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Indicate if a runner is running a job or not (is it busy?)

Release notes

The new job execution status badge in Admin Area > Runners and the {group_name} → CI/CD → Runners views gives users an at-a-glance indicator to determine if there are active jobs on a specific runner in the fleet.

Screenshot_2022-11-30_at_15.26.18

Screenshot_2022-11-30_at_15.23.32

Insight

It's difficult to tell if the runner is running a job currently. This is helpful to know for an admin because it helps when updating configuration and checking to see if the runner is actively running something, so nothing is interrupted, and also as a basis to make sure the runner works properly after an update to the runner. It is helpful to see if the runner is busy in general to know why a job isn't getting picked up.

Supporting evidence

Hard to tell if my runner is currently running a job. This helps because if I want to upgrade it or need to change configuration, I don’t want to interrupt a job.

wasn't sure whether the, the runner being online was the same as it's, it's able to accept jobs cause maybe it's online, but it is con congested and, or I, I know you can set a limit of how, how many tasks run I can concurrently process. So, so maybe it's it's online, but yeah, three, all, all of the slots have already been, been taken. So, which is also why I looked into this. Cause I wanted to see more details on if it says that it's all, if, if everything is good or if it's accepting jobs or if, if it's maybe congested or something like that. And

I think maybe let me see if, if they can look inside of the runner, maybe if you have like the, the last time run, maybe. Because of the, how can I say it? Like, like actually, I don't know, because if, if they are align, they should be okay, but if they are offline or, or, or, or stale, I think that if that's good to, to see if there it's like, it's healthy, but it's unused or, or something like that. But if it it's offline when it's stopped, but you know,

and this is the place where I should see. Okay. It should have, should have an icon here running, running on it. Because if I do pause it pauses, pauses, but a job may be still running because pause does not pause anything currently running it, the pickup. Okay.

What is missing now that you yet, you said is that from the GitLab UI, and this will be really helpful. You cannot see if a job is ongoing right now on a runner.

Action

Proposal

Add an indication if the runner is busy (running a job right now).

  • Running (taking on a job)
  • Idle (not taking on a job)

Each status should link to the runner's job list.

Designs in design management

Figma design specs

Resources

Tasks

  • Assign this issue to the appropriate Product Manager, Product Designer, or UX Researcher.
  • Add the appropriate Group (such as ~"group::source code") label to the issue. This helps identify and track actionable insights at the group level.
  • Link this issue back to the original research issue in the GitLab UX Research project and the Dovetail project.
  • Adjust confidentiality of this issue if applicable
Edited by Darren Eastman