Correlate child pipeline to triggering job (UX improvement)
Problem to solve
As a user, I want to understand which job triggers a child pipeline, so I can understand the progression of the pipeline.
All child pipelines have the same appearance and there is no information that can link back to the job triggering them.
The user needs to expand the child pipeline and look at the jobs in it to understand what the pipeline is about.
| Screenshot of pipeline with multiple child pipelines, not easy to know which jobs triggered which child pipeline |
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Intended users
User experience goal
Proposal
Create a visual link between the trigger job and the child pipeline.
- When a user hovers on a job that is a bridge job, visually highlight the linked downstream pipeline
- When user hovers on a downstream/child pipeline, visually highlight the trigger job in the parent pipeline
- Change the display name of the child and downstream pipelines to 'Child Pipeline <#ID>' or 'Project name <#ID>', respectively to make the relation clearer
- On hover • For bridge jobs, shown the information about the pipeline that it triggers in the tooltip • For child/downstream pipelines, show the information about the job that triggers it (Designs are attached to the issue)
Further details
For a future iteration, we can address in a separate issue this proposed approach from comment:
To visualize which job created a specific child pipeline, instead of using labels we could enhance the display name of the downstream (child or multi-project) pipeline:
- Today is in the form like
gitlab • #86(project + pipeline ID) - A great improvement would be adding more context like
test/docs ▶ gitlab • #86wheretestanddocsare respectively the stage and job name of the trigger job that created the downstream pipeline.
Availability & Testing
- Unit test changes - Yes, update existing unit test
- Integration test changes - Not required
- End-to-end test change - Yes, update existing E2E tests parent_child_pipelines_dependent_relationship_spec.rb and parent_child_pipelines_independent_relationship_spec.rb