Using Jenkins Deploy Dashboard for Visual Deployment

Jenkins Deploy Dashboard is a plugin (https://plugins.jenkins.io/deploy-dashboard/) that provides a visual overview of which application versions are deployed to which environments, helping teams answer questions such as “Which version is currently in the dev environment?” or “Was a patch deployed to production yesterday?”.

The plugin was created by Namecheap to simplify CI/CD deployment tracking in agile development where frequent releases are common.

Visualizing Deployments with Deploy Dashboard

The plugin offers a custom view that lists deployed versions per environment and allows clicking an environment to see its release history.

Clicking a specific environment shows its deployment history.

Getting Started: Adding a New Version to the Dashboard

Assuming you already have a Jenkins job that builds and deploys your application, call the addDeployToDashboard method with the environment name and application version.

properties([parameters([
    string(name: 'version', description: 'App version to deploy'),
    choice(
        name: 'env',
        choices: ['dev', 'prod'],
        description: 'Environment where the app should be deployed'
    )
])])
node {
    // ...
    stage("Deploy") {
        // Deploy app version ${params.version} to ${params.env} env
        // add release information to the dashboard
        addDeployToDashboard(
            env: params.env,
            buildNumber: params.version
        )
    }
}

Creating the Dashboard View

On the Jenkins home page or inside a folder, click the + tab to launch the New View wizard, name the view, select “Deploy View”, and confirm.

Use a regular expression (e.g., .*) to include jobs from the folder.

Adding Deploy Buttons to Your Versions

If you want to separate CI and CD, the plugin lets you add custom buttons to the build sidebar using buildAddUrl with a title and URL.

node {
    stage("Build") {
        String builtVersion = "v2.7.5"
        // Build app with ${builtVersion} version
        // Add buttons to the left sidebar
        buildAddUrl(title: 'Deploy to DEV', url: "/job/app-deploy/parambuild/?env=dev&version=${builtVersion}")
        buildAddUrl(title: 'Deploy to PROD', url: "/job/app-deploy/parambuild/?env=prod&version=${builtVersion}")
    }
}

This feature helps QA teams quickly deploy any existing version to the desired environment.

Declarative Pipeline Example

pipeline {
    agent any
    parameters {
      choice choices: ['dev','prod'], description: '', name: 'env'
      string defaultValue: '', description: '', name: 'version', trim: false
    }
    stages {
        stage('Hello') {
            steps {
                script {
                   addDeployToDashboard(
                        env: params.env,
                        buildNumber: params.version
                    )
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The Deploy Dashboard plugin thus provides a clear, visual way to track and manage deployments directly within Jenkins.