A look at Percy’s new changes requested workflow

Need to alert your team of a visual bug? 🚨

Want to block approvals while asking a teammate about an update? ✋

Trying to keep track changes that need to be made? 📝

To help teams do all that and more, we’ve made a big addition to our review workflow—the ability to “request changes.” Up until now, we’ve only supported approvals, which is why we’re so excited to launch our new changes requested feature and workflow.

How it works

You can now request changes directly on snapshots with visual changes and snapshot groups.

Marking a snapshot as “Changes requested” blocks single-click approvals; an overridable pop-up message will appear if an approval is attempted.

This feature also has a broader impact on our workflow and how teams review visual changes.

Changes requested workflow

Requesting changes on a snapshot now impacts the build status, making it easier to see which builds need attention.

If you request changes on a snapshot within a build, the build status will also be updated to “Changes requested.”

Previously requested changes are also carried forward into subsequent builds on the same branch. Until you introduce a fix or address the unintended visual changes, the snapshot status — and the build status — will remain as “Changes requested.”

That also means that when a “Changes requested” snapshot get carried forward to the next build, its status will be “Changes requested” from the get-go.

Notifications and commit status updates

This feature expands upon and integrates with our recently launched comments system. When changes are requested directly on snapshots, a time-stamped comment is created on behalf of the reviewer.

To alert a specific teammate and provide context for the changes requested, we recommend @mentioning them in a comment on the snapshot in question.

If you have your Percy project linked to a GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket repository, Percy updates your commit status to reflect the current build status. That now includes when changes are requested and when changes were previously requested and carried forward to the current build.

You can also utilize our Slack integration to get updates throughout the visual review workflow, including when changes are requested.

We’re incredibly excited about this addition and hope it gives teams more context and peace of mind throughout the visual review workflow.

We also wanted to give a shoutout to all the teams that tested this feature in early release! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to drop us a line at support@percy.io.🧡