How Jenkins Supports Continuous Deployment
Jenkins is one of the most widely used automation servers for implementing continuous deployment (CD). It provides a rich plugin ecosystem that lets you automate every stage of software delivery — from source code commit through build, test, and deployment to production or staging environments.
The typical software delivery flow that Jenkins automates looks like this:
The core principle of continuous deployment is that this entire flow is automated — no manual intervention is required between a code commit and a working deployment. Jenkins achieves this through plugins. A key example is the Deploy to Container Plugin, which can push build artefacts directly to application servers such as Tomcat or JBoss.
Additional plugins can provide a graphical view of the entire pipeline, making it easy to see exactly where a build is in the deployment process and whether any stage has failed.
Chaining Jenkins Jobs: Triggering a QA Build After a Successful Build
The following walkthrough demonstrates how to chain two Jenkins jobs together so that a QA test job runs automatically whenever the main build succeeds. This is a foundational pattern in continuous deployment pipelines.
Step 1 — Create the QA Project
Go to the Jenkins dashboard and click New Item. Select Freestyle project, enter QA as the project name, and click OK.
Step 2 — Configure the QA Project to Run Tests
In this example, the QA project is kept deliberately simple — it executes a test script against the Helloworld application. In a real pipeline, this is where you would run your unit tests, integration tests, or smoke tests.
Once configured, trigger a manual build to verify the QA project works correctly on its own before linking it to the upstream job.
Step 3 — Open the Helloworld Project Configuration
Navigate to your existing Helloworld project and click Configure.
Step 4 — Add a Post-Build Action
Scroll to the bottom of the project configuration and click Add post-build action. From the dropdown menu, select Build other projects.
Step 5 — Configure the Downstream Trigger
In the Projects to build field, enter QA. Leave the trigger condition set to the default: Trigger only if build is stable. This ensures the QA tests only run when the Helloworld build has succeeded. Click Save.
Step 6 — Verify the Chained Build
Trigger a build of the Helloworld project. Open the Console Output once the build finishes. You should see that, after Helloworld builds successfully, Jenkins automatically starts the QA build as a downstream job.
Visualizing the Pipeline with the Delivery Pipeline Plugin
Chaining jobs via post-build actions works well, but it becomes difficult to visualize as the number of stages grows. The Delivery Pipeline Plugin solves this by rendering a graphical view of the entire pipeline, showing the status of each stage in real time.
Step 7 — Install the Delivery Pipeline Plugin
Go to Manage Jenkins → Manage Plugins. On the Available tab, search for Delivery Pipeline Plugin. Select it and click Install without restart. Once the installation completes, restart the Jenkins instance to activate the plugin.
Step 8 — Add a New Dashboard View
On the Jenkins Dashboard, click the + tab next to the All tab to create a new view.
Step 9 — Choose the Delivery Pipeline View Type
Enter a name for the new view and select Delivery Pipeline View as the view type. Click OK.
Step 10 — Configure the Pipeline View
On the configuration screen, review and adjust the following recommended settings before clicking OK:
- Check Show static analysis results to surface code quality warnings inside the pipeline view.
- Check Show total build time to see how long the full pipeline takes end-to-end.
- Set the Initial Job to
Helloworld— this tells the plugin which job is the entry point for the pipeline. - Enter a descriptive name for the pipeline (for example,
Helloworld → QA). - Click OK to save.
You will now see a graphical representation of your entire delivery pipeline, with each stage displayed as a column and live build status shown for every job.
Alternative: The Build Pipeline Plugin
Another popular option for visualizing chained Jenkins jobs is the Build Pipeline Plugin. It provides a similar card-based graphical view and supports manual approval gates between stages — useful when you want a human sign-off before deploying to production. Choosing between the Delivery Pipeline Plugin and the Build Pipeline Plugin largely comes down to team preference and whether you need manual gate steps in the view itself.
Key Takeaways
- Jenkins automates continuous deployment by chaining jobs using post-build actions and a wide range of plugins.
- The Deploy to Container Plugin enables direct deployment of build artefacts to application containers as part of the pipeline.
- The Delivery Pipeline Plugin and the Build Pipeline Plugin both provide graphical dashboards that make multi-stage pipelines easy to monitor.
- For more complex pipelines, consider using Jenkins Pipeline (declarative or scripted) defined in a
Jenkinsfile, which gives you version-controlled pipeline-as-code.