Run, monitor, and manage builds

After you have set up your build system and defined your build processes, you can run, monitor, and manage your builds from the Builds page (Keyboard: Ctrl + 0, B).

What do you want to do?

• Manage your builds in Team Explorer

• Manage and queue your build definitions

• Manage queued, running, and completed builds

• Manage your build system and security

Manage your builds in Team Explorer

To view the Builds page in Team Explorer

1. If you're not already connected to the team project that you want to work in, then connect to the team project.

2. Choose Home, and then choose Builds (Keyboard: Ctrl + 0, B).

Tip

You can undock the Builds page from Team Explorer and open it in a new window.

Manage queued, running, and completed builds

My Builds displays builds that you have manually queued or that have been automatically queued for you, in the past seven days. For example, as the result of a gated check-in process, My Builds shows all queued or running builds in this time frame, as well as the last five completed builds. In this section, you can open the context menu of a build request or a running build and then choose:

• Open—Displays the build request window for a build request or the build results window for a running or completed build. For a completed build, you can choose Open in Browser to display the build results in your web browser.

• Set Priority—Modifies the priority of a build request.

• Postpone—Suspends a build request that you do not want the system to run. When you are ready for the build system to run it, choose Resume.

• Cancel—Cancels a build request or choose Stop to stop a running build.

• View Changeset—Displays the changesets associated with a build request or a completed build.

• Edit Build Definition—Opens the build definition so that you can:

  • Modify the build definition.

  • Enable, pause, or disable the build definition.

• View Controller Queue—Displays all builds that are queued to be processed by the same controller as the selected build in the Build Explorer window.

• Retain Indefinitely—Overrides the retention policy of the build definition and retains the selected completed build.

• Delete—Deletes a completed build.

• Retry Build—Queue the build using the same options and parameters you specified for the completed build.

• Refresh—Refreshes the Build page.

Manage and queue your build definitions

All Build Definitions displays all build definitions in the team project to which you are currently connected. You can drag build definitions from this list into My Favorite Build Definitions. This option gives you better visibility and access to the build processes that are most relevant to your work.

In the My Favorite Build Definitions and All Build Definitions sections, you can open the context menu of a build definition and then choose:

• View Builds—Displays builds of this build definition that were completed today in the Build Explorer window.

• Queue New Build—Queues a build.

• Edit Build Definition—Opens the build definition so that you can:

  • Modify the build definition.

  • Enable, pause, or disable the build definition.

• Open Process File Location—Opens the version control folder that contains the build process template for this build definition in Source Control Explorer. For more information, see Customize your build process template.

• View Controller Queue—Displays all builds that are queued to be processed by the same controller as the selected build definition in the Build Explorer window.

• Delete—Deletes the build definition. If the build definition is associated with completed builds, you must delete all the completed builds before you can delete the build definition itself. For more information, see Delete a completed build and Delete Command (Team Foundation Build).

Tip

The My Favorite Build Definitions list is shared with the Build Notifications application and is stored on your development client computer, so the list might differ across your various development computers. For more information about the Build Notifications application, see Receive build notifications.

Manage your build system and security

You can open the Actions menu and then choose:

• Manage Queue—Displays the Build Explorer window. You can also choose View My Builds. The Build Explorer window appears and it’s filtered to show completed builds you have recently requested or triggered. For example, you could have checked in a file in a folder that is encompassed by a Continuous Integration build.

• Manage Build Controllers—Manages build controllers and agents. For more information about build controllers, see Deploy and configure a build controller and Deploy and configure build agents.

• Add or Remove Build Quality Values—Modifies the list of build qualities from which your team can select values to manually apply to completed builds.

• Security—Opens your web browser to manage build-level permissions such as Edit build definition and Manage build queue for the team project collection. For more information, see Pernission reference for Team Foundation Server.