Approvals & Gates in Azure Pipelines

What Are Approvals & Gates?

Approvals and Gates are features used to enforce **checks and balances** during the software delivery lifecycle:

• Approvals: Manual interventions required before (or after) deployment to a specific stage
• Gates: Automated checks that ensure your system or environment meets predefined conditions
• Prevent accidental or unauthorized deployments
• Support compliance and governance requirements in regulated industries

Types of Approvals

Azure DevOps supports different types of approval configurations to match your release workflow:

• Pre-Deployment Approvals: Required before a stage begins deployment
• Post-Deployment Approvals: Ensures stability before moving forward
• Multi-User Approvals: Allows multiple approvers or teams to review before continuing

How to Configure Approvals in a Release Pipeline

To set up manual approvals in a release pipeline:

1. Navigate to Azure DevOps > Pipelines > Releases
2. Click the stage where you want to add an approval
3. Choose Pre-deployment conditions
4. Enable Approvals and select the required users or groups
5. Save your changes and test the pipeline

What Are Gates in Azure Pipelines?

Gates are **automated validations** that must pass before a stage continues. They're useful when you want to include health checks, quality gates, or policy validations in your release workflow.

• Run a script to validate deployment readiness
• Check alerts from Azure Monitor or ServiceNow
• Call a REST API to verify external system conditions
• Enforce security or compliance checks automatically

Sample YAML Snippet with Approvals Concept

stages:
- stage: Deploy
  displayName: 'Deploy with Approval'
  jobs:
  - deployment: DeployWebApp
    environment: 'Production'
    strategy:
      runOnce:
        deploy:
          steps:
          - task: AzureWebApp@1
            inputs:
              azureSubscription: 'AzureServiceConnection'
              appName: 'my-web-app'
              package: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)/drop/*.zip'
        

Approvals and gates are configured in the environment settings, not within the YAML file itself, but this shows where deployment happens within the pipeline.

Best Practices

• Use approvals in **production and critical stages** to prevent accidental changes
• Combine manual approvals with **automated gates** for added confidence
• Use **RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)** to manage who can approve what
• Integrate gates with **monitoring or security tools** for real-time insights
• Always keep your approvers informed of the changes they’re reviewing

Conclusion

By integrating Approvals and Gates, Azure DevOps ensures that your deployments are not only fast but also safe, auditable, and compliant. These features are especially valuable for enterprises or projects with strict release governance.

Coming up next: you’ll learn how to create **Rollback Strategies** in Azure DevOps in case something goes wrong during deployment.