In order to test this functionality, I’ve run a Docker Jenkins container locally. Obviously, you could also deploy Jenkins on Bluemix, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

In order to configure Jenkins, I suggest following the instructions from my colleague Eric Jodet in the Jenkins wiki, since they are more up to date than the instructions currently in the Bluemix documentation. Also, I struggled to get the Cloud Foundry deployment to work. I had to install the CF CLI manually on my container first.

Once everything is configured, you can run Jenkins jobs.

In order to send information to IBM Cloud DevOps, different post build actions can be defined.

Toolchains receive this data from Jenkins and can forward it to other tools, like Slack, that are in the same toolchains.

I also like that deployment information is directly added to Git issues; for example, links to toolchains and releases as well as labels to mark issues as deployed.

To find out more, read the blog from Eric, read the documentation, or try the sample toolchain "Deployment Risk Analytics with GitHub and Jenkins."