How to get TFS Build Status notifications?

Question

You can run Build Notifications, which is similar to CC Tray in that it will continually give you the status of all builds that you're interested in following. To launch the tool, go to...

All Programs-->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010-->Team Foundation Server Tools-->Build Notifications

Click on the Options button to subscribe to whichever builds are on your server. This will now show up in your system tray with a green check box or red X to indicate the status of the builds you've selected.

In Visual Studio 2013 with TFS 2013, you have email alerts from TFS and a Build Notification system tray tool: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181725.aspx

However, it usually doesn't show up in the Windows 8 Start screen, even with a search. So, run it manually in most installations from here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\BuildNotificationApp.exe

The TFS API is mostly documented on MSDN under the Visual Studio SDK: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/bb130146, however the build APIs are in a different location (in the TFS documentation): http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc339575.

These are the same assemblies that tf.exe and Team Explorer (etc.) use.

If you just want the alert (not programmatically): You can right-click on the project in the Team Explorer and select Project Alerts.

You can use AnyStatus to monitor both XAML and vNext builds and lots of other monitors such as Windows Services, HTTP, TCP/IP, Ping, GitHub, Other CI/CD tools, Performance Counters and more.

Disclaimer: I am the author of AnyStatus