Artifacts

Artifacts are the output of a software development process, such as configuration files or test suites, and are often stored in a cloud storage service. Artifacts can be downloaded from storage and used in subsequent testing or deploy steps in your development pipeline.

Prerequisites

Check that you have added the appropriate action to your workflow to collect artifact data:

Table 1. Required action, depending on workflow type.
If your workflow is:	Required action to collect data
CloudBees platform workflow	CloudBees platform register a build artifact action or CloudBees platform register a deployed artifact action
GitHub Actions (GHA) workflow	GHA register a build artifact action

Access an artifact

Use the Artifacts list features to access information and functions related to artifacts generated by workflow runs.

Your artifact may not yet be listed in Artifacts because it is still waiting to be generated.

To access artifacts:

Navigate to details for a component.
Select Artifacts.
(Optional) Search for a specific artifact by entering all or part of its name into Search.
(Optional) Select Filter to select for only those artifacts with specific names and/or labels.
(Optional) Select to toggle on the full version history. The default display (toggled off) shows only the latest versions.

The list of artifacts build or deployed by workflow runs in that component are displayed accordingly, as in the example below.

Figure 1. An example component artifact list of just the latest versions.

Select Create version to create an artifact version.
Add, edit, or remove artifact labels. You can filter the list via labels.
Select to copy a Digest or Location path.
Select a run link to display the Run details of the run that published the artifact.
Select to display an artifact’s deployment history.

Create an artifact version

Use this feature to configure a new artifact version.

To create an artifact version:

Navigate to details for a component.
Select the Artifacts tab. Artifacts built or deployed by workflow runs are displayed.
Select Create version. The Create version screen displays.

View image

Figure 2. Create version
Complete the required and applicable Create version fields.

View fields

name: The name of the artifact to send to the CloudBees platform for artifact traceability purposes.

version: The version of the artifact to send to the CloudBees platform for artifact traceability purposes.

url: The URL where the artifact version is located. For example, docker.io/myapp/myimg:1.0.0.

digest: The artifact digest that uniquely identifies the artifact.
Select Save.

View artifact deployment history

Use the Deployment history features to access information and functions related to a deployed artifact.

To collect artifact deployment data, a workflow must contain the Register an artifact deployed to an environment action.

To access deployed artifact features:

Navigate to details for a component.
Select the Artifacts tab. Artifacts built or deployed by workflow runs are displayed.
Select in the Deployment history column. The Deployment history for the artifact displays.

Figure 3. Deployment history

Manage deployment history list.
- Filter deployments by Name.
- Locate a specific deployment run using the Search feature.
Review the Deployment run, Status, Digest, Environment name, and Deployment date information.
Use these features to:
- Copy the path to a specific artifact or artifact digest by selecting .
- Access the run details for the workflow that deployed the artifact by selecting the workflow run name in the Deployment run column.

Artifact labels

Create custom labels for your artifacts, and use them to organize and filter the artifacts listed in a component. Any text string is an acceptable label, and labels are reusable. You can add multiple labels to an artifact.

Artifact labels are useful for organizing your artifacts into groupings such as:

User or team.
Release or testing status.
Environment.
Version.

For example, you may want "Testing" and "Dev team" labels on an artifact in the development stage, and a "For release" label on all artifacts ready for production release. You can then filter the artifact list by the "For release" label, to get a convenient view of all artifacts ready for release.

If you have created multiple labels for an artifact, only one is displayed by default in the artifact list.

The link displays the number of additional labels not displayed.
Select more to display all the custom labels for an artifact.

Create or add artifact labels in the UI

Create custom labels for an artifact, and/or add existing labels. An artifact may have multiple labels.

Figure 4. Creating an artifact label, with steps highlighted.

To create or add an artifact label:

Go to Components Artifacts.
Select the link next to the artifact you want to label. The link varies according to the label status:
- Add (an unlabeled artifact).
- Edit (an artifact with a single label).
- +n more (an artifact with n number of labels).
Select Labels, and then use either of the following methods:
- Enter a custom label, and then select Create "<custom label name>", where <custom label name> is your label name.
- Select an existing label from the options to highlight it (not shown).
  
  Scroll to display all the options in the label list.
(Optional) Add or create more labels using the above methods.
Select Save.

The artifact is labeled accordingly.

Remove an artifact label in the UI

Remove label(s) from an artifact.

To remove an artifact label:

Go to Components Artifacts.
Select either:
- Edit, if your artifact has one label.
- +n more, if your artifact has n number of labels.
Select Labels to display the labels list, and then select either of the following methods to remove a currently used label:
- Deselect the highlighted label in the label options.
- Select next to the label.
(Optional) Remove more labels using the above methods.
Select Save.

Your selection of label(s) is removed from the artifact.

Once a label has been removed from all artifacts, it is deleted from the CloudBees platform.

If you are using GHA workflows, you can create, update, and remove labels on existing CloudBees platform artifacts with the Manage artifact labels action.