Improved monitoring possibilities in TFS 2018

Posted: 29.5.2018 12.12.24 (EET/GMT+2)

TFS 2018 added nice new ways to keep an eye on your automated CI builds and CD releases. You can watch health from the web UI, pull statistics via the REST API, and plug analytics into dashboards.

Quick places to look:

Build and Release dashboards: pin build definitions, release pipelines, and failure trend charts to a team dashboard.
Agent pools: see online/offline agents and queue length to spot capacity issues.
Analytics extension (if installed): query-friendly data for Power BI reports (build duration, failure rate, test results).

In addition to the UI, you can use HTTP calls to query useful information, like this:

GET https://tfs.example.com/tfs/DefaultCollection/_apis/build/builds?resultFilter=failed&$top=20

GET https://tfs.example.com/DefaultCollection/_apis/release/releases?definitionId=42

Tip: set up a simple daily email notification using a script that hits the REST API and summarizes failures and long queues. You get a quick "heartbeat" of your build automation without even opening the portal.