Manual promotion

In certain cases Contributors and Restricted Contributors need to manually add a Release to a Release Channel. For example, a Release that requires validation through manual QA testing cannot be automatically promoted. It can also be necessary as a break-glass mechanism to fast track Release promotion in cases where an urgent bug fix is required.

In this section we will consider version 14.3.8 of a Product that has already been published to Apollo.

Prerequisites

Publish a Release to Apollo

Before manually promoting a Release, you need to publish the Release to Apollo.

Learn more about publishing Releases to Apollo.

Ensure label requirements are satisfied

Apollo enforces label requirements for manual promotion in addition to automatic promotion. You cannot manually promote a Release to a Release Channel if it does not satisfy the Release Channel's label requirements.

Learn more about how to add labels to a Release.

Configure a Release promotion pipeline (Optional)

We recommend that you set up a Release promotion pipeline before manually promoting a Release.

Enter the manual promotion workflow

To manually promote a Release, you can select the Promote release to channel option from the Actions dropdown menu in the Product Release overview.

You can also hover over a Release Channel node Release promotion pipeline graph and select Manually promote to this channel.

The third way to enter the manual promotion workflow is by navigating to the Releases tab of the Product overview page. Select the fast-forward icon on the right of the Release's row in the list of Releases.

Define the manual promotion strategy

Once you enter the manual promotion page, you can view your configured promotion pipeline and define the Release Channels that will be manually promoted to the selected Release.

Copy an existing release

This promotion strategy allows you to add a Release to all the Release Channels that have a different Release. Select this option and then choose the Release to copy using the Target release to follow dropdown.

For example, we can use this option to promote version 14.3.8 to all the Release Channels that have version 14.3.7.

Fast track to channel

You can use this promotion strategy to promote a Release up to a specific Release Channel on the promotion pipeline. This is useful in cases where it is necessary to urgently add a Release to a Release Channel toward the end of the pipeline. Select this option and then use the Target release channel selection to define the Release Channel in the pipeline to which you want to fast track promotion.

In our example, we can use this option to promote version 14.3.8 all the way up to the STABLE_3 Release Channel. All of the highlighted Release Channels will be promoted.

All release channels

Use this promotion strategy to promote a Release to all the Release Channels in the promotion pipeline that do not already have the selected Release.

In our example we will promote version 14.3.8 to every Release Channel in the pipeline.

Custom channels

This promotion strategy allows you to choose any Release Channels to manually promote, as long as label requirements are satisfied. You can select Release Channels that are not in the configured promotion pipeline as well as Releases Channels that are in the pipeline. Select this option and then search for one or more Release Channels that you want to promote in the Target release channels search bar.

In this example, we want to add version 14.3.8 to PRE_STABLE, which is in the promotion pipeline, and to ANOTHER_CHANNEL and PILOT, which are not in the pipeline.

Review manual promotion

Once you have configured the promotion strategy, select Next. The next step is confirming that the Release satisfies the label requirements for the target Release Channel(s), entering a reason for the manual promotion, and reviewing the number of Entities that will be impacted by the manual promotion.

You can also view a summary of the label requirements for selected Release Channels that are missing or mismatched.

When you are finished, select Promote release.

On the promotion pipeline you can hover over the transition node before the selected target Release Channel to view the status of the manual promotion.

Resume promotion evaluation

If there are Release Channels in the pipeline that were not promoted manually, Apollo will proceed with promotion evaluation if all constraints are satisfied.

In the example below, after the manual promotion is complete Apollo will evaluate version 14.3.8 for promotion to STABLE_7 if the Release satisfies the label requirements, health criteria, and maintenance windows for STABLE_7.