DevOps Automation

Designing Notification Schemes in IBM DevOps Deploy: A Step by Step Guide

In the field of software deployment, keeping track of project updates is crucial for maintaining workflow efficiency. Effective communication is essential for success, as timely updates help teams stay informed about key events within applications. Notifications play a vital role in this process by ensuring that team members are always up to date. 

This blog will guide you through the process of creating notifications within a notification scheme, detailing the necessary prerequisites and configuration steps.

What is a Notification Scheme?

A notification scheme is a structured approach to managing notifications for applications. It defines how and when notifications are sent during deployment, ensuring that the right users receive relevant updates in a timely manner.

Prerequisites for Configuring Notifications

Before diving into the creation of a notification scheme, it's important to ensure that you have the following prerequisites in place:

1. External SMTP Mail Server

 To send notifications, you need a configured SMTP server. Here's how to set it up in IBM DevOps Deploy:

• Navigate to: Settings > System Settings > Mail Server Settings

• Define the required details: I have defined the Mail Server host, Mail Server Port and the sender email address.

You can refer to System settings from IBM DevOps Deploy for more information about the Mail Server settings.

Note: If the Mail Server Host is left blank, notifications will be disabled.

2. Defined Security Roles

Ensure that users receiving notifications have the appropriate roles. You can find details on this in the Managing Security  section of the documentation.

3. Valid Email Addresses

All recipients of notifications must have valid email addresses on the Deploy server. Please note that email addresses are automatically imported from external servers such as LDAP only when the appropriate fields are configured correctly. You can manage this through Settings > Authentication.

Steps to Create a Notification Scheme

While a default notification scheme is available, you can create a new one if needed. Below are the steps for creating a notification scheme. Although this blog will focus on using the Default Notification Scheme.

1. Create a New Notification Scheme

• Navigate to: Settings > System > Notification Schemes

• Click on: Create Notification Scheme

• Provide a Name and Description for the new scheme and click Save

2. Configuring Notifications

• To Add Notifications in the Notification Scheme.  
• Navigate to your Notification Scheme and Click on Add Notification Entry to open the configuration window.

• Provide the requested information.  

For this blog, notifications will be sent to teams configured for the application, specifically targeting the Automation Engineer role upon successful deployment.

The template name you select should be determined by the Event Type or the specific reason for the notification. Note that the ApprovalCreated notification template is not intended for use within a notification scheme.

For further information about each field in the notification entry, you can refer to the Creating Notifications in a Notification Scheme section from the documentation.

3. Assign the Notification Scheme

I have an application named notification-test, and I would like users in the Automation Engineer role to receive notifications for the teams associated with my 'Application' target upon the successful completion of a deployment.

To assign the Notification Scheme to an Application:

1. Navigate to the Configuration tab of the Application.
2. Select your notification scheme from the list and click on Save.

Note: Notifications are not sent to users assigned to any role on the System Team, regardless of whether that role is configured to receive notifications for the application.

Once you’ve assigned the notification scheme and ensured the appropriate team is configured, the users of the specified team and role will receive notifications based on the entries defined in the scheme.

For this blog once the application deployment is successfully executed, users in the specified team and role will receive the notification.

Sample Output: