How Promotions Work

DevOps Center supports two types of promotions:

• Unbundled promotion—Users select one or more work items and promote (move) them to the next pipeline stage.
• Versioned promotion—Work items are combined into a single bundle represented by the Change Bundle object. The bundle is promoted as a single unit to the next pipeline stage. Change bundles have version identifiers, such as 1.0.

The Pipeline Stage object has a Boolean field called Versioned that DevOps Center uses to control how promotions come into a pipeline stage. The value of the field determines what type of pipeline stage it is:

• Unbundled Stage—A stage that work items are promoted into by users selecting them individually.
• Bundling Stage—The last unbundled stage in a pipeline. Work items have been promoted individually into this stage, but new change bundles are promoted out of it.
• Versioned Stage—A stage where change bundles are promoted into.

When an admin creates a pipeline, DevOps Center provides a template of a typical release pipeline that includes a bundling stage. However, you have complete flexibility to configure it based on your preferences. This setup allows users to individually select the work items they want to promote from the Approved Work Items list to the first pipeline stage. Admins can configure subsequent stages as either unbundled or versioned. But if an admin makes a stage versioned, all the stages to the right in the pipeline must also be versioned, and they can’t go back to being unbundled.