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A pipeline orchestrates the delivery of snapshots across the stages/environments.  While a deploy workflow defines the implementation for the delivery of a single build artifact into an environment, the pipeline operates at a higher level and orchestrates the propagation of many deployments across many stages/environments. The pipeline includes facilities for approvals, manual tasks, scheduling, deployments, and much more. See Creating/Editing a Pipeline Version to manage pipeline details.
A sample pipeline definition with three stages, see Example Pipeline for additional example.
Image The pipeline above has three stages, Development, QA, and Production.  The Development stage does not have any gates, which means the steps begin execution immediately.  The “Deploy All” step deploys all of the project versions in a snapshot into the Development environment, which utilizes the deploy workflows of the underlying projects to facilitate this work. The QA stage has three gates.  The “Verify Functional Tests” gate verifies that tests for the projects in the snapshot in Development meet the configured qualifier metrics.  If the qualifier metrics did not pass then the gate fails, otherwise, the gate completes and it transitions to the next gate.  The “QA Approval” gate creates an approval task for the QA Manager group and blocks execution until approved. When the approval is given, the “Deploy All” step for QA is executed. Another test is also run and an email notification to sent to a QA group. When the notification is complete, the pipeline execution transitions to the Production stage and executes its gates and steps (similar to QA). However, in the production stage, the approval is outsourced from an external Change Management System (i.e. ServiceNow CAB) instead of internally in the FlexDeploy application. In a typical release, most of the snapshots will not make it very far through the pipeline.  The approval gates are either rejected, or the snapshot is simply made “Out of Date” by a newer one.  Depending on the size and complexity of a release, there may be dozens or even hundreds of iterations in the lower stages before the first snapshot is promoted to the later stages.  In fact, it is possible that only one snapshot for the release ultimately makes its way all the way to production.  At such time, the release may be ended, and a new one is created.  However, if desired, the same release can be used to deliver additional fixes or updates.

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Pipeline Gates

Gate Type

Description

Approval

Creates an approval task for the defined group, and blocks transition until the task is approved.  If the task is rejected, the stage execution is marked as failed, and execution is terminated.

External Approval

Creates an approval task tied to an external system (e.g. ServiceNow), and blocks transition until the task is approved.  If the task is rejected, the stage execution is marked as failed, and execution is terminated.

Schedule

Blocks transition until the defined schedule is reached, or overridden by a user with appropriate privileges.

Test

Evaluates the test qualifiers for any tests which were executed for the same snapshot in the configured environment. The gate is successful if the qualifiers determine success, or fails otherwise.

Scan Gate

Evaluates any scans that were executed within the current pipeline execution on build or in a previous environment in the pipeline. The gate is successful if the qualifiers determine success, or fails otherwise.

Custom Gate

Executes custom groovy based implementation of gate.

Work Item Gate

Ensures that Work Items associated to the Release have met certain criteria before the Pipeline Execution can continue.

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Pipeline Steps

Step Type

Description

Deploy

Deploys a single project version from the snapshot to the current stage.

Deploy All

Deploys all project versions from the snapshot to the current stage, using the deploy priorities configured on the release.

Pre-Deploy

Executes the configured pre-deploy workflow for a single project version from the snapshot to the current stage.

Pre-Deploy All

Executes all the configured pre-deploy workflows for project versions from the snapshot to the current stage, using the deploy priorities configured on the release.

Test

Executes tests in the current stage for a single project, according to the defined strategy (on the project). 

Test All

Executes tests in the current stage for all projects in the snapshot, according to the defined strategy (on the projects).

Custom Step

Executes custom groovy based implementation of step.

Execute Utility

Executes a single utility workflow in the current stage.

Execute All Utility

Executes all utility projects in the release for the current stage according to the deploy priorities.

Promote To Release

Promotes current snapshot project versions to a specific release.

Notification

Sends an email to provided email address, FlexDeploy User, or FlexDeploy Group.

Group

A container for other steps to be executed serially.  Useful to execute the entire group in parallel to another step or group.

Wait

Halts execution for a configured number of seconds, or until a particular date and time.

Manual

Halts execution waiting for the task to be marked complete by a user in the defined group.

Schedule

Halts execution until the date/time evaluated by the given cron expression is reached.

Execute All

Deploys all projects versions in the snapshot and executes all utility workflows defined in the release, using the configured deploy priorities.

Update Work Items

Applies a number of optional updates to Work Items in the Release, such as updating the status or adding attachments.

Update Change Tickets

Applies updates to Change Tickets associated to the Stage Execution Info, such as adding comments and attachments.

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Viewing Existing Pipelines

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Creating and Editing a Pipeline Version

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Creating and Editing a Pipeline Stage

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Modifying a Pipeline Version during Execution

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Example Pipeline

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Pipeline Security