You cannot submit an approvals item directly. Approvals are created based on predefined rules and managed from release trains or release packages. The Approvals process app stores approvals and determines the approval process.
Approvals help enforce processes and bring accountability to your release management activities. Approvals may be required to:
- Allow a release train to proceed to final deployment stages
- Validate that a release train may exit a stage based on gate exit criteria
- Confirm that pre-defined milestones for a release have been reached by a certain date
- Allow deployment into an environment
Release managers indicate whether a release train requires approval when creating the release train. Release Engineers determine deployment approval needs when setting up environments and environment groups.
E-mail notifications for each type are configured so that recipients can approve or reject directly from the email they receive.
Release, Milestone, and Gate Exit Criteria approvals are shown in the following figure. Deployment approvals are not depicted here.
- Release Managers
- Level 1 through Level 4 Approvers
Approvals follow a process organized into these stages:
- Not Ready for Approval
- Level 1
- Level 2
- Level 3
- Level 4