Customizing Notification Templates

TeamCity users can select the events to be notified about. The default notification messages can be customized globally on a per-server basis.

Project Administrators with the enabled "Change user / group notification rules in project" permission can edit notification rules for users and user groups assigned to their projects.

Notifications Lifecycle

TeamCity supports a set of events that can generate user notifications (such as build failures, investigation state changes, and so on). On an event occurrence, for each notifier type, TeamCity processes notification settings for all the users to determine which users to notify.

When the set of users is determined, TeamCity fills the notification model (the objects relevant to the notification, such as "build", investigation data, and so on) and evaluates a notification template that corresponds to the notification event.
The template uses the data model objects to generate the output values (for example, notification message text). The output values are then used by the notifier to send the message. Each notifier supports a specific set of output values.

Note that the template is evaluated once for an event which means that notification properties cannot be adjusted on a per-user basis.

The output values defined by the template are then used by the notifier to send alerts to the selected users.

Customizing Notifications Templates

Notification Templates Location

Each of the bundled notifiers has a directory in <TeamCity Data Directory>/config/_notifications/, which stores FreeMarker (.ftl) templates. There are also .dist files that store the default templates. Each notification type evaluates a template file with a corresponding name. The template files can be modified while the server is running.

By default, the server checks for changes in the files every 60 seconds, but this can be changed by setting the teamcity.notification.template.update.interval internal property to the desired number of seconds.

If an error occurs during the template evaluation, TeamCity logs the error details to teamcity-notifications.log. There can be non-critical errors that result in ignoring part of the template or critical errors that result in the inability to send notification at all. Whenever you make changes to the notification templates ensure the notification can still be sent.

This document doesn't describe the FreeMarker template language, so if you need guidance on the FreeMarker syntax, refer to the corresponding template manual.

Supported Output Values

TeamCity notifiers use templates to evaluate output values (global template variables) which are then retrieved by name. The following output values are supported:

Email Notifier

subject — subject of the email message to send
body — plain text of the email message to send
bodyHtml — (optional) HTML text of the email message to send. It will be included together with plain text part of the message. However, if it is present in the template, it should be customized as well.
headers — (optional) raw list of additional headers to include into an email. One header per line. For example:

<#global headers>
  X-Priority: 1 (Highest)
  Importance: High
</#global>

IDE Notifications and Windows Tray Notifications

message — plain text of the message to send
link — URL of the TeamCity page that contains detailed information about the event

Customization Examples

This section provides Freemarker code snippets that can be used for customization of notifications:

Including Errors from Log

<#list build.buildLog.messages[1..] as message><#-- skipping the first message (it is a root node)-->
  <#if message.status == "ERROR" || message.status == "FAILURE" >
    ${message.text}
  </#if>
</#list>

The example below shows the snippet included into the build_failed.ftl template: the errors will be listed in both the plain text and the html part of the email:

<#-- Uses FreeMarker template syntax, template guide can be found at https://freemarker.org/docs/dgui.html -->
 
<#import "common.ftl" as common>
 
<#global subject>[<@common.subjMarker/> FAILED] ${project.name}:${buildType.name} - Build: ${build.buildNumber}</#global>
 
<#global body>TeamCity build: ${project.name}:${buildType.name} - Build: ${build.buildNumber} failed ${var.buildShortStatusDescription}.
Agent: ${agentName}
Build results: ${link.buildResultsLink}
 
${var.buildCompilationErrors}${var.buildFailedTestsErrors}${var.buildChanges}
 
 <#list build.buildLog.messages[1..] as message><#-- skipping the first message (it is a root node)-->
   <#if message.status == "ERROR" || message.status == "FAILURE" >
     ${message.text}
   </#if>
 </#list>
 
