ALM Octane Integration with Azure DevOps Services

General information

• An Azure DevOps Services account normally implies an organization level.
• Every account (organization) may have one or more projects.
• Every project may have one or more pipelines.
• Every pipeline consists of one or more jobs that may run in parallel.
• Every job is a sequence of one or more tasks.
• Every task is an activity executed during the run of the job containing it. A task can be written in a variety of programming/scripting languages and can be a part of either the Azure DevOps Services framework or an extension.
• The only unit of an executable code that an extension can contribute to the Azure DevOps Services framework is a task that is normally executed during a pipeline run.

The integration

• The current implementation supports only one direction – an Azure DevOps pipeline and its jobs can notify ALM Octane about their progress and statuses, as well as send information about the source control commits and test results relevant to them. However running and stopping the pipeline from ALM Octane, is not supported.
• The integration was implemented by developing an Azure DevOps Services extension with the following contributions:
  1. A new service connection type (ALM Octane Service Connection). By creating an a service connection of this type the user provides the properties of an ALM Octane Workspace (Connection name, URL, instance ID, shared space ID, workspace ID, API client ID and secret). This instance is then used by Azure DevOps pipelines for notifying the workspace with the events and data specified above.
  2. Two new task types (“ALM Octane Job Start” and “ALM Octane Job End”), instances of which are auto-injected to every job in the pipeline at the appropriate locations – the start and the end points of every job. The Pipeline Decorators Preview feature must be on.

The workflow for establishing a successful integration between an ALM Octane workspace and an Azure DevOps Services project

1. In the Azure DevOps organization install the ALM Octane Integration Extension. (The Alpha and Beta versions the extension will be published to the Microsoft Azure DevOps Marketplace).

2. In the ALM Octane shared space: Create an API client ID and secret with the “CI/CD Integration” role over the target ALM Octane workspace.

3. In the target Azure DevOps project:

   1. Create a new ALM Octane Service Connection by providing all the required settings. Let’s assume the connection name is OctaneCon.
   2. Let’s assume your pipeline consists of the following jobs: A, B, C and D. You must add 2 extra jobs to the pipeline: one to the pipeline beginning and the other to the pipeline end. These jobs must have the following names: AlmOctanePipelineStart and AlmOctanePipelineEnd. They must be set to always run (independently of the status of any other jobs). Moreover, the AlmOctanePipelineEnd must wait until all the other jobs will finish, even if the other jobs run in parallel. The best way to ensure this is by setting it as dependent on the other jobs. Thus the final version of our AlmOctanePipelineEnd job will be:

          - job: AlmOctanePipelineEnd
            condition: always()
              steps:
              - task: octane-end-task@1
                inputs:
                  OctaneServiceConnection: 'OctaneCon'
                  WorkspaceList: 'WS_ID'
                  GithubRepositoryConnection: 'GitCon'
              dependsOn:
              - AlmOctanePipelineStart
              - A
              - B 
      

   On the other hand, we want to let the AlmOctanePipelineStart to always run first.
   Therefore we need to force the other jobs to depend on it:

         - job: A
           dependsOn:
           - AlmOctanePipelineStart
   
   

   The final version of our pipeline should be similar to the figure below. After it runs, the appropriate “CI server” and “Pipeline” entries will be created in ALM Octane (if they don’t already exist), and the pipeline UI will reflect all the regular properties related to the pipeline run: its progress, topology, status, related source control commits, and test results.

       jobs:
       - job: AlmOctanePipelineStart
         condition: always()
         steps:
         - task: octane-start-task@1
           inputs:
              OctaneServiceConnection: 'OctaneCon'
              WorkspaceList: 'WS_ID'
              GithubRepositoryConnection: 'GitCon'
   
       - job: A
         steps:
         - script: echo Hello, Job A!
           displayName: 'Run a one-line script'
         dependsOn:
         - AlmOctanePipelineStart
   
       - job: B
         dependsOn: AlmOctanePipelineStart
         pool:
           vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'
         steps:
         - task: Maven@3
           inputs:
             mavenPomFile: 'pom.xml'
             mavenOptions: '-Xmx3072m'
             javaHomeOption: 'JDKVersion'
             jdkVersionOption: '1.8'
             jdkArchitectureOption: 'x64'
             publishJUnitResults: true
             testResultsFiles: '**/surefire-reports/TEST-*.xml'
             goals: 'package'
   
       - job: AlmOctanePipelineEnd
         condition: always()
         steps:
         - task: octane-end-task@1
           inputs:
             OctaneServiceConnection: 'OctaneCon'
             WorkspaceList: 'WS_ID'
             GithubRepositoryConnection: 'GitCon'
         dependsOn:
         - AlmOctanePipelineStart
         - A
         - B