Mastering Pipeline Management: Making Complex Workflows Transparent with Pipeline Explorer

Ever feel like you’re trying to solve a puzzle in the dark when troubleshooting complex DevOps and deployment pipelines? It can be tough to get a clear view of what’s really going on behind the scenes.

On an average day, a typical developer writes about 100 lines of code. Each new feature, bug fix, or update adds lines of code, which makes pipelines increasingly complex. This means even minor errors or delays can slow down progress and affect the speed and accuracy of the development process.

Adopting tools that enhance pipeline visibility and streamline management allows teams to alleviate much of this pressure and improve overall outcomes.

Enter Pipeline Explorer–a tool designed to lift the curtain on pipeline management, giving users clear visibility and control over the steps involved. By making it easy to navigate workflows and identify issues, Pipeline Explorer brings simplicity to an area that’s often shrouded in complexity.

With its user-friendly visual interface, Pipeline Explorer makes troubleshooting CI pipelines quick and easy. It simplifies navigating workflows and large logs, allowing teams to resolve issues efficiently.

No matter how intricate your pipeline is, Pipeline Explorer streamlines the troubleshooting process, ensuring you can quickly get to the root of any issue without hassle.

In this post, we'll uncover how CloudBees Pipeline Explorer shines a light on pipeline challenges, giving you a clear view into every stage and helping you solve issues faster.

Pipelines–especially deployment pipelines–are essential for automating the journey of code from development to production environments. A deployment pipeline specifically refers to a series of automated steps that move code changes from version control systems to live environments, ensuring that every change is tested and validated before it reaches end users. 

By integrating automated testing, quality assurance, and deployment stages, deployment pipelines help maintain code integrity and minimize human error, making it possible for teams to release updates more frequently and reliably.

As beneficial as deployment pipelines are, they can become overwhelming as the system scales. Pipelines often contain:

• Thousands of lines of declarative code that define each stage of the process

• Parallel stages running simultaneously to speed up the flow

• Large, complex logs that can span hundreds of megabytes, especially in high-frequency release environments

All of this adds layers of complexity, which can affect both system performance and developer productivity. For instance, large logs can consume system resources and cause UI lags, making it hard to identify and resolve errors quickly. Even for experienced developers, identifying issues can be challenging, and for those new to the process, it’s even harder to navigate without a visual view of each step.

Improving pipeline visibility and clarity is key to optimizing both DevOps pipeline management and deployment processes, helping developers at all levels work faster and with fewer obstacles.

Developers who take on workflows built by others need clear visibility to understand each stage of the development and deployment phases.

A lack of visibility can lead to confusion and drag developers into long troubleshooting sessions. That’s why tools that make pipelines easier to navigate are valuable in helping teams save time and avoid roadblocks.

Lack of visibility often means:

• Longer troubleshooting times – It can take hours to locate a single error in dense logs.

• Increased support needs – Developers and admins must collaborate more frequently to bridge knowledge gaps.

• Difficulty onboarding – New team members often struggle to familiarize themselves with existing pipelines.

CloudBees Pipeline Explorer is designed to meet the demands of an enterprise CI environment. It enhances understanding and efficiency by presenting pipeline steps, logs, and structures in a highly visual and interactive format that ultimately increases pipeline visibility. 

This approach simplifies the troubleshooting process and empowers teams to manage complex pipelines with greater clarity.

By making complex data more accessible, Pipeline Explorer transforms how teams collaborate and optimize their CI/CD workflows, leading to faster issue resolution and improved overall performance.

Pipeline Maps

The Pipeline Map is a powerful feature that displays the entire pipeline structure. It allows users to zoom in on specific stages or collapse sections to view broader pipeline phases. The map view is especially helpful for teams analyzing both the development and deployment pipeline, as it visually represents what’s happening at each stage.

Error Detection and Direct Line Jump

One standout feature of Pipeline Explorer is its ability to be configured to jump directly to error points, allowing users to navigate instantly to the exact line where an issue occurs, instead of scrolling through extensive logs. This is crucial in fast-paced environments where quick resolutions are necessary for maintaining workflow and successful deployments. Streamlining troubleshooting helps teams stay agile and productive.

Filtered Logs for Focused Debugging

Large log files can be a nightmare, especially when only certain stages are relevant to an issue. Pipeline Explorer allows developers to filter logs by stage, making it easy to view only what matters. For example, when debugging a specific stage in a pipeline with multiple parallel steps, users can isolate that stage to avoid sifting through unrelated data.

Shareable Logs and Filtered Views

When developers need assistance, Pipeline Explorer allows them to share a filtered view or a direct link to a specific line within the log. This feature makes collaboration smoother by allowing multiple users to access the exact log segment where issues occur.

Customizable User Settings

Pipeline Explorer allows users to tailor their view with customizable settings such as timestamps, color-coding, and line numbering. For example, users can toggle between absolute and relative timestamps, depending on whether they are analyzing the duration of stages or the exact time of completion. This flexibility allows each user to configure the interface according to their needs, whether debugging a long-running pipeline or diagnosing a new setup.

Performance-First Approach with Paginated Log Loading

Large pipelines can lead to memory strain on the system, especially when viewing extensive logs. Pipeline Explorer mitigates this by using paginated loading, which ensures that logs are loaded in segments rather than all at once. This approach maintains a smooth UI experience without causing memory overloads on controllers or impacting other users on the system.

With these powerful features in mind, Pipeline Explorer not only boosts pipeline visibility but also sets the stage for increased collaboration and efficiency in CI/CD workflows.

Creating a culture of collaboration and efficiency is essential for teams relying on CI/CD pipelines. By allowing developers to visualize and share pipeline data easily, teams can reduce troubleshooting time and enhance communication.

This clarity is especially beneficial when non-engineering stakeholders, like project managers and executives, need to be involved in pipeline reviews. With visual maps and clear log segmentation, these stakeholders can grasp the pipeline processes quickly, leading to more informed discussions and better decision-making.

Tools like Pipeline Explorer are indispensable for maintaining manageable pipelines. CloudBees is committed to making the invisible visible, transforming raw data into structured insights that empower teams. Beyond troubleshooting, Pipeline Explorer offers a streamlined, cooperative development environment where everyone stays aligned, works with greater insight, and delivers high-quality software faster and with fewer hiccups.

In DevOps, pipeline complexity can be a hidden productivity killer, slowing teams down when they can’t afford to lose momentum. CloudBees Pipeline Explorer flips the script by making the invisible visible, letting teams navigate logs, spot errors instantly, and cut through the confusion.

With its visual tools and customizable views, Pipeline Explorer makes it easy to manage everything from massive logs to onboarding new team members. 

Ready to stay on top of both the DevOps and deployment pipeline process? Reach out to a CI expert today for a demo and see how Pipeline Explorer can help you untangle your pipelines!