TeamCity: What Is It & How Does It Work?

TeamCity

JetBrains’ TeamCity is a continuous integration solution for DevOps teams. It can be used by developers, engineers, managers, and administrators.

TeamCity is highly flexible and can support several workflows and development practices. The platform supports all programming languages and can integrate with third-party applications, such as Microsoft Azure, VMware, Jira, NuGet, and others. With TeamCity’s Project Overview page, users can track build statuses, see triggers, and download the latest build artifacts. The Build Log provides real-time data for all builds and tests. This feature allows users to search by errors, warnings, or important events.

Other TeamCity tools include building configuration templates, pipeline optimization, user access management, code quality tracking, and more. JetBrains provides pricing information, and support is available via online documentation, a community forum, and other resources.

Overview of TeamCity

TeamCity is a continuous integration software designed to help DevOps teams perform automated tests and deploy applications, packages, and containers. The project management module enables IT teams to track the status of builds, download build artifacts, configure workflows, and assign tasks to team members.

TeamCity allows organizations to maintain a historical record of tests in a centralized repository, automatically highlight unstable tests, log their duration, and identify causes of test failure across multiple pipelines. The application lets managers track employees’ productivity, generate real-time progress reports, and conduct test failure analysis.

It also helps employees synchronize business data across external platforms, such as Git, Mercurial, Perforce, or Subversion, categorize pull requests by author, and provide their access to authorized users.

The platform is an all-purpose continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment tool for DevOps teams. The CI/CD platform allows development teams to enjoy plenty of flexibility in their collaboration, workflows and more to deliver high-quality software faster.

TeamCity’s features include:

  • Technology Awareness. One reason TeamCity is dubbed an “Intelligent CI server” is its approach to integration.
  • Key Integrations
  • Cloud Integrations.
  • Continuous Integration.
  • Configuration.
  • Build History.
  • Build Infrastructure.
  • Code Quality Tracking.

TeamCity supports integration with various third-party applications, such as Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, VMware, vSphere, Docker, Jira, Maven, NuGet, and more. Other features include analytics, version control, code quality tracking, user management, data backup, and real-time monitoring.

TeamCity Tools

Datalore

A collaborative data science platform, it lets you connect any data from the notebook interface. With datalore, you can avoid going back and forth between Jupyter notebooks and your SQL database tools, S3 interface, or file browser.

Analyze data with smart coding assistance and no-code automation
  • Jupyter-compatible notebooks: Work with familiar .ipynb files while enjoying smart Datalore features.
  • CPU and GPU access: Train your ML and DL models on powerful cloud and on-premises machines.
  • Automatic visualization: Understand your data in seconds with out-of-the-box line, point, bar, area, and correlation charts.
  • Environment manager: Start from preconfigured and isolated pip and conda environments, and customize as you go.
  • Interactive controls; Make your notebooks interactive with dropdowns, sliders, inputs, and ipywidgets.
  • Dataset statistics: Get essential descriptive statistics for your data frames with one click.
Collaborate everywhere

Easily share notebooks, data, scripts, environments, and reports. Organize team projects in shared workspaces.

  • Real-time collaboration on code: Share notebooks by link or via email and see live changes to the code.
  • Versioning: Track progress with history checkpoints, compare versions, and revert to previous checkpoints at any time.
  • Team workspaces: Organize team projects in workspaces to keep everyone on the same page.
  • Shared files and data sources: Securely share your data connections and files attached to notebooks and workspaces.
  • Custom Auth modules: Configure authentication and SSO for your team in private cloud and on-premises setups.
  • Access permissions: Grant your colleagues viewing or editing access when sharing notebooks and workspaces.
  • Collaboration on file editing: Edit Python scripts and any plain text files with your team members in real time.
Create BI apps with a few clicks

Impress your stakeholders with clean, interactive data apps built from notebooks with just a few clicks.

