Figure 8.9. Installing the Jenkins IM plugins
Once this is done, you need to configure your Instant Messaging server. Any Jabber server will do.
You can use a public service like Google Chat, or set up your own internal messaging server locally
(the Java-based open source chat server OpenFire^1 is a good choice). Using a public service for
internal communications may be frowned upon by system administrators, and you may have difficulty
getting through corporate fire walls. Setting up your own internal chat service, on the other hand,
makes great sense for a development team or organization in general, as it provides another channel of
communication that works well for technical questions or comments between developers. The following
examples will be using a local OpenFire server, but the general approach will work for any Jabber-
compatible server.
The first step involves creating a dedicated account on your Jabber server for Jenkins. This is just an
ordinary chat account, but it needs to be distinct from your developer accounts (see Figure 8.10, “Jenkins
needs its own dedicated IM user account”).
Figure 8.10. Jenkins needs its own dedicated IM user account
Once you have set up an IM account, you need to configure Jenkins to send IM notifications via this
account. Go to the main configuration page and tick the Enable Jabber Notification checkbox (see
Figure 8.11, “Setting up basic Jabber notification in Jenkins”). Here, you provide the Jabber ID and
password for your IM account. Jenkins can usually figure out the IM server from the Jabber ID (if it is
different, you can override this in the Advanced options). If you are using group chat rooms (another
(^1) http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp