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Build Notification Applet

Admittedly, our inclusion of continuous integration (build queuing, triggers and drop management) into the Orcas release was a bit rushed and we didn't have time to implement everything we wanted. One of the bigger omissions was a means of notifying the user about build events and making it easy for them to respond to those events.

Well, we've worked up an initial design for a notification applet that would run in your tray (er, I mean "notification area") and keep you up-to-date on the status of the build definitions you're interested in. Here's an annotated storyboard that walks you through the design. Please post comments here and let me know what you think. We haven't even started implementing this yet, so now is the time to give us feedback.

Build Notification Applet
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: notification build)

Note that if you click the on SlideShare link you'll be taken to a page where you'll have the option of a full screen view of this document - which I'd highly recommend.

Published Tuesday, May 15, 2007 9:53 PM by JimLamb
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Comments

# VSTS Links -

Jim Lamb on Continuous Integration and Build Notification Applet. Brian Harry on May DevDiv Dogfood...

Thursday, May 17, 2007 9:23 AM by Team System News

# Help us design the Build Notification Applet

As Jim Lamb points out, one of the improvements we'd like to make to our upcoming release of continuous

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 10:13 AM by Jeff Beehler's Blog

# re: Build Notification Applet

On a related note - it would be nice to have an RSS feed (as opposed to/in addition to email notification) for TFS notifications. This might be more valuable for check-ins and work item changes, as a project manager to "queue" up notifications that I might not be able to see in real-time in my task bar but want to see.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 9:45 PM by socko

# re: Build Notification Applet

socko, there are RSS feed generators for TFS version control, work item tracking, and build: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2006/08/11/tfs-rss-feed-generators.aspx.

Buck

Sunday, June 03, 2007 8:58 PM by buckh

# Specs for a CCTray equivalent for Team Build and TFS Hosting

Jim Lamb has posted a couple of specs recently. The first is a Windows tray app that notifies you when

Wednesday, June 06, 2007 8:26 PM by Buck Hodges

# re: Build Notification Applet

What I'd love to see is a "Deploy To->" menu item in that notification popup.  That, of course, will require some additional features in TFS that I hope are coming soon. :)

Wednesday, June 06, 2007 9:26 PM by ericmatz

# re: Build Notification Applet

Two comments.  I didn't see a way to "Force a Build" which is something we use fairly often with CC tray.  I also didn't see a way to monitor builds from mutiple TF servers.  Other than that, it looks pretty slick. Oh yeah, make sure the overlays on the icon will be discrernable on a tray that has a dark background. I worry that it will be too hard to tell if a build is broken or not on my Zune themed desktop.

Thursday, June 07, 2007 1:41 PM by keith_hill

# re: Build Notification Applet

I like the general idea, but I think putting a permanent ico into the notification area is really not in lign with the UI guidelines. I know, everyone else violates them all the time as well, but you can be better, right?

In particular: Only show an icon, when there was an event, not to show the current status. If you want a piece of UI that gives a permanent sight into the build status, why not design a Gadget for that? It can hold a lot more information and it would be a much more appropriate place to put such information.

Friday, June 08, 2007 9:33 AM by davidacoder

# re: Build Notification Applet

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I've updated the specification and I've included some responses to your specific feedback here:

ericmatz: I agree that a "Deploy To ->" menu item would be a terrific addition. As you remarked, there's a significant set of additional work required to make that possible. I'm afraid I can't comment on that just yet.

keith hill: I've updated the specification to include a way of queueing a build from the build status window. You'll notice that the configuration dialog now lets you select build definitions across multiple Team Foundation Servers.

davidacoder: Point taken. I've also put together a sidebar gadget, but haven't published it yet. Currently it doesn't offer any information about queued or running builds, just completed build status. It's challenging to fit an informative view into the sidebar's real estate.

Thanks! - Jim

Thursday, June 21, 2007 1:20 PM by JimLamb

# Build Notification Applet für Team

Jim Lamp stellt die Spezifikation für ein Build Notification Applet für Team Foundation Server vor. Feedback

Thursday, July 26, 2007 1:18 PM by Christian Binder's Weblog

# Build Notification Applet fürTeam Foundation Server

Jim Lamp stellt die Spezifikation für ein Build Notification Applet für Team Foundation Server vor. Feedback

Thursday, July 26, 2007 2:15 PM by Noticias externas

# Preview of the build notification tray applet power tool for TFS 2008

We would have loved to have included in TFS 2008 a build notification tray applet along the lines of

Friday, September 21, 2007 1:32 AM by Buck Hodges
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