Generating and Scheduling Builds

If you are associated with uploaded Flare projects in Central, you can open the Builds view of the Projects page. From here, you can manually build targets (such as HTML5, PDF, and others), or you can schedule targets to be generated. If you are using branching, you can build output for a specific branch.

Permission Required?

For this activity, you must have the following permission setting:

For more information about permissions, see Setting User Permissions or Setting Team Permissions.

How to Generate a Target Manually

  1. Select Projects on the left side of the interface, then click a project name to open it.

  2. At the top of the page, click Builds.

  3. In the upper-right, click Create Build.

    The New Build dialog opens.

  4. (Optional) From the Branch field, you can select the appropriate branch. If you are not using branching, you will always be building from the master branch.

  5. From the Target field, select the target you want to build.

  6. Click Build.

    A row is added to the page, showing the progress of the target as it is generated. If the target generates successfully, the color of the Progress column changes from light to dark green, and the State column displays “Complete.”

    If you click a build row (not the check box), the row expands, showing details about the selected build (i.e., the private URL and whether the build is associate with a site).

Note You might notice that it takes somewhat longer for a target to build on Central, compared with building it locally in Flare.

Note Certain Flare features are not supported when generating output from Central. This includes limitations on which output formats can be viewed from Central. See Flare Features Not Supported in MadCap Central.

Note If you intend to build a target that links to an outside Flare project (e.g., for the purpose of importing files via Global Project Linking, project merging, or multilingual output), make sure that the other project is also uploaded to Central. Otherwise, the automated imports or merging will not work. See Setting Up Project Linking.

How to Schedule a Target to Be Generated

  1. Select Projects on the left side of the interface, then click a project name to open it.

  2. At the top of the page, click Builds.

  3. At the top of the grid area, select Schedules.

  4. In the upper-right, click Create Build Schedule.

    The Create Build Schedule dialog opens.

  5. (Optional) From the Branch field, you can select the appropriate branch. If you are not using branching, you will always be building from the master branch.

  6. From the Target field, select the target you want to build.

  7. Complete the rest of the fields in the dialog.

    • Build Every Week on Following Day(s) Click on the day(s) of the week when you want the target to be generated.
    • Time Click the field to manually enter the hour, minutes, PM or AM. Alternatively, click the little clock to the right of the field to select a time from the columns presented in the Time Picker popup. You can use the mouse wheel to rotate through the hour and minutes columns to locate the desired time.

    • Time zone Click the down arrow and choose your time zone.
    • Build only if changes detected Select this option to generate output on the specified days and times only if no changes to source files were found. If you deselect this option, the target will always be generated, even if no changes are detected in the source files.

    Example You want to schedule a target to be generated automatically. You want the target to be build every work day (Monday-Friday) at 9 p.m. Pacific time.

    However, you only want the target to be generated if a change is detected in the source files since the previous build.

    Your schedule would look something like this:

  8. Click Save. A row is added to the grid, representing that scheduled build.

How to Remove a Scheduled Build From a Target

  1. Select Projects on the left side of the interface, then click a project name to open it.

  2. At the top of the page, click Builds.

  3. At the top of the grid area, select Schedules.

  4. In the grid, select the check box next to the scheduled build you want to remove.

  5. In the local toolbar, click .

  6. In the dialog that opens, type delete in the field, and click Delete.

Build State

When you build a target in Central, it is going to have a particular state, depending on various factors.

Queued

When you generate a target in Central, your build is added to a node along with builds from other customers. Therefore, it is queued as it awaits its turn to begin processing. If one node reaches is limit, another one is started in order to process additional builds. Therefore, the wait should be brief for any build that you start.

Tip If you notice that builds are constantly displaying as queued, you can try generating targets at a different, non-peak time of day. Also, if you have many builds that are scheduled to begin at the same time, you can try staggering those start times.

Note If a build seems to be stuck in the queued state for quite a long time, please contact technical support.

Getting Files

When a queued build reaches its turn, Central undergoes a brief period where it gathers the necessary files to generate the output.

Building

The "Building" state for a target means that the output is actively being processed. A build can remain in this state for quite some time, depending on the number of files and size of the output.

Publishing

The "Publishing" state for a target means that it has finished compiling and is in the final stages before completion.

Completed

A build reaches the "Completed" state if it generates successfully. You can then expand the build row and click the link to view the output.

Canceled

This state displays when someone cancels a build.

Failed

A build might fail for various reasons. If this happens, you can click the three dots at the left of the row and select View Log from the menu. This can give you an indication as to why the build was not successful. See Opening the Build Log.

What’s Next?

After you generate a target, you might want to do any of the following: