Archive Build Runs on Test Reporting & Analytics

Learn how to archive build runs to declutter your test run data.

Over time, the build and test run data in your Test Reporting & Analytics account could become cluttered and noisy due to several reasons. This can result in the rich insights and testing metrics provided by Test Reporting & Analytics becoming unreliable or skewed, providing an inaccurate state of testing in your organization.

Archiving build runs is a feature that allows you to clean up your testing activity so it doesn’t pollute your testing metrics.

Some examples of when you might want to archive build runs from your Test Reporting & Analytics project are:

• Issues with network, environment, or setup, causing entire builds to fail.
• Builds triggered by accident.
• Builds triggered as pipeline test jobs.

If you archive a build run, it becomes read-only. You can’t trigger any action on that build run anymore. Also, Test Reporting & Analytics recalculates Smart Tags and other test metrics, excluding the tests in archived build runs.

Close, archive, and delete compared

Build Runs gives you three ways to take a build run out of your active list. They differ in what happens to the build run and its data:

How to archive build runs?

Follow these steps to archive build runs:

1. You can trigger archiving a build run in two ways:
   • From Build Runs, select the checkboxes next to the build runs you want to archive. To archive every build run that matches the current filters, select the checkbox at the top of the list. Then click the more options (⋮) menu in the bulk action bar and select Archive.
   • From Build Insights, click the kebab menu and click the Archive button.
2. Read through the instructions in the pop-up and type Archive in the textbox.
3. Click Archive build run
   A message ‘Build archive successful’ is displayed after archiving the build run.
   

What happens when you archive a build run?

Test Reporting & Analytics removes archived build runs from the default view inside Build Runs. Archived build runs become non-editable. Test Reporting & Analytics also recalculates all the Smart Tags, metrics, and charts after you archive a build run. Archived build runs leave the list immediately. For large selections, the recalculation continues in the background.

The following table summarizes how the features and metrics in Test Reporting & Analytics handle archived build runs.

How to view an archived build run?

To view an archived build run:

1. From Build Runs, click the Filters button on the top-right corner.
   
2. Switch on the Select archived builds only toggle button.
   
3. Click Apply.
   
   Build Runs displays all the archived builds. Archived builds are prepended with the text [Archived] before the build name.
   

Delete build runs

You can also permanently delete build runs from the bulk action bar. Deleted build runs cannot be restored.

1. From Build Runs, select the checkboxes next to the build runs you want to delete. To select every build run that matches the current filters, select the checkbox at the top of the list.

2. Click the more options (⋮) menu in the bulk action bar and select Delete.

   

3. Read through the instructions in the pop-up and type Delete in the textbox.
4. Click Delete build runs. The button shows the number of build runs you selected.

Smart Tag calculations for subsequent runs no longer consider data from deleted build runs. Test data from deleted runs is removed from the Tests Health and Testing Trends dashboards.