Build Triggers

Two of the more popular features of Jenkins are build scheduling and source control hooks.

• Build scheduling allows you to have Jenkins automatically build the project based on your preferences.
• Source control hooks give Jenkins the ability to build the project whenever code is committed.

Build Scheduling:

In the project configuration, go to the Build Triggers section in your project configuration. Find the Build Periodically check mark. You'll see a text field come up. In this text field you can specify how often you want Jenkins to build.

Text entered here must be in the form of a Cron Expression. A Cron expression is a special format scheduling. The expression comprises of 5 fields separated by a space. The fields are minutes (0-59), hours (0-23), day in the month (1-31), month (1-11), and day of the week (0-7) (0 and 7 are Sunday).

If you want to build every 5 minutes, the expression would be `*/5 * * * *`

If you want to build every day at 7am, the expression would be `0 7 * * *`

For more on Cron expressions

Git Web Hooks (Build when you push to Git)

You can configure Jenkins to build every time commits are pushed into Git. Doing so requires minimal configuration.

You must have the GitHub Integration plugin installed.

In your project setup in Jenkins, go to the Build Triggers section. Select GitHub hook trigger for GITScm polling.