Microsoft has released Update 2 CTP (Community Technology Preview) 1 for Visual Studio 2013, introducing new enhancements to areas such as agile planning, debugging and diagnostics.

Microsoft technical fellow and Team Foundation Server product unit manager Brian Harry announced the update in a blog post detailing the ALM improvements. In terms of work-item tagging, Update 2 adds queries and permissions on tags, object model and REST API support, and the ability to edit tags in Excel.

Other improvements include improved backlog management performance, updated charting, a release-management update enabling deployment target tagging, and a new Export Test Plan function to HTML. A more in-depth description of the new features can be found in the Knowledge Base article, which provides installation instructions and a detailed breakdown of each technology improvement in the update.

Update 2 CTP 1 also fixes several issues. The Visual Studio 2013 Code Analysis check-in policy no longer triggers on websites; VS2013 no longer crashes when loading a corrupted IntelliTrace file; and developers will no longer receive JavaScript errors when opening pages using the internal Visual Studio Web browser.

The Visual Studio Update 2 CTP 1 can be downloaded here.