NI TestStand Idea Exchange

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I just switched from TS2019 to TS2023. I am not finding a way to configure the TS editor, witch is a hard to orientate flash of white and black screen. The color separation of the different panes, icons, step colors, fields and menues is not given and there are no clearly visible frames distinguished by backcolors. Working with this new GUI is tedious and not suitable, not suporting a rapid development idea. The attention of development shold be by the code and not by the absorbing search and brain consuming editor. How can I use the old 2019 condition gain? Could you please change this in the NEXT Teststand version?

I am currently working on a project using the Teststand software's seq editor. This project has many steps, with nearly 3000 steps. During my seq editing and debugging process, sometimes I need to repeatedly jump in different sections and change some parameters. Oh my God, quickly finding a step between so many steps is driving me crazy, and I feel like my life is getting dark.

So I was thinking, why can't Teststand add a serial number display to the left of the seq edit box? This way, whether I am positioning a certain step or telling my colleagues which line needs to be changed, I simply need to obtain or convey a line number information. I believe that adding this information to an editing form is not particularly difficult.

Why not make it better to use?

Brothers, it's already 2023. Are you willing to continue enduring this pain?

TestStand File Diff and Merge Utility is not very useful for code reviews on its own. It seems adequate for notifying the user that a sequence was added, however from the tool itself the user cannot actually review the newly added or removed sequence's contents. Why is there no + on the item tree to go deeper.

Alternatively:

If I have to right-click a sequence and select "Go to location" then why bother with the separate tool to begin with? Why isn't the diff utility integrated into TestStand's sequence editor itself? Seems like a side-by-side comparison within Sequence Editor would allow a reviewer to poke and prod around all the hidden settings that are often missed using the existing utility.

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TestStand File Diff and Merge Utility has the ability to produce reports in XML format with a slew of dependencies on TestStand (stylesheets, button images, etc.) making them not very portable. Yes, I know they can be packaged with the extra utility, but that's a hassle too. Now instead of managing a file I have to manage a folder of files.

Additionally, these reports only seem to work with Internet Explorer which I'm hearing is going away. Not sure if it's just me, but Edge's IE mode doesn't seem to work for these reports either.

Can NI do something to address this?

Make a browser extension that works with at least chromium based browsers.
Figure out a nice PDF format.

Ideally, I want to upload the file type into my code review platform of choice (git, perforce swarm, crucible, network folder share, etc.) and not require my reviewer to have TestStand installed on their machine.

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when manipulating data between different system, JSON string are very usefull to have a standardize, simple and readable exchange format.

Python or LabVIEW can dump structure (dictionnaires or Cluster) to JSON and vice versa.

It can be very usefull to allow to dump a TestStand variable or container to JSON and vice versa.

It can be good to have also a way to have native function in string functions to read, write or add a specific value in a JSON string.

MaximeR

There is rudimentary Command Line Interface (CLI) integration in the TestStand Deployment utility. Its undocumented, and is one flag. "build". Which is useful, but the fact that my only option to determine if the build succeeded is manually parse the build output log is cumbersome and error prone.

In a world where continuous automation and build automation are becoming daily buzzwords, additions to the CLI are sorely missing.

I don't necessarily need to be able to do much from the CLI, but having control and the ability to read back status on a build would be tremendous.

https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/Running-the-deployment-utility-from-the-command-line/td-p/1624948

Obviously it's not a great idea to have loads of nested conditional steps, but for longer sequences even with only a few nested conditions, I find it hard to find the matching END for example when an if-statement. Sure I can count the number of lines, but I think it would be a lot easier if the "scope line" that indicates the scope would stand out more and become bold or blue (like the selected line)

Here's are two mockups (bold line)

An alternative indication could be to highlight the ending line of the scope like below.

Having a keyboard shortcut for jumping between beginning and the ending within a scope would also be very helpful!

In Microsoft Visual Studio there's a keyboard shortcut (CTRL + [ ) which toggles the cursor position between the and and beginning of a scope, and it works with all things that encapsulates a scope or a string or expression. e.g. curly braces in code sections, quoted strings etc.

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Hello,

Many SW-Tool providers have realized that how comfortable it is for a programmeruser to work with dark backgrounds. Microsoft did it in 2013 for visual studio and now browser companies are doing the same. Unfortunately, I can Change background color of MAX and TestStand. This makes longer working painful for eyes.

An example of such a bakground is attached with the message.

Such a feature will improve ergonomics.

Thank you

Regards

Ricky

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In instances of nested expressions, it would be useful to be able to press tab to indent a line. I propose inserting "n" spaces when pressing tab.

