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We are just integrating Visual Studio Team Services as our new workflow and setting up automated builds on commits to master. Currently the individual who commits to master and instigates a new build will get a notification email when the build fails or succeeds.

We thought we would all get a notification but it does not appear that way. We have looked at notification settings in VSTS but have so far not found any setting that would allow all of us to be notified on build completion. Is there a setting we are missing or is this a feature that is not currently supported?

jessehouwing
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tokyo0709
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4 Answers4

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Notifications

The VSTS Build Succeeded notification can be customized to report only on certain statuses using the Filter Criteria options, by creating the subscription for a team or group the notification will be sent to all members of the group:

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If you need more advanced filters, consider routing your notification to an alternate email address and point that to IFTTT or Microsoft Flow. Or using the Build notification step in Microsoft Flow directly.

Visual Studio CD tools

The VSTS CD Tools integrate build notification directly into Visual Studio. This results in a toast notification whenever you have Visual Studio open:

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Catlight

Another great tool to get build notifications is Catlight, it runs from the task tray and will even notify you when Visual studio isn't open:

enter image description here

Siren of Shame

And a 4th option is Siren of Shame, which also offers integration with a USB emergency light that will start blinking when the build fails:

enter image description here

jessehouwing
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  • Thanks so much for the thorough response! – tokyo0709 Nov 17 '17 at 20:28
  • Catlight is a good tool, but unless using it for an open source project, there's now a yearly subscription pricing model in effect. https://catlight.io/editions – CJBS Jan 17 '18 at 00:15
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AnyStatus

AnyStatus is a notification tool that comes as a Visual Studio add-in, or stand-alone tray icon (desktop app) that will notify upon status of build changes.

It has support for many Continuous Integration systems, including TFS vNext.

Here's is the configuration screen for adding a new project:

AnyStatus config screen

Here is the status screen, which appears when clicking the tray icon:

Status Screen, including folders

Here is the tray icon (immediately after triggering a build):

Tray icon

The tray icon shows a tick when all builds are OK, and a red X when at least one has failed. It shows a 'play' icon when at least one build is in progress.

CJBS
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Maybe node-build-monitor could be interesting for you. We use it for our teams on a dedicated screen. But you can open it in a browser tab and enable desktop notifications, too.

It's open source with a lots of contributers and support for many services.

https://marcells.github.io/node-build-monitor

Marcell Spies
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If anyone is getting the dreaded "An error occurred while sending the request." with Catlight, try running it as administrator. Fixed it for us.

Ben Power
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