Dashboard: Focus on the Repositories you care most about

[joshk]

When @lislis joined, we started planning an updated UI which would help users focus on the Repositories which they care most about.

This is especially useful for teams which have a growing number of Repositories testing on Travis. Additionally, it brings consistency to our UI when viewing Builds across various screen sizes.

We have further iterations of this feature in planning, but we want to hear from you on what works well, what needs improvement, and what could be removed.

This feature will be available for users to opt-in to from the 28th of February.

Please leave all feedback related to this feature here as comments.

[bsipocz]

It's always great to see when a feature request becomes a feature. How can one opt in?

[joshk]

We have a blog post coming out next week with more information, stay tuned :)

[sschuberth]

An here's that blog post: https://blog.travis-ci.com/2017-02-28-introducing-dashboard

[bsipocz]

Thanks, I'm looking at it. Do you prefer feedback in one big comment or can I do it one thing/comment (latter is a bit easier)?

[LefterisJP]

Hey guys is this the right place to report an issue with the Dashboard or should a separate issue be opened? I am getting this error repeatedly when trying to add a repository to the starred repositories:

If this is not the place I can make a new issue. In that case please advise. Should this issue be against this repo or the main travis repo?

[bsipocz]

same for me, though I can star repos where I have commit rights...

[LefterisJP]

Could be due to that. I believe I lost my direct push rights to that repo due to some organization reshuffling.

I have also added 2 repositories to starred repos which I have push rights to succesfully.

[bsipocz]

The other issue I have is the disappearance of the sidebar. Even though one can star repos of interest on the dashboard, this is less productive now than it was before with the sidebar (containing hundreds of them) as when looking at a repo/build one needs to go back to the dashboard to see what other repos doing.

Ideally it would be great to be able to choose what to see on the sidebar (starred repos/all repos/queue for starred repos, etc), but getting back the old one would be a good place to start.

[fabioknoedt]

For me, it works! I am missing the left bar with all repositories + how many jobs are running at the moment: e.g. (2/5)

[localheinz]

Loving it!

[joshk]

Hi @LefterisJP and @bsipocz

Could you please email support@travis-ci.com with further information on the errors you are seeing so we can dive into the problem further?

@bsipocz If the feedback is short (per item) then one comment is fine, otherwise individual comments per feedback would be great.

Thanks a bundle for trying this out!

[mtoothman]

I also miss the count of running jobs and the convenient + button to add new repos.

Also, this is our fault for using long names, but some repos with long names don't display in full in the dashboard view. Can the allotted space for that be larger?

[joshk]

Running and Queued Jobs will be added to the Dashboard soon.

I'll take note of the + button so we can add something to help with that!

[bsipocz]

Do you plan to add an organization queue as well, or it's only queue jobs per repos?

[joshk]

We plan to add a tab to the dashboard which lists all jobs queued and running which you have access to. A similar tab will also be added to the Org page eg. https://travis-ci.org/travis-ci

[lislis]

Small fyi: currently we only display up to 100 of your repositories on the dashboard. We're working on a way that best accommodates pagination if you have access to more repos.

[tas50]

The easy ability to check out individual orgs is great, but the UI changes make it really hard to figure out what's running right now. Sometimes we have an insanely large test queue and I want to figure out what's running so I can cancel some jobs. It would be nice to expose that in a simple way.

[joshk]

Hi @tas50, we plan to add this in an upcoming iteration (https://github.com/travis-ci/beta-features/issues/5#issuecomment-283115588)

[pelikhan]

Where is the dashboard???

[joshk]

@pelikhan if you read the blog post it explains how to enable the Dashboard.

[jweaver]

Some feedback on my use so far (with 25+ repositories on .com travis):

• I miss the menu where it shows the number of running jobs at that moment. In the current travis-ci.com, I have a tab on the left that shows me this. On the dashboard I don't see it at all.
• Stars are a nice feature, but I wish I could further "group" builds together. I have a big project that spans a lot of repos and I'd love to distinguish those builds (visually) separate from the others. Stars don't really scale for that use case.

[mykmelez]

I'm a member of two GitHub orgs (mozilla and mozilla-b2g) and also have a variety of personal repos. Currently, when I go to the dashboard, I only see repos in the "mozilla" org. I don't see any of my personal repos. Is this because "mozilla" has over a thousand repos, and the dashboard only shows 100 of them at the moment, which crowds out my personal ones?

