TeamCity 2020.1 Help

TeamCity Experimental UI

In version 2019.1, TeamCity introduced an experimental UI option as an alternative to the classic UI. Our experimental UI is a work in progress: we present the changes in functionality in the early stages of development so you can benefit from the new features as soon as possible. Based on our vision and your feedback, we are constantly releasing new UI features and improving existing ones.

Our goal is to provide a support for all the important classic features in the new UI before making it a default option. However, many users of TeamCity have successfully switched to the new UI already and use it in terms of their production pipeline.

We encourage you to try the TeamCity experimental UI and leave your feedback via our UI survey.

Enabling and disabling experimental UI

When you sign in to TeamCity for the first time, it automatically offers you to switch to the experimental UI and remembers your choice.

You can change the default UI representation anytime in My Settings & Tools | General via the Use experimental UI checkbox.

Any page that supports the experimental UI has a toggle that allows quickly accessing a UI mode alternative to the default one. For example, if you miss any of the familiar classic options in the new UI, you can switch the page to the classic UI with the mammoth.png button. To return to the experimental UI, click tube.png.

Available features of experimental UI

Currently, the experimental UI is available for the following pages:

Each experimental page comes with a handy sidebar that serves for quick navigation and preview of build/agent statuses.

Below, you can find a recap of these features. Please note that the described functionality is a work in progress. In case you face any unpredictable behavior in the new UI, feel free to contact us via our feedback channels.

Experimental Project Home page

The Overview tab of the experimental Project Home page strives to provide more visibility of the project's nested subprojects and build configurations. The page has two main views: Builds and Trends.

The Builds view resembles the classic UI and displays a list of the recent builds in subprojects and build configurations of the current project.

The Trends view comprises cards that represent build configurations, grouped by their projects. Each card contains a preview of the most recent builds displayed as bars on a timescale. You can hover over any bar to instantly see more information about the build: its duration, queue statistics, test results, used agent, and more. The card also displays the number of pending changes.

The Trends view of the Project Home:

Experimental Project Home page

All the classic UI tabs are also available on the experimental page: click More and select the required tab in the list.

Experimental Build Configuration Home page

The Overview tab of the experimental Build Configuration Home page provides two already familiar views: Builds, listing all the recent builds of the configuration, and Branches, listing the recent builds in active branches.

Every build item in the list is expandable: click it to preview the most important information about the build and get quick access to any of the Build Details tabs.

Experimental Build Home page

Click a specific build problem or failed test to see the related stack trace:

Failed test preview

Click Open in build log to open the new build log exactly at the line where the problem occurred.

The Changes pop-up block has also been reworked. Now, build changes are sorted chronologically and grouped by their origin: user commits to the code and changes in artifact dependencies. You can also filter the changes by their author and display changes made in the build configuration settings.

Example of the Changes pop-up block:

Experimental Changes pop-up

All the classic UI tabs of Build Configuration Home are also available on the experimental page: click More and select the required tab in the list.

Experimental Build Details page

The new Build Details page offers better visualization of the build results and provides a few handy widgets.

Experimental Build Details page

With the Trends block, you can instantly preview all the previous builds and their details, without leaving the current build page:

Build trends preview

The graphic timeline reflects the duration of each build stage and indicates build problems:

Build timeline

Click any stage to open the corresponding line of the build log. In the new UI, even a long log can be displayed directly in the preview, with no need to download it.

Apart from the Overview tab, you can use the revamped Changes, Tests, and Dependencies tabs:

  • The Changes tab displays more information about changes in the build, separately for user commits and artifact changes. You can filter changes by their author and display changes made in the build configuration settings.

  • The Tests tab allows switching between failed, ignored, and succeeded tests. Click a test to quickly view its details or, for example, to assign an investigation.

  • The Dependencies tab provides three alternative modes of displaying the build dependencies: a visual timeline, structured list, and build chain. Choose the mode that is the most helpful for your current task.

Other classic UI tabs are also available: click More and select the required tab in the list.

Experimental Agents page

The experimental Agents page loads faster for a large number of agents and allows quickly switching between agent details.

Experimental Agents page

The page provides a better hierarchical view of agent pools and makes it easier to see all their assigned projects and cloud images.

The All Agents view gives a quick preview of all agents' statuses and allows managing them side by side, on a single dashboard.

Experimental sidebar

The experimental sidebar is available for the project hierarchy and agent hierarchy. Depending on the current page, it serves for better navigation between either projects and build configurations, or build agents.

You can change the sidebar width by dragging its frame border and hide/show it anytime by clicking the corresponding button at its bottom.

To customize a sidebar, click wn-pencil.png in its upper-right corner. In the customization menu, you can move a project or build configuration in the list via a keyboard or using the arrow UI button, or mark/clear projects as favorite.

Projects sidebar

The Projects sidebar lists all the projects available to the current user of TeamCity and allows searching them by name. You can expand any project to see its nested subprojects / build configurations and quickly switch between them. If a project is added to your Favorites, you will also see the status icons and counters for all its nested objects directly in the sidebar.

The sidebar allows accessing the Favorite projects and Favorite builds views with the lists of your favorite projects and favorite build configurations respectively.
You can also toggle the display of archived projects.

You can use the Q keyboard shortcut to focus on the projects' search field. When focused, use and keyboard arrows to navigate between search results. To remove the focus, press Esc.

Agents sidebar

The Agents sidebar allows browsing the agent pool hierarchy and searching agents and pools by name. The Overview view provides statistics about all the agents on the server.

Roadmap

The next improvements of the experimental UI will affect the following areas:

  • Build Queue page

  • Sidebar and Header areas

  • Mutes/Investigations

Last modified: 18 May 2020