Getting Started with Jenkins Blue Ocean: A Step‑by‑Step Tutorial

Blue Ocean rethinks Jenkins' user experience by providing a visual, user‑friendly interface for creating and managing Jenkins pipelines while remaining compatible with traditional freestyle jobs. Its main features include complex pipeline visualization, an intuitive pipeline editor, personalized views for team roles, precise error location, and seamless integration with GitHub and Bitbucket branches and pull requests.

First, install the Blue Ocean plugin through Jenkins' plugin manager.

Access Blue Ocean either via the Jenkins UI or by appending /blue to the Jenkins URL.

To create a pipeline, select the project's source code repository (e.g., GitLab), choose the protocol (HTTP or SSH), provide the appropriate credentials, and then create a multibranch pipeline, which automatically generates pipeline jobs for branches or tags containing a Jenkinsfile.

In the pipeline editor, configure the execution node (default is the master node) and add the first stage named GetCode. Add the desired steps for the stage (note that some common steps like httpRequest are not yet supported) and save the configuration.

When saving, a dialog appears to commit the newly generated Jenkinsfile to the repository; you can specify the commit message and target branch (default is master). After committing, the multibranch pipeline is created and visible in Blue Ocean.

While Blue Ocean offers an attractive UI and simplifies pipeline creation, its functionality is still limited, and many steps are not yet supported, leaving room for future enhancements.