Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

Azure DevOps Changing Build Notifications

I don’t do a lot of team builds in Azure DevOps, but I constantly use it for demos. However, I’m often experimenting with things and I break builds regularly. I used to show the email notifications to audiences years ago, but I think Continuous Integration (CI) has become fairly common and people are used to getting notified on failures.

These days I find myself constantly getting success notifications, which are annoying. Instead, what I’d like to do is avoid these and only get build failures. This is a quick post of making this change.

I am doing this for a project, but you could do this for all projects. In my case, I’ll pick the project settings at the bottom of the main page.

This opens a list of items on the left, one of which is notifications.

Select this and you see a number of default notifications set up. The top one is in the “Build” section and is for a build completing. We don’t need to know builds complete. In fact, I wouldn’t ever want this notification, even in a team. I assume most complete and only want failures.

This is enabled, but I’ve clicked the slider to disable this below.

Now I want a build failure notification. At the top there is a “New Subscription” area to select.

This opens a list of various subscriptions you can set up. The first item is build, and you can see on the right that I can choose the build complete or failure. I assume this is because I may want to alter the default settings for the completion.

I pick this and see some settings I can configure. I can change the name, decide who gets notified and even set this for all projects. I like these custom dialogs, letting me pick a number of criteria that I Can link in an and/or fashion.

That’s it. Now when I run builds, I don’t get notified if there is success. Only failure.

July 20, 2020
Daily Coping 20 Jul 2020

I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to go for a walk to clear your head when you feel overwhelmed.

I’m lucky that I have space around my house to go walk without any COVID issues. That means that when I’m a bit stressed, I can go outside.

I’m not good at that.

I do try to take breaks and exercise, but often I go to the gym, practice yoga, or ride a bike. However, a walk is a good way to clear your head.

Last week I had a dog get surgery, and while she can’t walk this week, next week will be the time I do a bit of walking before, during, and after work.

Going outside, doing something easy and mindless often resets your brain, and might even inspire you to solve some problem that you are struggling with.

July 20, 2020
A Travel Milestone: Two Keystones

I used to travel a lot. Last year I flew over 140,000 miles in the air, drive another 1000 or so on vacation, and visited numerous countries. It’s hectic and hard at times, but it is very enjoyable when my wife comes with me, which I plan on happening more and more.

Not this year, but while I only have one plane flight this year, I’ve still gotten out and about a bit. In fact, I hit a travel milestone for myself recently. I was in two cities named Keystone inside of a week.

Keystone, SD

I’ve never been to Keystone, SD, but I’ve been close before. This is on the East side of Mount Rushmore, where I’ve been many times. We found a new campground there this year and drove up to Keystone one night for dinner. It was a great week where I was unwired and recharged with family.

This was my daily view, watching my wife and daughter ride their horses.

Keystone, CO

Less than a week after we came back, I drove up to Keystone, CO. My wife and I own a condo near the ski resort there, and I went up to work for a few days while there was construction at my house. My wife joined me and we had a couple nice days over the weekend relaxing.

This was my work environment.

A Little Silly

It’s a silly milestone, but when you like to travel, and you get to do it, you look for little things. This was interesting for me, unplanned, but a funny coincidence. I hadn’t known there was another Keystone within driving distance until late May. I hadn’t planned on going to our condo until a couple weeks before when we scheduled the construction work.

It all worked out, and I was lucky to get two vacations in about two weeks in towns with the same name.

July 17, 2020
Daily Coping 17 Jul 2020

I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to challenge negative thoughts, find an alternative interpretation.

Recently I had a bad day. I felt I didn’t do something well and spent a lot of time complaining to myself in my head, second guessing my actions, and feeling that I wasn’t really good at that task.

After a couple days of on and off negative thoughts, I finally started to snap out of it. I looked at things as learning opportunities. I need to grow and do better in the future. My past actions are sunk costs, they’re gone and can’t be changed. I can, however, look back and realize that I didn’t prepare well, hadn’t thought of a few things (which I have learned), and needed to make decisions quicker.

In other words, I wasn’t as adept as I’d have liked, even though mentally I thought I was ready. A good lesson and accepting this helped me to feel better.

July 17, 2020