Status updates overview
CircleCI reports the status of your pipelines back to your version control system (VCS). This lets you see the progress and results of your CircleCI jobs and workflows without leaving your VCS.
Introduction
CircleCI provides two types of status reporting. This overview guide covers "status updates":
- Status updates
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CircleCI sends job level status information for every commit. Status updates are available for GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab. You can disable status updates in the CircleCI web app by navigating to and setting Status Updates to
off. - GitHub Checks
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GitHub Checks reports workflow-level status and is available for GitHub only. You can enable GitHub Checks in the CircleCI web app by navigating to and selecting Manage GitHub Checks. GitHub Checks is a GitHub App, and you will notice that from the GitHub UI the App is called CircleCI Checks. For information on setting up and using GitHub Checks, see the Enable GitHub Checks guide.
Status update locations
When a pipeline is triggered in CircleCI, status information is sent back to your VCS. Status updates appear in the following locations:
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In pull requests when viewing an individual commit.
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Next to individual commits in a pull/merge request conversation view.
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At the end of a pull/merge request.
Status updates are the default way CircleCI reports pipeline status to your VCS. They are reported at the job level and are available for GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab. The following images show where to find status updates in GitHub. Other VCS providers will have similar locations.
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Status updates in PR
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Commit status
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Commit status in PR
Status update naming
CircleCI displays status updates differently depending on the job type.
Regular jobs display using the following format:
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Format:
ci/circleci: <job_name> -
Example:
ci/circleci: build -
Example:
ci/circleci: rspec
Approval jobs and no-op jobs display using the following format:
-
Format:
ci/circleci: <workflow_name>/<job_name> -
Example:
ci/circleci: build_and_deploy/approval-deploy -
Example:
ci/circleci: build_and_deploy/no-op-job
The workflow name prefix for approval and no-op jobs provides additional context. These jobs typically require manual intervention or represent conditional workflow states. Regular jobs that run automatically do not require this additional context.
| Need to find the workflow for a regular job? Click through to the CircleCI dashboard. The full workflow context is visible there. |
Disable status updates
If you use the GitHub Checks feature, you can disable status updates to avoid duplication of statuses.
To disable status updates in the CircleCI web app:
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In the CircleCI web app, select your org from the org cards on your user homepage.
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Select Projects from the sidebar and locate your project from the list. You can use the search to help.
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Select the ellipsis
next to your project and select Project Settings.You can also access project settings from each project overview page using the Settings button. -
Select Advanced Settings.
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Set VCS Status Updates to
off.
You can re-enable status updates by setting VCS Status Updates to on.
| The VCS status updates setting affects both GitHub and Bitbucket status updates. |