How to configure accelerated notifications for Azure DevOps

By default, CatLight will poll your server every minute to check for updates. For Azure DevOps/TFS, you can configure push notifications using webhooks. After that CatLight app will significantly reduce polling frequency, and check for changes when it receives the push notification. You can expect to get notifications about 10x faster and reduce your server load by about 30x.

How to enable accelerated notifications

• Install the CatLight Azure DevOps extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace
• Go to Azure DevOps web UI. Every project should now have "CatLight" hub on the left. 

• In the CatLight hub, click on "Enable accelerated notifications". The hub will ask you for your CatLight team id. You can get it from the CatLight App-> Help and Feedback menu -> About. If you don't use CatLight yourself, and just want to configure accelerated notifications for other users, ask one of them to provide a CatLight team id for you.
• Accelerate notifications are now enabled for this Azure DevOps project. You can repeat the previous step for every other project you want to accelerate. The team id will be asked only once, but you can change it later in hub settings if needed.

You can check the CatLight app to see that accelerated notifications are working. On a dashboard, go to panel settings and edit any item group. You should see a yellow thunderbolt near the projects that have accelerated notifications .

How accelerated notifications work

CatLight extension for Azure DevOps can configure webhooks for specified projects. After that Azure DevOps server will make an HTTPS call to CatLight cloud service to notify it about completed builds/new pull requests and so on. The CatLight service will then forward the information about the changed item to the CatLight desktop apps. The CatLight service does not store any details about the changes, and forwards only the identifier of the changed item.