[joshk]

@jweaver we plan to add this in an upcoming iteration (https://github.com/travis-ci/beta-features/issues/5#issuecomment-283115588)

@mykmelez Thank you for reporting that. That could indeed be the issue. We are looking at ways to fix that, I don't have an ETA on this at the moment though, sorry.

[eliaskosunen]

I would like the available screen space to be used more efficiently. In the old version, all of the width of the screen was used, but in this new one only under a half of it. I use .org.

Here's an example.

Or am I just dumb and did something wrong?

[ruuda]

Two remarks:

• I often keep one Travis tab open to watch builds. Without the sidebar, I have to click twice instead of once to go to a different repository. Apart from the extra click, opening the dashboard is slow, it shows the Travis head with animated dots for about a second before I can continue.
• I do not have a large number of repositories, but I am a member of various organisations, and I would like to keep those separate. I don’t want to see builds for work repositories at home, and my personal repositories clutter the list at work. Github partially solves this with the dashboard context switcher.

[joshk]

@eliaskosunen Thanks for the feedback. The new centered UI is meant to give better structure, as well as a more consistent experience across different screen sizes. The exact same information is displayed, we just don't add extra padding for paddings sake. We will be looking at tweaks and improvements though.

@ruuda Thanks for the feedback as well. We are looking at adding a quick switch between repositories, that will likely come in a later iteration. Loading the Dashboard is a bit slow at the moment, we have yet to make a range of performance improvements. We are also planning in an Org switcher so you can focus on just your repositories in the Dashboard. You can also use your public profile page for this too. eg. https://travis-ci.org/travis-ci

[mykmelez]

@mykmelez Thank you for reporting that. That could indeed be the issue. We are looking at ways to fix that, I don't have an ETA on this at the moment though, sorry.

Until you work out pagination, another solution would be to show me up to 100 repositories from each organization (and my personal account), grouped by organization/account. Alternately, if there was a way to star a repository in another interface, f.e. in the page for a specific repository, then I could star them there to make them show up at the top of the dashboard.

[eliaskosunen]

@eliaskosunen Thanks for the feedback. The new centered UI is meant to give better structure, as well as a more consistent experience across different screen sizes. The exact same information is displayed, we just don't add extra padding for paddings sake. We will be looking at tweaks and improvements though.

@joshk I see. I just dislike the fact that not all information even fits properly when it's using about three fifts of the available width. I have a 1440p monitor, and the padding is about 780 pixels on either side, so that means that 1560 of 2560 available pixels are not used. A centered UI is a great idea, but I'd like less of the space to be wasted.

[joshk]

@eliaskosunen I completely understand. I will take this feedback into consideration for future iterations of our UI. Making something which gives a consistent experiences on a laptop, or 1440p desktop monitor, was one of our goals, but I think we can also tweak and improve on this idea and concept further. Thanks for the great feedback.

[eranshapira]

It takes too long to load the data on the main screen, sometimes it's half a minute before I see my repositories.

[jmgarnier]

The immediate reaction from my colleagues was: "where is the build queue" ? I guess I will follow that gh issue and re-enable this Beta feature when the queues are back. Apart from that, nothing shocking, it looks good!

[pitrou]

How do I star a repository? I can't find a star on e.g. https://travis-ci.org/dask/distributed . When I go to my dashboard, the list of repositories ("All active repositories") is truncated, probably because the conda-forge team has so many repositories.

[geerlingguy]

I was just referred here by a support response—in my case, some projects just didn't appear on the dashboard, as I presume my org has > 100 projects, meaning some just don't get displayed (including the one I'm most active on right now!).

For now I've had to switch back to the old style view, but otherwise I love the Dashboard's conciseness.

(Note: Even if you just display like the 100 most recently updated, but allow me to filter/search for others, I can star the ones I'm interested in, and that's all I'd care to do. Don't need a pager or anything if that's a holdup).

[blimmer]

Similar to @jweaver 's feedback, once I star something, I think it should be removed from the list below all the favorites. See the screenshot below, most of the screen is duplicated and not great use of the real estate IMO:

Instead of being able to see 11 unique repos in the 11 available slots, I can only see 7 unique.

