It’s been a while since I had to work with Jenkins directly (since I started on OpenStack, really). However, I had a few tricks picked up around plugins for Chrome that make working with pre-3.0 Jenkins a little more pleasant.

BuildReactor

This provides a current statuses of a user-defined number of Jenkins jobs. It also gives notifications when projects pass/fail.

Site
Source

Installation

Install from the Chrome store. Once installed, “Add” a new view, give it a name (i.e. “Open vSwitch”) and configure the following settings:

Server: jenkins.example.com:8080
User:   [leave empty]
Pass:   [leave empty]

Substitute the appropriate URL for your local server. Once done, select the “Show” button, and select which of the projects you want to display. Then “Save”. You should now be able to get an overview of your builds by clicking on the toolbar icon. You should also get notifications. This is easier to parse than the emails, IMO.

Doony

This provides a new, ultra-usable stylesheet for Jenkins. IMO it makes Jenkins easier to work with.

Site
Source

Installation

Follow the guide on the README. When modifying the manifest.json file, add the following URLs:

"matches": [
  "https://jenkins.ci.cloudbees.com/*",
  "http://localhost:8080/*",
  "https://jenkins.example.com:8080/*",
  "http://jenkins.example.com:8080/*",
  "https://jenkins.example.com/*",
  "http://jenkins.example.com/*",
],

Substitute the appropriate URL for you local server. Don’t forget to “reload” the plugin once installed.