Coding style of course varies, but for readability, I rather dislike the following

Trim(Locals.SomeLocal) == "" ? (Locals.SomeLocal = "foo",Locals.AnotherLocal = "bar", Locals.SomethingOrRather = "zoo") : False

...and much prefer this styling:

Trim(Locals.SomeLocal) == "" ? (
                Locals.SomeLocal = "foo",
                Locals.AnotherLocal = "bar",
                Locals.SomethingOrRather = "zoo" ) : False

...but at present the latter is tedious because one has to insert a lot of whitespace manually or worse yet, use another text editor and paste it into TestStand. It would be nice if TestStand's expression editor supported this basic feature available in almost every text editor or IDE.

Thanks,

Mr. Jim

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right now with TestStand Sequence Analyzer utility, it is limited to analyzing a whole sequence file at once (or as much of it as you analyze before you hit the stop button).

However, if I have a long sequence file this can take quite a while, and I don't really want to wait.

Add a feature where I can select areas to analyze and have sequence analyzer just analyze those areas (for example -- select a few (sub)sequences in my sequence file, or a few steps within a sequence). This way I can limit the area of my analysis to where I know I made changes (or where I know my biggest problems are) and focus on those and not waste time analyzing everything else.

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The Search Directories.Insert method should only insert the directory if it is not already there.

The Method includes an index argument, if the directory is already there, then it should move the existing directory to the requested index.

While we were working on the shipping examples for DQMH, we discovered that the insert method was creating duplicates every time it was called. We implemented a work around that includes a for loop to check each of the items in the search directories list to see if it is the directory we are trying to insert, if it is, we delete it. Once the for loop ends, then we insert the directory where we want it.

You can see a video of the issue and how we worked around it here: DQMH 3.1 Only inserts the Delacor examples directory into Search Directories once

The "Report Options" dialog box provides a lot of flexibilty in the way reports are generated for sequences executing under the Batch model. A new report can be generated for each UUT, for each socket, etc. One option that appears to be lacking, is to flat out not generate a Batch Report. Doing a brief search, I found at two other folks who were trying to do the same thing:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/Disable-Batch-Report-TestStand-2014/td-p/3091476

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/How-do-I-disable-batch-report-in-the-batch-model/td-p/238387

Suggest adding another check box to the Report File Pathname on the Report Options dialog box to disable batch reports.

In order to keep file clean, sequence analyzer helps in finding "potentially unused variables". To delete such variables, each warning in sequence analyzer result has to be double clicked and then delete has to be pressed to finally remove that variable.

In many cases with large sequence file, there could be dozens of unused variables and in a single work-space there are dozens of .seq files.

Is it possible to provide a button or some option to remove all unused variables from a sequence file?

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The TestStand documentation describes the ControlExecFlow user subproperty as follows:

"User can control the flow of execution by setting breakpoints, single-stepping, and using the Set Next Step command. User can use the Run Mode command in a user interface. User can use the Run Mode command in the TestStand Sequence Editor but only if the EditSequenceFiles subproperty is also True."

This description should be amended to include the fact that the value of this subproperty also enables or disables options in run-time error dialogs (Retry, Ignore, Abort, and Break). TestStand users will see run-time error dialogs with different options based on the value of this subproperty.

NOTE: The ControlExecFlow user subproperty description can be found in the online help under NI TestStand Environment Reference Help>>TestStand Sequence Editor Menus, Panes, and Windows>>Windows>>User Manager Window>>User and Group Privileges.

According to this forum discussion the Flow step types behave different compared to other step types, making customization hard:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/Where-does-logic-for-flow-control-step-types-live/td-p/2607349

Rectifying the behaviour of the Step types may be out of reach as this would dig too deep into architecture.

But there is a lack of documentation of the behaviour of these steps. E.g. just to mention the fact that step type functionality is in those cases tied to the step type name would help a lot.

NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Graphical distinguishing of menues, pains, borders, icons etc in Teststand sequence Editor

Review all idea Exchange and Update status

Suggest adding line number display on the left side of seqedit

Integrate Diff Merge Utility into Sequence Editor

Improve TestStand Diff Merge Utility Reporting

Axis labels for graphs in report

Add JSON string function

Improved TestStand Deployment Utility CLI

Highlight the scope of selected a conditional step

Add Git to supported source code control providers

Dark theme (background) color for TestStand and MAX

Create a TestStand Champion title

Support Tabs and Indentation in Expression Editor

TestStand Sequence Analyzer able to anlyze subset of a sequence file

Search Directories Insert method should not duplicate a search directory

Provide mechanism to disable batch report through "Report Options" dialog box

Remove all unused variable in sequence file with single click

Improve ControlExecFlow user subproperty documentation

Improve Documentation of Flow Steptypes

Ability to Launch Version Selector from Error Dialog