Repeating deployments over a specified interval

With IBM® UrbanCode™ Release, you can automatically schedule deployments that repeat over a specified interval of time. For example, you can configure the release tool to automatically schedule deployments to a specific environment in a specific phase in a specific Release. With the release tool as delivered, you can schedule recurring deployments on hourly, daily, and weekly bases. You can also schedule deployments to run at custom intervals that you define by using CRON expressions.

  1. Click the navigation list arrow, and then click Releases & Deployments.
  2. On the Recurring Deployments tab, click Add New.
  3. Complete these details, then click Save:
Field Description
Release The release for the deployment.
Phase The phase into which the deployment deploys the application version.
Environment The environment that the deployment deploys into.
Deployment plan The deployment plan that describes the tasks for completing the deployment.
Type The deployment frequency. This setting specifies how often a deployment runs. A recurring deployment runs at the specified frequency. Available values are as follows:
  • Hourly
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • CRON
A CRON expression specifies a custom interval such as every 5 minutes. You can use CRON expressions to customize the deployment frequency.
Time Zone The Time that the recurring deployment is scheduled for.
Description A description of this repeating deployment.
Executor Role A role with permissions to run the deployment. The options are all user roles that are defined in the security settings.
Version Selection The version to deploy. To select the version manually at deployment time, select Leave Empty_Populate Manually. To have the tool automatically assign the most recent application version that passes the gates when the scheduled deployment starts, select add Latest Versions Passing Gates.

When you select the Latest Versions Passing Gates option, you can further limit the versions by creating a version filter. You can either use basic wildcards or you can specify REGEX expressions to define more complex filters. For example, you can use a REGEX expression to select only snapshots with a name that follows a specific pattern such as DEV_**_2014. To define a filter, select Use Regular Expressions option, and specify the filter in the Version Filter field.
Start Automatically Check this option to start the scheduled deployment automatically. If you select this option, you can also configure these options:

Manual Task Notification

Select this option to email an owner of a manual task when a task requires user input. This option notifies the assigned user or all users in a role for a task that is part of the first segment of the scheduled deployment or if an approval is stopping the scheduled deployment from starting.

Run for new versions only

Select this option to deploy only new versions. If you select this option at deployment time and the latest version that is selected for deployment is deployed, the scheduled deployment is rescheduled for the next time according to the recurring rule.
Notification Scheme Selects the notification scheme used during deployments. For information about notification schemes, see Configuring notifications.
Enabled By default, recurring deployments start scheduling deployments as soon as they are saved. A recurring deployment will start the first instant its scheduling criteria is met. To stop recurring deployments from being scheduled, click the Enable button.

When you click Save, the release tool schedules the first repeating deployment at the time that you specified. You can see that deployment in the calendar view. After the deployment is scheduled, you can go to the scheduled deployment detail view and modify it. For example, you can modify options such as start automatically and select a different version, pattern, or version filter.