[joshk]

Thanks for this feedback @blimmer

Initially we decided not to remove the repos from the full list as the UI/UX of starring and removing didn't feel right and could lead to confusion. I'll relook into this though as your feedback is perfectly valid.

Thanks a bundle!

[blimmer]

No problem - I'm really liking the direction of this feature.

[carlad]

I also miss the ability to search for a repo. With a large number of repos it's really hard to find a specific repo if it's not already starred.

[ankon]

Feedback after trying to use the dashboard for a week, and now having switched back:

1. I'm really missing the "what's building right now, what's in the queue" overview
2. ... especially the part that it took just a little scrolling and a click to switch from one build to another one!

I do like the "fresher" design, but for me the new dashboard is really adding work. Disclaimer: I'm the "build dude" in our organization, so I look at a lot of projects building every day, rather than watching just a specific project once in a while.

[afeld]

Edit: duplicate of https://github.com/travis-ci/beta-features/issues/5#issuecomment-286200398. Missed it before, sorry!

One issue that came up for me: some recently active repositories seem to be missing from the new dashboard.

Normal

Beta

[xealot]

I just joined Travis-CI and my organization has a lot of repos in quite a few orgs (few hundred). It would be SUPER NICE if I could just exclude certain orgs from my own dashboard.

The starring feature is right in spirit, but it's still super annoying to make me star 75 repos to prioritize them over 150 others.

[joshk]

@xealot thanks for the feedback. We have some ideas in the works to make this better. We will definitely keep this feedback in mind.

@afeld Sorry for the issues, could you check on your profile page if the repos that are missing are marked as active?

[seripap]

Love the new dashboard but I am with @ankon, missing the 'whats currently being built/queued' right now. The star repo is a nice feature but it's really hard to have a quick glance of what is inactive and active in terms of building.

Maybe a simple fix is to add a light yellow background to the row to indicate that it is currently building?

[joshk]

@seripap We have something in the works, expect an update shortly :)

[kaizhu256]

i don't like the new dashboard, because everything i need, including the logs should be on a single-page (i hate extra user-clicks, its poor UX for me, especially when i have hundreds of repos to manage). please allow opt-out to use the "classic" dashboard if you ever do GA release with the new dashboard.

the main appeal of travis-ci to everyone was its one-page simplicity, and lack of complicated ui and zero-config. don't lose that focus ; )

[kaizhu256]

@xealot , yea, i have an org with 2000+ repos, and the noise from that drowns everything else out. i ended up leaving that org, and creating a separate "org-user" account to maintain it.

[kaizhu256]

a common painpoint is to do rolling build/update of repositories prioritizing those with the oldest travis "last_build_started_at" time.

with 2000+ repos i currently have to maintain own db to track that @ https://github.com/kaizhu256/node-utility2/blob/gh-pages/build/dbTable.TravisRepo.json , using travis api-calls.

so an ascending sort-by last_build_started_at feature would be nice-to-have (as well as sort-by last_build_status)

[kaizhu256]

found out i can i can get the list repos in reverse-order (for previously mentioned rolling release use-case) with the following curl command:

curl "https://api.travis-ci.org/repos?\
active=true&\
include=repository.current_build&\
limit=100&\
sort_by=current_build%3Aasc&\
" \
    -# \
    -H "Travis-API-Version: 3" \
    -H "Authorization: token $TRAVIS_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \

woot!

[joshk]

Hi @kaizhu256, thanks for your feedback!

The Dashboard going into GA and being the default is a long way off as we have plenty of feedback we need to incorporate into future releases. Although we are unlikely to offer an opt-out for when it does become the default, we do plan to address your one-page simplicity advice as UI improvements should not mean more work and more clicks. Our goal is to provide better focus and less noise. Simplicity and delight is at the core of what we are working towards.

[schoenwaldnils]

+1 for the need of a repo-search

[kaizhu256]

can u display a badge on main-page showing how many builds are still pending in the queue? i send batches of 50 / 200 / 500 builds via github hooks, and i'm a bit clueless right now on eta on when they will finish (1 hour? 5 hours? 8 hours? etc).

or adding a last_build_state=created query param to the /repos/ api-call would be fine for me as well.