<@common.footer/></#global>
 
<#global bodyHtml>
<div>
  <div>
    TeamCity build: <i>${project.name}:${buildType.name} - <a href='${link.buildResultsLink}'>Build: ${build.buildNumber}</a></i> failed
    ${var.buildShortStatusDescription}
  </div>
  <@common.build_agent build/>
  <@common.build_comment build/>
  <br>
  <@common.build_changes var.changesBean/>
  <@common.compilation_errors var.compilationBean/>
  <@common.test_errors var.failedTestsBean/>
 
    <#list build.buildLog.messages[1..] as message><#-- skipping the first message (it is a root node)-->
   <#if message.status == "ERROR" || message.status == "FAILURE" >
     ${message.text}
   </#if>
 </#list>
 
  <@common.footerHtml/>
</div>
</#global>

Listing Build Artifacts

There is no default way of listing build artifacts in an email template at the moment. See a related issue with a simple plugin allowing you to list artifacts via a relevant API.

Current workaround

This assumes direct access to disk from the template and ignores external artifacts storage (like S3) as well as artifacts browsing policies (not showing internal artifacts). Also, this way is likely to become deprecated in the future TeamCity versions.

<p>Build artifacts:</p>
  <#list build.artifactsDirectory.listFiles() as file>
    <a href="${webLinks.getDownloadArtefactUrl(build.buildTypeExternalId, build.buildId, file.name)}">${file.name}</a> (${file.length()}B)<br/>
  </#list>

This will list only the root artifacts and include the .teamcity directory, which can be changed by modifications to the code.

Listing Build Parameters

<#list build.parametersProvider.all?keys as param>
  ${param} - ${build.parametersProvider.all[param]}
  <br>
</#list>

This will list the parameters that are passed to the build from the server.

Default Data Model

For the template evaluation, TeamCity provides the default data model that can be used inside the template. The objects exposed in the model are instances of the corresponding classes from TeamCity server-side open API.
The set of available objects model differs for different events.You can also add your own objects into the model via a plugin. See Extending Notification Templates Model) for details.

Here is an example description of the model (the code can be used in IntelliJ IDEA to edit the template with completion). Note that not all entities listed below will be available in any template, for example, all test responsibilities are assigned in the project scope and notifications on test responsibilities can be configured to point to a project where an investigation was assigned (not to a build configuration).

<#-- @ftlvariable name="project" type="jetbrains.buildServer.serverSide.SProject" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="buildType" type="jetbrains.buildServer.serverSide.SBuildType" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="build" type="jetbrains.buildServer.serverSide.SBuild" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="agentName" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="buildServer" type="jetbrains.buildServer.serverSide.SBuildServer" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="webLinks" type="jetbrains.buildServer.serverSide.WebLinks" -->
 
<#-- @ftlvariable name="var.buildFailedTestsErrors" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="var.buildShortStatusDescription" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="var.buildChanges" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="var.buildCompilationErrors" type="java.lang.String" -->
 
<#-- @ftlvariable name="link.editNotificationsLink" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="link.buildResultsLink" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="link.buildChangesLink" type="java.lang.String" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="responsibility" type="jetbrains.buildServer.responsibility.ResponsibilityEntry" -->
<#-- @ftlvariable name="oldResponsibility" type="jetbrains.buildServer.responsibility.ResponsibilityEntry" -->

TeamCity Notification Properties

The following properties can be useful to customize the notifications' behavior:

teamcity.notification.template.update.interval — how often the templates are reread by the system (integer, in seconds, default 60)
teamcity.notification.includeDebugInfo — include debugging information into the message in case of template processing errors (boolean, default false)
teamcity.notification.maxChangesNum — max number of changes to list in an email message (integer, default 10)
teamcity.notification.maxCompilationDataSize — max size (in bytes) of compilation error data to include in an email message (integer, default 20480)
teamcity.notification.maxFailedTestNum — max number of failed tests to list in an email message (integer, default 50)
teamcity.notification.maxFailedTestStacktraces — max number of test stacktraces in an email message (integer, default 5)
teamcity.notification.maxFailedTestDataSize — max size (in bytes) of failed test output data to include in a single email message (integer, default 10240)

Last modified: 22 August 2023