Getting data into pipelines can be hard. Instead of wrangling APIs and chatops, you can now add custom forms directly to your Buildkite pipelines 🙌🏻 Getting input from your team has never been easier.

Screenshot of the Buildkite Secret Santa block step input fields

Sounds great, but what can I actually use this for?

• 🖥 Choosing an environment before running a deployment script
• 💭 Dynamic questions based on pull request content
• 📑 Automation of team onboarding, offboarding, and other workflows
• 💥 Checking that you really do want to go through with that Friday afternoon deployment
• 🚀 Adding a name, version, and changelog to a release

We even used it to automate our team’s Secret Santa 😄🎄🎅🏼

Adding an input field to your pipeline

1. Add a block step to your pipeline.yml file.
2. Provide it with a prompt attribute, and at least one field attribute. For example:

- block: "Question!"
  prompt: "Please answer this important question"
  fields: 
   - text: "What day is it today?"
     key: "day-of-the-week"

3. Create and run a new build on your updated pipeline!

The data that the user enters into the form is then available on subsequent steps from the build meta-data! 😱

Screenshot of the block step input field example

To explore a pipeline with a block step and input fields, take a look at our example repository: https://github.com/buildkite/block-step-example

Check out all of the available input field options over in our documentation. We’d love to hear what you think! Say hi on twitter, or send us an email.