Managing pipelines with the Pipeline view

With the Pipeline view, you can manage releases and deployments from a single page.

  • Create a release and add environments to the release phases.
  • If you are working with applications in IBM™ UrbanCode™ Deploy, apply at least one snapshot of each application. The Pipeline view shows only snapshots of these applications, not component versions.
The Pipeline view shows information about a release, its applications, phases, and environments. From this view, you can compare the contents of environments and schedule deployments.
  1. To open the Pipeline view, click the navigation list arrow, then click Pipeline View, and select a release from the list at the top of the page.
    The Pipeline view shows the release phases as columns from left to right across the page. The column for each phase shows the release environments for that phase. For example, the following figure shows two release environments that are named DEV-1 and DEV-2; these environments are assigned to the DEV phase.
    The Pipeline view, showing two release environments within a release phase
    Under Applications, the view shows the snapshots and release versions that are deployed to the release environments. For example, the following figure shows the QA-1 environment; on this environment, the snapshot 1.1.001 of an application is deployed. This snapshot is marked as release version 1.1.
    A release phase, which contains one release environment; this environment has a release version that is deployed to it

    As a default all applications are listed under Applications. To narrow the list of applications, you use the application filter.

    When you open the pipeline diagram, the environment that deploys next is selected. Selected environments are shown with a light-yellow background and dark-green version number. Any matching versions in other environments are also green. Differing shades of purple indicate how closely any other versions are related to the selected versions; the darker the shade, the closer the relationship. After you open the pipeline, you can select any environment by clicking its name or any white space in the environment. Then, the diagram color coding is updated to reflect the newly selected environment.
  2. To compare the contents of environments, click an environment to select it.
    The snapshots and release versions in that environment are shown in green. At the same time, the snapshots and release versions in other environments change color temporarily. The temporary colors indicate how the contents of those environments match the contents of the selected environment.
    You can compare snapshots by clicking them individually. If you click multiple snapshots, information about the snapshots appears in a dialog box, as shown in the following figure:
    Comparing snapshots; information about the statuses and gates is shown
  3. To schedule a deployment from this view, drag a snapshot or release version from one environment to another environment, as shown in the following figure.
    Dragging a snapshot or release version in this way created a scheduled deployment.
    Dragging an application snapshot to an environment

    You can also click the link in the Upcoming row to create or edit a scheduled deployment for an environment. If there is no scheduled deployment for an environment, this row shows a link that is titled Schedule. If there is a scheduled deployment, this row shows a link that includes the date and time of the scheduled deployment. To create a deployment or edit the scheduled deployment, click this link.

  4. To switch the view between showing scheduled deployments and showing current deployments, click Upcoming or Latest links at the left of the page.
    The following figure shows a scheduled deployment for the DEV-1 environment. Because the snapshot is not yet deployed, it is shown in orange.
    The Pipeline view, showing a scheduled deployment; a snapshot is listed under an environment, and the time of the scheduled deployment is shown
    Clicking Upcoming shows error icons if gate conditions are not met. Compliance warning icons appear when Latest is clicked.
  5. Optional: If the inventory of the release environments does not reflect the applications that are deployed on the physical environments, you can update the inventory manually.
    Applications that are connected to an integration provider are updated automatically, but applications that are not connected to an integration provider are not updated automatically. To specify which application versions are deployed to the environment, click the list next to the environment name and then click Adjust Inventory, as shown in the following image. Then, select the application versions that are deployed to the environment and click Update Inventory, as shown in the next image.
    Adjusting the inventory for a release environment

    Specifying the application versions that are deployed to the environment
    You can adjust the inventory in this way only for applications that are not connected to an integration provider.
  6. When an environment has a collection of application versions that you want to save, you can create a snapshot of those application versions by clicking the snapshot icon.
    You can create a snapshot only if at least one deployment ran in that environment. In the Snapshot window, you can name this snapshot, which is also known as a release version, and specify which applications to include. After you create a release version, you can drag it to other environments or schedule it for deployment by clicking the Schedule link.
  7. From this view, you can manage any gate warnings that appear on the gate icons.
    Each phase has a gate that defines the minimum version statuses that an application must have before it can be deployed to an environment in that phase. Click the gate icon to show the required statuses. If a version does not have the minimum required statuses, the Upcoming row displays an error icon. To resolve this problem, you can add the required statuses to that version or create an exemption. You perform both actions by clicking the scheduled deployment or the version that has the error icon.

    If you are deploying a release version to an environment, you must set the version statuses on only the release version. You do not need to specify statuses on the application versions.

  8. From this view, you can also manage compliance errors that appear on versions.
    A compliance error occurs for one of the following conditions:
    • A component version does not match the version that is intended to be deployed to that environment.
    • A component version does not match the version in the application snapshot. In other words, after an application snapshot was taken, a different component version is deployed to the environment.
    • An application version does not match the contents of the release version. In other words, a snapshot was taken and that release version was deployed to another environment. However, in the new environment, one or more of the applications did not deploy correctly. Therefore, the version of one or more applications does not match the contents of the release version.

    One way to correct compliance errors is to try to redeploy the applications or release versions to the environment. As a shortcut, you can click the list next to the environment name and then click Compliance. A pop-up window shows only the applications with compliance errors. From this window, you can select one or more applications to redeploy and then click Schedule to schedule a new deployment.