Exploring ReleaseOps
Summarize
Summary of Exploring ReleaseOps
ServiceNow® ReleaseOps is designed to automate and streamline the deployment of changes, customizations, and custom applications on the ServiceNow AI Platform. By automating these deployments, ReleaseOps improves predictability and reliability while reducing risks associated with releasing unwanted changes into production. It enhances existing deployment pipelines by managing cross-instance trust and credential sharing internally, making pipeline setup and configuration simpler. Deployments can be triggered directly from the ServiceNow Studio development environment and leverage ServiceNow Playbooks to minimize manual errors.
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ReleaseOps manages deployments through releases, which specify the changes or apps to be moved to production or other target instances and the timing of deployment. Within each release, deployment requests group update sets or application installs that are to be deployed.
ReleaseOps availability and user roles
- Availability: ReleaseOps is not supported in regulated environments or on-premise. Customers should verify their entitlements to confirm access.
- User roles:
- Pipeline Manager: Creates and manages deployment pipelines and customizes playbooks.
- Release Manager: Creates, schedules, and verifies releases, ensuring deployment requests meet release criteria.
- Developer: Creates deployment requests to push application installs or update sets through the pipeline.
- Tester: Reviews Automated Test Framework (ATF) failures and either approves deployment continuation or returns work to developers.
ReleaseOps workflow
The typical workflow starts with the release manager creating a release linked to a pipeline. Developers promote update sets and create deployment requests targeting the release. The release moves through the pipeline stages:
- Assessment stage: Deploys changes to non-production instances for analysis, scans, and tests. Testers review any failures, approving or sending them back to developers.
- Release stage: Moves all approved changes to production on the scheduled date.
During the release process, the release manager activates the release and prepares it by deferring incomplete deployment requests. When ready, deployment requests move from test to production in the order they were last deployed, and the release is then marked complete.
Key benefits
- Requirement definition: Pipelines allow pipeline managers to set criteria for applications or updates to be installed on target instances.
- Controlled deployment: Release managers can deploy changes in a scheduled and managed way via releases.
- Deployment requests: Developers can push work through deployment requests, grouping update sets or app installs for deployment.
- Deployment analysis: Deployment analyzer scans requests against the target instance’s current state, helping developers decide appropriate actions.
Next steps for customers
To get started or deepen your expertise with ReleaseOps, explore documentation on configuring ReleaseOps, managing deployments, promoting update sets, creating deployment requests for scheduled or on-demand releases, attaching update sets to deployment requests, and creating releases.
ServiceNow® ReleaseOps is a solution to problem of deploying changes, customizations, and custom apps on the ServiceNow AI Platform. By automating the deployment process, ReleaseOps helps to increase the predictability and reliability of deployments, while also reducing the risk of releasing unwanted changes to production.
ReleaseOps overview
ReleaseOps automates and enhances the process of deploying changes, customizations, and custom applications on the ServiceNow AI Platform. ReleaseOps improves upon the existing pipelines deployment process by internally managing cross-instance trust and credential sharing, simplifying the setup and configuration of custom pipelines. ReleaseOps enables you to deploy changes using update sets and trigger deployment from directly within the ServiceNow Studio development environment. In addition, ReleaseOps leverages the automation capabilities of the ServiceNow Playbooks, resulting in deployments that are less error-prone and manual.
ReleaseOps handles deployments through releases. Releases define which changes, customizations, or custom apps will be moved to the production (or target) instance and when the changes will be deployed. The changes within a release are contained in deployment requests. Each deployment request contains one or more update sets or application installs. For more information about releases and deployment requests, see Releases in ReleaseOps and Deployment requests in ReleaseOps.
ReleaseOps availability
ReleaseOps is not supported in regulated environments or on-premise. Check your entitlements to determine whether you have access to ReleaseOps.
ReleaseOps users
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Pipeline manager | A pipeline manager is responsible for creating and managing pipelines, including customizing playbooks. Pipelines define the flow of your deployments. |
| Release manager |
A release manager is responsible for creating and scheduling releases, as well as verifying that the contents of a release are both relevant and correct. The release manager can remove deployment request items that don’t meet the criteria for the release. |
| Developer | A developer is responsible for creating deployment requests to push application installations or update sets of work completed through the pipeline. |
| Tester | A tester is responsible for signing off on ATF test failures that occur to enable a deployment to continue. A tester can also send it back to development. |
ReleaseOps workflow
The following workflow illustrates the sample pipeline workflow installed with ReleaseOps. Your pipeline manager can customize it as needed.
In the traditional development to test to production workflow:
- The release manager creates a release, which is associated with a pipeline.
- Developers create and promote update sets, adding them to an existing deployment request or create a new deployment request, which is targeted to a release.
- The release moves through the pipeline:
- The assessment stage moves changes in from deployment requests through non-production instances and is designed to do deployment analysis and run scans and tests.
- If there are assessment failures, deployment tasks are created that the Tester can sign off on or redirect to the developer to address.
- The release stage moves all changes across its deployment requests that have passed assessment by the scheduled date to production. See sample release workflow, below.
In the traditional release workflow:
- A release manager creates a release and sets the state to Active.
- On the scheduled freeze date, the release begins preparing for deployment.
- During the preparation process, deployment requests that aren't ready are set to Deferred and can be attached to a future release.
- Once preparation is complete, the release state is set to Ready for deployment.
- When the release date arrives, the update sets within the deployment requests move from test to production in the order that they were deployed in the last instance.
- The release and deployment requests are set to Complete.
ReleaseOps benefits
| Benefit | Feature | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Define requirements for an application or update to get installed on a target instance. | Pipelines in ReleaseOps | Pipeline Manager |
| Deploy changes to a production or another target environment. | Releases in ReleaseOps | Release Manager |
| Push application installations or update sets of work completed through the pipeline with deployment requests. | Deployment requests in ReleaseOps | Developer |
| Scan deployment requests for changes to the current state of the production instance or target instance with the deployment analyzer. Use those findings to determine your actions in the pipeline. | Deployment analyzer in ReleaseOps | Developer |