default, the Queries window is loaded.
5) Select the Assign Build link to view the available builds and the impacted work items between the selected build and the current build.
6) Select the latest build and click on view to see if there were any BUG to verify or user story that was developed to start to run its test cases
7) But to see the scenario we are talking about we need to click on Recommended Tests tab to see the test cases that should rerun again based on the code changed
8) Then select the test cases and click on Rest to active.
By applying Test Impact in the data and diagnostics tab of the test settings, this feature helps you decide which test cases you should rerun based on changes made to an application.
At last the feature that many testers wanted and waited for is NOW available.
Today with the launch of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 1, you will find some new test features in Microsoft Test Manager in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. And the among these features is the one that we waited long for it “ Cross Browser Testing with Coded UI ” 
Now users will be able to perform functional testing of web applications across IE/Firefox/Chrome.
System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 8 X86 Client/Windows 8 X64/Win7 X64/Win7 X86/Win2k8 R2 SP1
- IE version – IE9/ classic IE10
- Firefox version – 15+
- Chrome version – 21+
- Visual Studio Ultimate/Premium – VS 2012 RTMÂ + VS 2012 Update 1 CTP
- Selenium NET Bindings and the Selenium ChromeDriver made available to you through an installer on Visual Studio Gallery. Refer to the file attachment “CUIT Cross Browser Testing Acquisition” for more details
Features:
The following features are available across the various web browsers:
- Recording support for actions and validation on supported IE browsers
- Hand-coding scenarios support for such things as control properties, search, and playback waiters.
- Support for popups and dialog
- Ability to execute basic JavaScript with no return type
- Search resilience (via smart match) and performance improvements
Scenario Videos:
Record on IE and Playback everywhere
Author cross browser tests with Coded UI Test Builder
Author cross browser tests using plain hand coding without UI Map
Run cross browser tests sequentially on multiple browsers
Troubleshoot cross browser test failures
Known Limitations
- No support for Safari browser
- Browser launch needs to be part of the UITest. In case you have a browser already open and you want to run steps on the opened browser, playback will fail for non-IE browser windows. Hence, it is advisable to have launch too as part of the test case.
- Automating browser based actions such as Maximize/minimize/restore is not supported
for more info click here
Happy Testing
On Tuesday 9 Oct 2012 I will be speaking at Microsoft Egypt in smart village about Software Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012, if the registration is full you can join us online, waiting for you there
In this session we cover the improvements to Microsoft Test Manager 2012 and the new exploratory testing approach offered by Microsoft Test Manager. Microsoft Test Manager 2012 can be used to organize your test plans, author and manage your test cases, and run manual tests. Also we will cover Coded UI tests that provide a way to create fully automated tests to validate the functionality and behavior of your application’s user interface. .
Please join us at the “Software Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012″
Date: Tuesday 9th of October 2012
Time: 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Session: “Software Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012”
Speaker: Ahmed Nasr
Venue: Microsoft building – Smart Village
Now, you can join the session online through the below links:
Note: please make sure that you are using good internet connection
Join online meeting
https://join.microsoft.com/meet/azzae/Q0F5C834
Join by Phone
+20235393330
Find a local number
Conference ID: 1142895
See you there
I’m so excited to give a session in PConnet
PConnect from Microsoft Middle East and Africa Center of Expertise offers Microsoft’s partners a FREE virtual academy to enrich professional services skills and increase competitiveness across Microsoft solutions’ stack.
I will be participating in giving the following session with Hosam Kamel
Agile Planning / Development with Visual Studio 2012
In this session, we can see how Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 support Agile practices, including storyboarding, backlog management, sprint planning, and actionable feedback. Find out how to help your team respond to the unpredictability of building great applications with these adaptable tools and new features.
To receive an invitation, make sure to register to PConnect by contacting us on info@meapconnect.net
See you there 
HandsOnVisualStudio.com is a website that we (MEA ALM Community) created based on Brian keller’s Virtual Machine and HOLs to experience, learn & practice Visual Studio 2012 via guided, multi-lingual and real-life labs.
Ayman El-Hattab one of the founders and leaders in MEA ALM Community posted an idea on Visual Studio UserVoice site to take HandsOnVisualStudio.com to the next level by
– Translating the 20 available HOLs to other languages and creating videos and DemoMates to explain them (So far, we have the English and Arabic ones only)
– Creating more HOLs to address extra topics and scenarios like Source Control Features, Team Build, SSDT, GIT Integration, Team Explorer Everywhere, Building Java Projects, Customizing TFS Work Items and Workflows and more)
Please vote here if you see this as good idea 
I’m happy to tell you that there will be a special launch for Visual Studio 2012 in Egypt on Sep 26th in Four Seasons Nile Plaza
Register to attend
26th of September 2012
Four Seasons Nile Plaza
Organizations that are able to move forward with velocity on realizing value opportunities through such modernization investments as Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) stand to attain a competitive advantage in the industries they serve. Organizations that are first to realize such opportunities stand to establish ground as domain leaders. We are excited to announce the release of a new Visual Studio 2012 Launch Event, to help you capitalize on this opportunity immediately.
Agenda
Ahmed Nasr's Blog 