How to Add Environment Approvals and Gates in Azure Pipelines

Azure environments add approval checks and automated gates that a deployment job must clear before it runs.

Target an environment: from a deployment job. Configure approvals and gates on that environment in the UI; the job pauses until checks pass.

A deployment job targeting an environment

The environment "production" can carry a required-approvers check configured in Pipelines > Environments.

stages:
  - stage: Deploy
    jobs:
      - deployment: DeployProd
        environment: production
        strategy:
          runOnce:
            deploy:
              steps:
                - script: ./deploy.sh production

Gotchas

• Approvals and gates are configured on the environment in the UI, not in YAML - the YAML only references the environment.
• A deployment job (not a plain job) is required to bind to an environment and trigger its checks.
• Gates can poll external systems (e.g. a monitoring query) and delay until healthy.

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