Preface – This post is part of the SAP on Azure series.

Introduction

Azure DevOps provides an option to create a pipeline that can be configured in such a way that it can take the latest code from a branch, and build it into artifacts (deployable file) and then deploy the same in a specific cloud platform. This full process can be automated, and it is called Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI CD Pipeline). In this article, we will discuss the later part of pipeline that is Release and Continuous Deployment.

Creating a Release Pipeline for Continuous Deployment

1. Go to Releases, as shown below:
   

   

2. Create or import a pipeline (for that you need to export the existing one and then import)
   
3. When you create a new pipeline, choose Empty Job, as shown below:
   
4. Now, add your stage name
   
5. Change the name of the pipeline
   
6. Now click on “Add an artifact” and choose the source as the builder we have created above:
   
7. Now, add a trigger for automation (Continuous Deployment), add your branch by following steps as shown below:
   
8. Now, add artifact filter, just in case you don’t want every stage to run for all the builds:
   Here, you need to choose the branch for which this stage is meant to run the pipeline
9. The pipeline can be easily copied from existing one by uploading pipeline json which has given code.
   Also, you must change given builder name with yours under Tasks (for each of the stages)
   
10. Once you are done with the above activities, then go to variables and given info there:
    
11. Now simply save and run the pipeline
    

Hence, we have successfully created an end to end CICD Pipeline.

Continuous Deployment

In CICD Pipeline, we can automate the deployment part with Continuous Deployment. We have shown how to do that in step 07, above.