Introduction to Builds

Introduction

As applications are broken down into smaller components and microservices that can be built and deployed independently, the Release Management process needs to track various CI/CD pipelines that are doing all of the builds, deployments, and even some of the automated testing.

Release & Verify's Builds entity provides visibility and tracking of build progression for every Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Pipeline in your enterprise regardless of the applications being used and the variations in the pipelines.

Combined with Release Management and Environment Management the Builds entity enables you to see:

• What software versions are being delivered as part of a Release?
• What versions are currently deployed in your non-production environments?
• What user stories and defect fixes are included in each build?

The Builds entity also provides additional DevOps and Value Stream metrics for each Application or component, such as:

• Build frequency
• Build duration
• Build success rate
• Deployment frequency (in non-production)
• Time between deployments (Dev-Test-Stage-Prod)

Pre-requisite

You must have the following user permissions:

• Create Builds.
• Edit Builds.
• Delete Builds.
• Create/Delete Build Public Query Builder: You can create and delete public filters in the Build grid’s Query Builder.

Enable Builds

To enable Builds entity:

1. Go to Settings  > Customization > Builds.
2. Click Build Setup.
3. Click to select the Enable Builds checkbox.

The saving of CI application console logs can also be toggled from Build Setup Customization.

Navigation

Environment > Builds

Builds Data Fields

These are:

• Build Tag: The external version number, such as 3.1.3.
• Build Number: The internal version number generated by the CI application.
• Branch Name: The name of the GIT branch that has been built.
• Build Status: The final Build status (Successful, Failed, Aborted, and so on).
• Commit Number: The unique reference to the CI job execution.
• Commit Count: The total number of commits in the build.
• Change Log: An attachment that contains the change log showing the list of Commits, who created them and the commit comments.
• Artifacts: The list of any artifacts generated. Not mandatory.
• Linked Release: The Release & Verify Release linked to the Build.
• Linked Changes: The list of Release & Verify changes linked to the Build.
• Deployment History: This captures of history of Deployments for a Build to each Environment in Release & Verify:
  • Environment Name
  • Used for Phase
  • Date/Time
  • Triggered From
  • Time between Deployments.
• Job Execution History: This captures details of the job that created the Build and any additional jobs run against the Build such as Deployment or Test jobs:
  • JobName
  • Application
  • Status
  • Duration
  • Execution Date/Time
  • Logs.

View Builds