Jenkins can record the 'fingerprint' of files (most often jar files) to keep track of where/when those files are produced and used. When you have inter-dependent projects on Jenkins, this allows you to quickly find out answers to questions like:

• I have foo.jar on my HDD but which build number of FOO did it come from?
• My BAR project depends on foo.jar from the FOO project.
• • Which build of foo.jar is used in BAR #51?
  • Which build of BAR contains my bug fix to foo.jar #32?

To use this feature, all of the involved projects (not just the project in which a file is produced, but also the projects in which the file is used) need to use this and record fingerprints.

See this document for more details.