Jenkins CI Build Monitor Plugin

Build Monitor Plugin provides a highly visible view of the status of selected Jenkins jobs.

It easily accommodates different computer screen sizes and is ideal as an Extreme Feedback Device to be displayed on a screen on your office wall. (Inspired by the no longer maintained RadiatorView plugin).

Have a question? Perhaps it's already been answered - check the FAQ section below.

Features

I'd like to keep the plugin as simple as possible, yet useful and effective.

Current functionality of the Build Monitor plugin:

• Displays the status and progress of selected jobs. The view is updated automatically every couple of seconds using AJAX, so no "Enable Auto Refresh" needed.
• Displays the names of people who might be responsible for "breaking the build".
• Supports the Claim plugin, so that you can see who's fixing a broken build
• Supports View Job Filters, so that you can easily create Build Monitors for "slow builds", "only failing", etc.
• Supports Build Failure Analyzer, so that you know not only who, but also what broke the build; learn more
• Supports CloudBees Folders Plugin, so that you can have project- and team-specific nested Build Monitors; learn more
• Supports Pipeline Plugin, so that the currently executing stage(s) are shown.
• The number of columns and size of the font used is easily customisable, making it trivial to accommodate screens of different sizes.
• UI configuration is stored in a cookie, making it possible to display different number of columns and using different font size on each of the screens at your office.
• Can work in a colour-blind-friendly mode; learn more

All the previous releases together with their change logs are listed here.

Requirements

To use Build Monitor you'll need:

• Jenkins CI version 1.642.3 or newer - please note that for production installations I recommend using a Long-Term Support release
• A modern web browser - to avoid unnecessary complexity when implementing the view layer I decided to use CSS 3 flexbox. The standard is currently supported by most modern web browsers, so if your browser doesn't support this feature - consider upgrading :)

Your feedback matters!

Do you find Build Monitor useful? Give it a star! ★

Found a bug? Raise an issue or submit a pull request (start with this mini-dev guide, it might come in handy).

Have feedback? Let me know on Twitter: @JanMolak

Setting up

To create a new Build Monitor View, click on the "New View" tab, select "Build Monitor View" and select jobs you wish to display on the monitor.

Simple, right? :-) You can have as many Build Monitor Views as you want - the most popular approach is to have one per team or one per project.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Please note that you can change the number of columns and the size of the font using the gear icon in the top right corner.

Roadmap and work in progress

To stay up-to-date with the project news - follow @JanMolak on twitter.

If you'd like to know what's coming next - have a look at the project's kanban board. Here's how the columns work:

• Ideas - ideas up for discussion. If you'd like to see any of them making it into the Build Monitor project - vote on them or submit a pull request.
• Backlog - features most wanted by the Build Monitor Community. I'll get them done as soon as I have a spare moment. Feel free to help out! :-)
• In progress - stuff I'm currently working on and will make it into the next release.
• Done - done and deployed. Grab the latest version from your Jenkins Update Center or the Releases page.

If you'd like to get hold of the latest and greatest build of the Build Monitor Plugin before it's available in the Jenkins Update Center, you can download the latest incremental build from the Jenkins CI server. If the plugin doesn't appear in your Jenkins Update Center, visit Manage Plugins / Advanced and click the "Check now" button to make Jenkins retrieve the latest update-center.json data.

(A)TDD

If you'd like to understand more about the logic behind the Build Monitor Plugin, have a look at the tests that drove the design.

FAQ

How do I let my teammates know that I'm fixing a broken build?

By claiming it. Build Monitor supports Jenkins Claim Plugin, so once you have it installed, enable "Broken build claiming" in the "Post-build actions" of your Jenkins job. From now on you'll be able to claim any further broken builds and Build Monitor will pick it up.

You might also be interested in a script that enables claiming on all your Jenkins jobs.

How do I know what broke the build?

Wouldn't it be great to know what made your build fail? Well of course it would. Build Monitor supports Jenkins Build Failure Analyzer Plugin so get it, teach it, and Build Monitor will tell you what the Failure Analyzer found out.

I have too many jobs on one screen, what should I do?

You have several options here:

1. review the granularity of your jobs: If you have too many low-level jobs displayed on one screen, consider consolidating them using Promoted Builds Plugin or MultiJob Plugin
2. use job filters: Build Monitor supports Jenkins View Job Filters Plugin, if you have it installed
3. get a bigger screen ...

Red and green colours are lovely, but I'm colour blind ...

There's a colour blind mode you can enable in the Settings

Open Source Software Used

• Angular.js
• Angular-slider
• Customised Angular Bootstrap
• HTML5 Boilerplate normalize.css
• OpenSans font by Steve Matteson

Friends of Build Monitor

Build Monitor is continuously delivered to a Jenkins near you thanks to:

• the time and commitment of the author and the contributors
• the acceptance tests