Deployment Overview in Notifications

Last updated on 27th October 2025

When you add a deployment overview to your deployments (either manually or using AI), this overview is automatically included in your integration notifications. This provides your team with richer context about what's being deployed directly in their communication tools.

Supported Integrations

Deployment overviews are automatically included in notifications for:

  • Slack (both legacy and OAuth)
  • Discord
  • Microsoft Teams (both Power Automate and legacy Office 365 connectors)
  • HTTP POST webhooks
  • HTTP Request webhooks (using the %deployment_overview% variable)

How It Appears

Slack Notifications

In Slack, the deployment overview appears as a separate field in the message attachment, displayed below the commit message and above the deployment status information.

Example Slack Message:

Deployment of MyApp

Message
Fixed critical payment bug

Overview
This deployment includes critical bug fixes for the payment
processing system and new features for the user dashboard.

Status          | Server
Completed       | Production

Start Commit    | End Commit
abc123          | def456

Microsoft Teams Notifications

Power Automate Format (Adaptive Card):

The overview appears as a separate text block with a separator line, making it visually distinct from other deployment information.

Legacy Office 365 Connector Format (MessageCard):

The overview is included as the first fact in the deployment details section, labeled "Overview:".

Discord Notifications

In Discord, the overview appears in the embed description with a bold "Overview:" label, positioned between the deployer information and the revision details.

Example Discord Embed:

New deployment for MyApp (completed) on Production

2025-01-27 15:30:00
John Doe

Overview:
This deployment includes critical bug fixes for the payment
processing system and new features for the user dashboard.

Last Revision: def456

HTTP POST Webhooks

The deployment overview is included in the JSON payload as the overview field within the deployment hash:

{
  "payload": {
    "identifier": "12345",
    "deployer": "John Doe",
    "status": "completed",
    "overview": "This deployment includes critical bug fixes...",
    "timestamps": {...},
    "files": {...}
  },
  "signature": "..."
}

HTTP Request Webhooks (Custom Payload)

You can include the deployment overview in your custom payload using the %deployment_overview% variable:

{
  "title": "%commitrange%",
  "description": "%deploymenturl%",
  "overview": "%deployment_overview%",
  "status": "%status%",
  "version": "%endrev%"
}

This variable will be replaced with the deployment overview content when the notification is sent.

Backwards Compatibility

If a deployment does not have an overview (either because it wasn't added or it's an older deployment), the notification will simply omit the overview field. All integrations continue to work exactly as before, ensuring complete backwards compatibility.

Best Practices

  1. Be Concise: While there's no strict character limit, keep overviews focused and scannable for quick reading in chat tools.

  2. Highlight Key Changes: Mention the most important changes or fixes to give recipients immediate context.

  3. Use Clear Language: Write overviews that can be understood by both technical and non-technical team members.

  4. Consistent Format: If your team uses overviews regularly, establish a consistent format (e.g., always starting with "This deployment includes...").

Example Overview Contents

Good Overview: text This deployment includes critical bug fixes for the payment processing system and new features for the user dashboard. Key changes: fixed timeout issues in checkout flow, added real-time notifications, improved mobile responsiveness.

Too Brief (not helpful): text Bug fixes and improvements.

Too Detailed (better suited for commit messages): text Fixed bug in PaymentProcessor.process() method on line 234 where the timeout was set to 5000ms instead of 30000ms. Also refactored the DashboardController to use the new NotificationService class that was added in PR #123. Updated all CSS media queries to use the new breakpoint system...