How to Gate Production With Manual Approval in Azure Pipelines

A deployment job that targets an environment with an Approvals check pauses in a pending state until a named reviewer approves the release.

Add an Approvals check to the production environment in the Azure DevOps UI, then point a deployment job at that environment. The run halts before the deploy steps until someone approves.

Steps

• Add an Approvals check on the production environment and list reviewers.
• Use a deployment job that sets environment: production.
• The run pauses for approval before the deploy steps run.

Pipeline

stages:
  - stage: deployProd
    jobs:
      - deployment: release
        environment: production
        strategy:
          runOnce:
            deploy:
              steps:
                - script: ./deploy.sh
# The "production" environment has an Approvals check
# requiring a reviewer to approve before deploy runs.

Gotchas

• The approval gate lives on the environment, so it applies to every pipeline that targets it.
• A reviewer cannot approve their own run when "requestor cannot approve" is enabled.
• Pending approvals can time out and fail the run if not actioned in the configured window.

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