MicrosoftPremier / VstsExtensions

Documentation and issue tracking for Microsoft Premier Services Visual Studio Team Services Extensions
MIT License
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Title of the extensions' tab does not describe the data therein #186

Open ncook-hxgn opened 2 years ago

ncook-hxgn commented 2 years ago

Describe the context

Describe the problem and expected behavior The name of the tab is 'Extensions'. This feels like a default. Should the tab not be called 'Build Quality Report' or 'Build Policy Report' or something that makes it more obvious what kind of data it contains?

image

Task logs These won't inform the issue at hand, which is a design one.

ReneSchumacher commented 2 years ago

Hi @ncook-hxgn,

you're right, this is a bit confusing and it is a default name. However, there is no way for us to change that name of the tab without creating a UI extension that adds another tab to the build summary UI. Currently, we simply upload a Markdown file as a custom task result which is rendered automatically by Azure DevOps. I'm not sure if it's worth the additional effort of creating a UI extension just to fix the name of the tab.

ncook-hxgn commented 2 years ago

Hi @ReneSchumacher, thanks for responding :)

.. 🤯 I didn't know that Azure could do that (my team has been wishing for the ability to display custom html reports, sounds like markdown is the way to do it instead).

So.. If I also publish markdown as a pipeline artifact to a guid-named folder, would I get something like 'Extensions 1', 'Extensions 2'? Or would it just pollute this tasks data in the existing tab? image

In terms of the effort though.. could you folks just lift some code from the SAST Scans extension?

I'm trying to sell Azure DevOps to developers who have grown used to Jenkins and the warnings-ng plugin. Between the SAST Scans extension and this one, I might be most of the way there.. it would likely help me get buy-in from developers if the UI didn't look half finished (the result of Azure DevOps default behaviour) compared to the mature UI that Jenkins and the warnings-ng plugin provided. This is a really useful extension (I honestly think it should be built right into Azure DevOps) but me having to explain to developers where the output data actually goes is not making it feel intuitive.

Perhaps we could open a related issue on User Voice about naming tabs after the markdown files they are based upon..? Alas, uservoice feels to me a lot like /dev/null (.. I am thinking of the aforementioned inability to render HTML files being an example of something requested on uservoice several years ago, the kind of thing that enables teams to lift and shift existing tooling into Azure, that seemed to go ignored).

ReneSchumacher commented 1 year ago

@ncook-hxgn Sorry, I have missed this since I have been on vacation and busy with internal meetings and some reorgs inside Microsoft.

First, you need to publish the markdown file using a logging command (see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/scripts/logging-commands?view=azure-devops&tabs=bash#uploadsummary-add-some-markdown-content-to-the-build-summary). It's not enough to simply publish it as a pipeline artifact.

If you publish multiple markdown files, each will be rendered as a separate section in the Extensions tab. There is - unfortunately - no way to rename the Extensions tab. We could add a feature request for this, but I doubt that it will be important enough for a team to pick it up. I'll take a look at the UI extension and check if it's worth the effort, as I'm currently very time-constrained 😕