  • Report Builder: Rearrange notebook cells on a canvas and build interactive dashboard-style apps.
  • External link sharing: Share your apps via email, private link, or public link.
  • Scheduling: Deliver regular report updates by configuring automatic schedules.

Space

A complete software development platform, Space is an extensible platform committed to providing first-class support for a wide range of extensions and integrations. It provides the following benefits:

  • Everything in one place: Get a single, complete platform for the entire software development pipeline and team collaboration.
  • Distractions minimized: Receive the information relevant to you, and eliminate distractions and context switching by managing all of your notifications in integrated chats.
  • Remote development toolset: Streamline onboarding, store secure code, and work from anywhere, with any kind of laptop. Spin up a ready-to-go dev environment, connect to your IDE, and start coding in seconds.
  • Extensible and customizable: Build integrations on top of a single platform, and automate business processes with Space, using a rich HTTP API, Webhooks, and a Client SDK.
  • Easy start-up: Start projects quickly, and easily set up the whole infrastructure. A unified UI/UX ensures consistency and unification in all areas.
  • Native integration with IDEs: Connect your JetBrains IDE with Space to get all the power of the integrated collaborative solution inside your personal development environment.
  • Scales with your business: You can easily scale Space as your company grows and more teams join the platform. Space can be customized and extended to meet your exact needs.
  • Cost-saving solution: Instead of paying for multiple solutions, get one platform to develop software faster and collaborate more efficiently.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a general-purpose CI/CD software platform that allows for flexible workflows, collaboration and development practices. It also allows for successful continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment within your DevOps process.

Benefits include:
  • Perform better: Just as your IDE gives you more coding powers, TeamCity does the same for continuous integration. It integrates with your building and testing tools, visualizes your DevOps pipelines in detail, and helps you be more productive – right from day one.
  • Get started easily: It’s really easy to get started with TeamCity. Setting up your first pipeline takes less than 2 minutes and can be done through a simple UI without writing any code.
  • Test intelligence: TeamCity understands your tests like no other CI solution. It integrates with your build and test tools, keeps a history of your tests, flags unstable tests as flaky, and can even help you identify the exact commits that cause failures in your pipelines.
  • Real-time reporting: Don’t wait for a build to finish to discover that something is wrong. Everything is reported on the fly, so you can dig into an issue, resolve it, assign it to your project members, or even open it directly in an IDE right at the problem line of code.
  • Remote run and pre-tested commit: By integrating TeamCity with your IDE, you can build, check, and run automated tests without creating any branches or committing any code. You also keep your code base clean at all times.

Boost Your Productivity with a Fast Feedback Loop

Integration with all popular build and test tools: Whether you use tools like Maven, npm, Gradle, and MSBuild, or run your own Docker containers, TeamCity understands how your projects are built, lets you set up CI/CD with ease, and gives you full visibility into your pipelines.

On-the-fly build progress reporting: The results of your CI/CD builds and tests are reported in real time, so you can iterate quickly and ship new features faster.

Get Comprehensive Analysis of Failures

TeamCity not only reports running tests in real time, but also keeps their build history, logs their duration, and marks unstable tests as flaky. Each test may include a variety of details, such as stack trace, screenshots, links, build artifacts, and logs, allowing your team to investigate failures quickly.

You can start new tests and recently failed tests before others to provide even faster feedback.

Automate Pipelines of any Complexity and Scale

TeamCity takes the concept of CI/CD pipelines to a whole new level. With build chains, you can build apps that have their source code distributed across many repositories, run multiple builds and tests in parallel, and take advantage of many smart optimizations that save your time when running incremental builds.

Build chains help you structure your software delivery process, and allow you to focus on writing code and tests instead of connecting different parts of pipelines to each other.

Configuration as Code

If you are familiar with YAML or similar formats for describing CI/CD as code, then you probably know that maintaining configurations for large projects can be a pain.

