Telegram Notification VSTS Extension

Telegram Notification task uses Telegraf - Telegram Bot Framework for Node.js and allows you to send customizable notifications to your Telegram chats and groups. This task has some predefined options of what info (e.g build/release status, ID etc.) to include in the message about your build/release process.

Getting started

Only three steps to start receiving your notifications: 1. Create a Bot 2. Get Chat Ids 3. Customize your notifications

Follow the instructions below to configure the Telegram Notifications task to send messages to a group or chat.

Create a Bot

First of all, you need to create a Telegram bot which will later send all the notifications to your chats.

• Talk to Bot Father: follow Bot Father's instructions and create a bot
• Save Bot Token: this token will be used by the task
• Add your bot to every chat you want to be notified

Having a bot allows you to fully customize its appearance (nickname, user picture) and add it to as many chats or groups as you want.

Obtain chat IDs

Currently, Telegram doesn't offer a convenient way to obtain all chat IDs from bot API. So there are two ways to do it:

1. Add @RawDataBot to your group

Upon joining it will send a JSON where your chat ID will be located at message.chat.id.

Don't forget to remove the bot from chat right after.

2. Use built-in "Get chat ID" feature (Preview)

If you want the bot to send notifications directly to you (not a group), the trick with @RawDataBot won't work. You need to:

• Check "Get chat Id" in task properties

• Queue build or release: please make sure that this action won't affect any of your production processes. I suggest creating empty build\release definition just to get chat ID and then paste them into the real task.
• Type /chat: while the task is running use /chat command in every chat where your bot is present
• Type /stop: use this command to finish task execution
• Paste your chat IDs to task properties: copy all your IDs to task property (use comma as delimiter e.g -123456678,321654987)

Customize your message

There are some basic predefined features both for build and release tasks.

General

• Add task status - shows whether the task finished successfully, failed or has some issues.

In order this to work properly, don't forget to change run conditions of the task to "Even if a previous task has failed"

• Add project link - adds a link to your team project
• Message - add a custom message to your notification. You can use html markup.

For Release

• Name - The name of the current release.
• Created by - The display name of identity that triggered the release.

For Build

• Number - The name of the completed build.
• Queued by - The display name of identity that queued the build.

NOTE: USE EITHER RELEASE OR BUILD RELATED OPTIONS DEPENDING ON YOUR PROCESS