I thought I had a problem with our TFS Lab Manager setup, 80% of our environments had disappeared. I wondered if it was rights, was it just showing environments I owned? No it was not that.
Turns our the issue was a UX/Scrollbar issue.
I had MTM full screen in ‘Test Center’ mode, with a long list of test suites, so long a scroll bar was needed and I had scrolled to the bottom of the list
I then switched to ‘Lab Center’ mode, this list was shorter, not needing a scrollbar, but the the pane listing the environments (that had been showing the test suites) was still scrolled to the bottom. The need for the scrollbar was unexpected and I just missed it visually (in my defence it is light grey on white). Exiting and reloading MTM had no effect, the scroll did not reset on a reload or change of Test Plan/Team Project.
In fact I only realised the solution to the problem when it was pointed out by another member of our team after I asked if they were experiencing issues with Labs; the same had happened to them. Between us we wasted a fair bit of time on this issue!
Just goes to show how you can miss standard UX signals when you are not expecting them.