TeamCity allows you to write CI/CD configuration using Kotlin, giving you the power of a full-featured programming language and its toolset. Import libraries, create your own functions, enjoy autocompletion and refactoring in your IDE – these are just a few of the many tools that can help you keep your CI/CD configuration clean and maintainable.

YouTrack

Manage projects for any team

YouTrack is a project management tool packed with features that streamline your work and increase productivity on any team project. From software development and DevOps to HR and marketing, all kinds of teams can use YouTrack’s functionality to easily track and collaborate on projects of any size.

Collaborate on team tasks

YouTrack is designed to handle large numbers of tasks with ease. It’s full of features that enable intuitive and effortless collaboration within and between teams. Mentions, reactions, and automated update subscriptions with several notification options help keep conversations flowing and ensure that everybody stays in the loop.

Document everything in your knowledge Base

From team meeting notes to project plans, you can keep internal information impeccably organized. Create and collaboratively discuss and share ideas. Produce engaging, rich content and discuss it in comments with @user mentions and notifications. When needed, build a public Knowledge Base with user guides and FAQs.

Customize Agile Boards

Boards offer a great way to plan and track projects at all levels – from individual backlogs to enterprise portfolios. YouTrack supports Kanban, Scrum, and mixed approaches for any process your team may have.

Track time and check results on Timesheets

YouTrack’s automated and manual time-tracking features make light work of keeping accurate records. Timesheets help you get clear reporting with detailed analyses per team member, project, or work group.

Plan with interactive Gantt charts

Plan projects using the interactive Gantt timeline to schedule and prioritize tasks, set estimates and dependencies, and track progress with maximum precision.

Get detailed reports and combine them on Dashboards

YouTrack comes with configurable reports to help you track, manage, and analyze a wide range of performance and progress indicators.

Dashboards allow you to build collections of reports and other useful information – all on a single page. You can create unlimited dashboards for your personal, team, and customer needs.

Support your customers with Helpdesk projects

YouTrack includes a ticket-based Helpdesk solution that lets your support agents help unlimited numbers of external customers or maintain service desks for internal users.

Key features include multiple support channels, exclusive tools for support agents, and service-level agreements.

Automate your business processes with Workflows

Workflows are sets of rules that define and automate the life cycles of tasks in projects. You can set up workflows that automatically remind you about upcoming deadlines, update fields and assign tasks according to specified conditions, create recurring tasks at specific dates and times, and much more.

With workflows, YouTrack follows your processes. 

TeamCity pros and cons

Pros

TeamCity offers several pros or advantages, such as:

  • Easy setup and use.
  • Solid integrations
  • Real-time reporting
  • Tons of built-in functionality

One of the biggest pros in TeamCity’s favor is its simplicity. Many claim the automation tool is easy to set up and configure, so you can jump right into using its multiple features without wasting a ton of time on onboarding. Beyond that, TeamCity’s user interface is also modern and intuitive, making navigation a snap.

What about integrations? TeamCity excels in that department with full support for many top developer tools like Docker, Jira, Maven, NuGet, Visual Studio Team Services and VCS Hosting Services. It also has cloud integrations with Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes and more.

Real-time reporting is another plus. JetBrains’ TeamCity gives developers reporting and insights on the fly, so they do not have to wait until a build is completed to uncover issues. And while many other DevOps tools rely too much on plugins to do the heavy lifting, TeamCity’s built-in functionalities for source control, monitoring and statistics stand strong on their own without the need for outside help.

Cons

While solid, TeamCity is not a blemish-free CI/CD tool. Some of its cons or disadvantages include:

  • API integration documentation.
  • Cost.
  • Resource usage.
  • Smaller community.

TeamCity could benefit from more detailed resources and documentation on its API integration beyond just the basics. Its cost could place it out of reach for many individual developers and smaller development teams on limited budgets.

Jetbrains’ CI/CD tool is known for being resource-intensive and slowing down some machines. Its smaller community than Jenkins may also be a turn-off to some seeking stronger support and more robust resources.

References

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