Build triggers in Jenkins
A build trigger may be used for various purposes depending on the context of the project.
For example:
If an organization would like to have a CI/CD pipeline setup using plain Jenkins. They will have the build triggers to trigger downstream projects such as
- Integration tests
- Code scans
- Performance Tests
- End to End Tests
- Deployment.
The above stages will be chained to the parent job and can be triggered one by one or in parallel depending on the stage (this is where build trigger is used, trigger the downstream project if the parent is successful).
Build periodically can be used to run on standard jobs (if you have a team setup which has deployment to master every evening). Then you can set up the test jobs to build periodically late evenings at a fixed time (also the test job can be triggered based on success as explained in (1)
Poll SCM is nothing but checking if there is new code committed in your repository and build based on that.
Checkout the Jenkins wiki for moreinformation: Building a software project