# Publish an HTML Report from Azure Pipelines (Without a Marketplace Extension)

Canonical: https://commareports.com/ci/azure-devops-html-report
Published: 2026-08-21

> Azure DevOps won't render an HTML artifact — it downloads as a zip and the run expires on a retention policy. Publish the report to a stable URL with one curl task: comments, revisions, and diffs included.

# Publish an HTML report from Azure Pipelines

Azure Pipelines runs the job, the job produces an HTML report, and then
Azure DevOps offers you an artifact download. `PublishPipelineArtifact@1`
stores the folder; a reviewer opens the run, finds Artifacts, downloads,
unzips, and opens `index.html` from `~/Downloads`, where half the relative
asset paths work.

The alternatives inside the product don't close the gap:

- **The run summary accepts markdown**, not HTML. Useful for a table of
  numbers; useless for a rendered report.
- **`PublishCodeCoverageResults`** gives you the Code Coverage tab, but
  only from Cobertura or JaCoCo XML, and only for coverage.
- **The marketplace extensions** that add an HTML tab need an
  organization-level install. In a lot of enterprise tenants that's a
  ticket, an approval, and a wait.
- **Retention deletes the run.** Pipeline artifacts live and die with the
  run, and retention policies clear older runs on a schedule. The link in
  the incident review goes dead.

## One task, one URL

Store a [scoped token](/docs/api-tokens) (`reports:write` is enough) as a
secret variable or in a variable group, create the Comma report once, and
put its id in a pipeline variable:

```yaml
- script: |
    curl -fsS -X PATCH "https://commareports.com/api/v1/reports/$(commaReportId)" \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer $COMMA_API_TOKEN" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d "$(jq -n --rawfile html coverage/index.html \
            --arg title "Coverage — $(Build.SourceVersion)" \
            '{title: $title, html: $html}')"
  displayName: Publish report to Comma
  condition: always()
  env:
    COMMA_API_TOKEN: $(COMMA_API_TOKEN)
```

Three details do the work:

- **`PATCH`, not `POST`.** Every run appends a revision **at the same
  URL**. One bookmark per report, forever — and any two runs can be
  [diffed](/share-html-report).
- **`condition: always()`.** The runs worth sharing are the red ones.
  Without it, the publish step is skipped exactly when it matters.
- **A commit-stamped title.** Revisions titled by `Build.SourceVersion`
  make the history read like a log instead of a pile of timestamps.

`$(COMMA_API_TOKEN)` must be mapped through `env:` — Azure Pipelines does
not expose secret variables to the script environment automatically, which
is the single most common reason this step fails with a 401 on the first
try.

## Posting the link on the pull request

The report URL is stable, so the PR comment stays one line, permanently
valid:

```yaml
- script: |
    echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=reportUrl]https://commareports.com/p/$(commaReportId)"
  displayName: Expose report URL
```

Use it in a PR comment step, a status check, or the run summary — every one
of them now carries a link that opens a rendered report instead of starting
a download.

## What you get that an artifact can't give you

- **Comments anchored to the report.** A reviewer highlights the module
  that lost 8% coverage and pins a thread to it; the thread survives the
  next twelve runs. See [commenting on HTML](/comment-on-html).
- **Revision history with diffs.** "What changed since the last green
  build?" is a diff, not a memory exercise. Artifacts have no notion of a
  previous version.
- **Readers without a seat.** Azure DevOps artifacts need project access. A
  Comma report can be team-visible, domain-gated, or shared with a named
  reviewer who will never have a license — see the
  [sharing model](/docs/sharing).
- **No retention clock.** Revisions stay.
- **Announcements for free.** A [webhook](/docs/api) on `revision.created`
  posts each run to Teams, Slack or Discord.

## Limits worth knowing before you wire it up

- **HTML body: 5 MB.** Screenshots, trace zips and JS bundles go in as
  [assets](/docs/api) — 25 MB per file, 250 MB per report.
- **Scripts run, sandboxed.** Report HTML is stored verbatim and
  rendered in an iframe with `sandbox="allow-scripts"` and no
  `allow-same-origin`, so an interactive report keeps working. A report
  that loads sibling files at view time (Allure, JMeter's dashboard)
  needs those files uploaded as assets alongside the HTML.
- **Rate limits are per token**, 60/minute by default. One publish per
  build is nowhere near it.
- **Use a self-hosted agent's network egress rules.** If your agents run in
  a locked-down VNet, `commareports.com` needs to be allowed like any other
  HTTPS endpoint.

## Try it

Comma is free — unlimited reports, unlimited commenters, unlimited revision
history. Add the task to one pipeline and send a link instead of an
artifact.

**[Create your first report →](https://commareports.com/)**

### Related

- [Publish from CI](/docs/ci) — the general pipeline pattern
- [GitHub Actions](/ci/github-actions-html-report) · [GitLab CI](/ci/gitlab-ci-html-report) · [Jenkins](/ci/jenkins-html-report) · [CircleCI](/ci/circleci-html-report)
- [Bitbucket Pipelines](/ci/bitbucket-pipelines-html-report) — the 14-day artifact clock