Setting up a Release plan

Release Plans

The release plans are created according to the project management lifecycle and executed based on behaviours configured as explained here. 

It is possible to configure the environment by clicking the Automated Behaviours icon and it will redirect the user to the Environments screen. From the dashboard, it will also be possible to view the previous plans and also fetch the details of the current release plans.

Creating a release plan

A new release plan can be created from the DevOps -> Create Release Plan. The release information below are displayed on the dashboard as follows: 

• Version Name
• Deployment path (origin and target). eg: ERP Dev -> ERP Testing
• Created by and created on
• The status of the Release plan.
• The user will also get to see the automated behaviour configuration set. For example, if all the automated behaviour are set the following strategies will be laid out:
  • Run tests before deployment
  • Auto deployment
  • Run tests after deployment.

The overview section of the dashboard will have information about 

• Issues in this release
• The various tests to run
• The different applications to deploy

The dashboard also displays detailed logs of activities performed while creating a release.

Start Plan

Starting the plan initiates the execution of the plan according to the Behaviours configuration. 

Release plan execution process

The Release plan gets executed based on the status set for each status in Environment Behaviours. Three separate scenarios of release plan execution are discussed below:

• If all the status such as Auto Deployment, Deploy Testing Modules, Run Tests before deployment and Run tests after deployment are set to false, starting the plan would initiate a deployment from the Testing Stage to Deployment Stage. There will be no testing before or after the deployment. The "Tests to Run" block would say "No tests Scheduled".
• If all the status are set as True, upon starting the plan, the issues are first tested before deploying, deployed to Testing and tested again after deployment is successful. 
• If the Auto Deployment status is set to False, then after testing, the user will have to manually deploy the plan. The start plan button text would change to Start Deployment. At this time, the user will also be able to cancel the plan.

It is possible to modify the behaviour of a release plan in between. For example if you want to include testing for a release plan where testing in automated behaviour is set to Off, the user can go to the Automated Behaviours and turn on the Run Tests before and after deployment flags. 

Cancel Plan

A plan can be cancelled only on certain occasions. This is greatly determined by the status of the release plan. This is explained below:

• A plan can be cancelled before it has been started
• When a plan starts and as a part of release process, testing would be the first step performed(Run Tests Before Deployment). Once the test is completed, if the automated deployment is set to false, the start plan status changes to Start Deployment. At this point, it is possible to cancel the plan.
• If as a part of Automatic Behaviours, if Automatic Deployment is set to ON, it will not be possible to cancel the plan until the automated deployment completes.

Glossary

Status of different modules in a release plan