Is there a way to see/recover the deleted test run results from TFS 2018?

Question

The on-premise TFS installation that we have in our organization was upgraded from 2013 to 2015 and now finally 2018. However, recently we started noticing that the test run results from older test cases were being automatically deleted and the test cases were being set to Active.

I found out through this link that TFS 2015 Update 1 introduced a retention policy and for any older projects it was Never Delete and for any projects created after the Update 1 upgrade was 365 days. And sure enough, the only projects that had data deleted were created after 2015.

Now, we currently do not have a proper TFS admin so we are trying to find out a solution to see if it was possible to recover that deleted test run data or is it gone from the system as well? I have not seen anything on the internet that could help and only articles that I find all link to the above MS page.

So, is it still possible to somehow recover those results? Or are they lost forever?

Answer 1

Is there a way to see/recover the deleted test run results from TFS 2018?

I am afraid there is no such a way to recover the deleted test run results from TFS 2018.

Accordig to the document Delete test artifacts:

We only support permanent deletion of test artifacts such as test plans, test suites, test cases, shared steps and shared parameters. Deleted test artifacts won't appear in the recycle bin and cannot be restored. Deletion of test artifacts not only deletes the selected test artifact but also all its associated child items such as child test suites, test points across all configurations, testers (the underlying test case work item doesn't get deleted), test results history, and other associated history.

So, the deleted test result will be permanently deleted, could not be recovered.