Jobs

Jobs are a component of Perforce's defect tracking system and a record of bugs found or improvement requests. Jobs can be associated with changelists to create fix records, indicating the work that solved the problem or provided the requested feature. Begin browsing jobs by clicking the Jobs link in the main toolbar.

The Jobs page

You can search available jobs by entering a job filter in the search box. Words, phrases, and field=value pairs can be entered. For example, entering reportedby=slord swarm displays jobs that the user slord has reported that also contain the word swarm in its description.

Searching Jobs

The fields you can search for depend on the jobspec defined in your Helix Versioning Engine.

Adjusting Jobs columns

You can configure the columns that are displayed:

  1. Button to configure Jobs columns Click the button beside the search field to display a tooltip menu showing all of the available jobspec fields.

  2. Selecting jobspec fields to display

    While the tooltip menu is displayed, check or uncheck the columns to configure which columns to display.

  3. Click the button again, or a blank portion of the page, to hide the tooltip.

Additional columns in the Jobs display

You can also adjust the order of the columns, in one of two ways:

  1. With the tooltip menu displayed, click and drag column labels up or down to adjust their position.

  2. When the tooltip menu is not displayed, click a column heading and drag it to the left or right to move the column to a new position.

The column display updates as columns are rearranged:

Reordered Jobs columns

Tip

For more information on customizing jobspecs, see: Perforce System Administrator's Guide: Job Specifications

Job display

Jobs are typically identified with the word job followed by six digits, e.g. job000123.

View a specific job by clicking on a linked job identifier, or by visiting the URL: 

https://myswarm.url/jobs/jobid

When Swarm displays a job, the presentation is similar to:

A Job

The upper portion of the job presentation includes:

  • The avatar and userid of the user that created the job

  • The job's creation time

  • If changes have been made to the job, the modifying userid and time

  • A status indicator

  • The job's description

  • If A pending changelist A committed changelist A changelist in a review any changelists have been submitted that fix the job, a list of those changelists and their descriptions. Each associated changelist includes an icon to represent their type

The lower portion of the job presentation lists all of the keys configured in your Helix Versioning Engine's jobspec. Swarm inspects the jobspec and enhances the presentation of fields it recognizes. For example, date fields display as time ago, and links are created for userids.

Click Drop-down menu for flagging a comment as a task. the Comments tab to view any comments added to the job, or to add a comment. Adding a comment sends a notification. The Comments tab display the number of open comments associated with the job. If you hover your mouse over the comment count, a tooltip is displayed showing how many comments are archived.

A comment on a job

Tip

For more information on customizing job specifications, see: Perforce System Administrator's Guide: Job Specifications

Note

The default Perforce job specification contains very few fields. Adding fields to record additional information, such as the modification time and userid, reporting time and userid, can assist Swarm use appropriate terminology when describing the current disposition of a job.

Adding jobs

Swarm does not provide the ability to create new jobs in the Helix Versioning Engine, but jobs can be added to changelists or reviews:

  1. Navigate to a changelist or review.

  2. The Add Job link Click the Add Job link.

  3. Scroll through the available jobs, or enter job search criteria to search available jobs.

    The Job Search dialog

    Tip

    For more information on job search criteria, see Perforce User's Guide: Jobs.

  4. The Job Search Select button If you find the job you want to add, click its row to highlight it and then click Select. Or, double-click the desired job to add it.

    The Job Search Cancel button If you do not find the appropriate job, click Cancel.

Note

If you attempt to add a job to a review that affects a single project, Swarm applies the project's job view filter to display only jobs that affect the project. It is not currently possible to expand the filter to include jobs outside of the project.