Creating Planning Release Trains

Planning release trains are used for oversight only, including setting the schedule and milestones for the release and enabling release approvals. If you want to drive deployment using release trains, you should use deployable release trains. See Creating Deployable Release Trains.

You should create a release train when you are ready to request approval for or begin scoping and scheduling the deployment of one or more release packages. You can create a release train before or after you create the release packages that will be associated with it.

To create a release train:

1. In Work Center, click +New.
2. Search for the project that will store your release train, and then select the project to open a Submit form. (By default, the Release Trains project is used to store release trains.)
3. Fill out the required fields and any desired optional fields.
   Tip:

   • Enter the version of the release train in the Title or Description so that you can later report on and compare release train versions through standard SBM reports.
4. Configure and manage the release train using the tabs that appear in the form.

Required Fields

The required fields when you create a release train are as follows:

• Title
• Purpose
• Release Manager
• Dates: Specify the dates for the release train gates. You can also select Quarter Release or Six Month Release to auto-populate the fields using today's date as the start date, or calculate them using a specified start or end date.

Optional Fields

Optional fields include:

• Release Engineers
• Release Approval Required: Specify whether approval is required for the release train to enter production after QA is complete. Release approval is required by default.
• Message Log

Tabs

The tabs available from a release train once it is created are as follows:

• Overview: View reports on release packages associated with this release train. Reports display active release packages by environment and by state.

  From this tab, you can do the following:

  • Create and link release packages. You can see the list of release packages, including any parent and child release packages.
  • In the list of release packages, click the eye icon beside a release package to see a quick view of the details without opening the item.
  • In the list of release packages, click the release package link to open the item.
• Schedule/Gates: View or update the release train stage schedule. Specify exit criteria for each of the stage gates.
• Details/Approvals:
  • When the train moves to the approval stage, automatically-generated approvals appear here based on predefined rules. Approvers can perform an approval action on the item or recreate approvals.
  • Specify the milestone dates that major aspects of the release should be complete.
• Notes/Attachments: View notes and attachments that have been added to the item through the Work Center More option and related email correspondence.
• History: View the history of the release train item.