Usage

To use the Azure DevOps plugin, the plugin must be loaded and an instance created before you can configure the plugin integration. You define configuration properties in the user interface or in a JSON file.

Integration type

The Azure DevOps plugin supports scheduled events integration which are listed in the following table.

Integration

There are two methods to integrate the plugin:

• Using the user interface
• Using a JSON file

Using the user interface

1. From the Plugins page, click Settings > Integrations > Plugins.
2. Under the Action column for the plugin, click Add Integration.
3. On the Add Integration page enter values for the fields used to configure the integration and define communication.
4. Click Save.

Using a JSON file

The JSON file contains the information for creating a value stream and integrating with the Azure DevOps server. The following table describes the information for the creating a HCL Accelerate value stream map.

1. From a value stream page, download the value stream map. The value stream map is a JSON file used to define integrations.
2. Edit the JSON file to include the plugin configuration properties.
3. Save and upload the JSON file. This replaces the current JSON file with the new content.
4. View the new integration on the Integrations page.

Minimum permission to integrate with Azure Devops

The Azure Devops Account used to generate the token must have the below permission:

1) Build – Read Permission
2) Code – Read Permission
3) Project and Team – Read Permission
4) Release – Read Permission
5) Work Items – Read Permission

How to use Build Tags Field

A new hidden field named as Build Tags is added to Azure Plugin for version 4.0.29 and later:

This field can take the comma-separated list to tags that have been added to a pipeline run. If you provide such tags, only the pipeline runs with these specific tags will be pulled to HCL Accelerate as part of SyncAzureBuildsEvent.

This is how you can add tags to your pipeline run in Azure Devops:

Here, HCL Accelerate is the tag that has been added to the pipeline run.

Configuration Properties

The following tables describe the properties used to configure the integration. Each table contains the field name when using the user interface and the property name when using a JSON file.

• The General Configuration Properties table describes configuration properties used by all plugin integrations.
• The Azure DevOps Properties table describes the Azure DevOps configuration properties are unique to the Azure DevOps plugin and define the connection and communication to the Azure DevOps server. When using the JSON method to integrate the plugin these properties are coded within the properties configuration property.

Not all configuration properties are initially displayed in the user interface, to see all properties enable the Hidden field.

Release orchestration

This plugin can be used to orchestrate releases in Azure Devops.

Compatibility

• HCL Accelerate version 2.4.0 and later is required to support release orchestration in Azure Devops.
• Azure Devops plugin version 3.0.1 and later supports release orchestration of Azure Devops release pipelines.
• Azure Devops plugin version 4.0.1 and later supports release orchestration using Azure Devops yaml pipelines.

Orchestrating Azure release pipelines from Accelerate

The plugin syncs repositories, builds, pipelines, releases definitions, environments, pipeline runs and release executions every five minutes with Accelerate. A repository in Azure can be mapped as an application in Accelerate pipeline. The build that is created after mapping the application appears as version in the Input column of the Accelerate pipeline.

In the following graphic,

• Parts Unlimited is the Azure Project and my-new-repo is one of the repositories in the Parts Unlimited project.
• Parts Unlimited/my-new-repo is mapped as the application.
• 20210729.02 is the latest build created in Azure Devops for this repository.

The release definitions can be mapped as processes in the Accelerate pipeline. For example, Demo-success is the release definition which is deploying to QA environment as shown in the following graphic. The graphic also shows that Demo-success is mapped as the process for Accelerate QA environment.

QA-my-new-repo is the release environment in Azure Devops for the above release definition. The following graphic shows the mapping the Azure Devops environment in the Accelerate pipeline.

To orchestrate the deployment from Accelerate, select the version using the deploy option as show in the below picture.

A new release is created in Azure Devops. The deployed version is synced with Accelerate within 5 minutes of deployment as show in the below picture.

Notes

In order to orchestrate the release in Azure using this plugin, there should be separate release pipelines defined for each stage.

Orchestrating Azure yaml pipelines from Accelerate

In order to orchestrate the Azure yaml pipeline using this plugin, the yaml pipeline has to be exploded in such a way that an Azure pipeline deploys to a single environment in Azure.

In the below example, ‘pipelines-javascript-new’ is the project name as well as the repo name. The Azure yaml pipeline is exploded into two pipelines, ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CI’ and ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CD’. ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CI’  contains the build and test jobs and also the ‘PublishBuildArtifacts@1’ task which uploads the artifact to a  to a staging directory. ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CD’ downloads the artifact created in ‘piplines-javascript-new-CI’ and performs the deployment.

The following picture shows the yaml script for ‘pipeline-javascript-new-CI’.

The following picture shows the yaml script for ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CD’. The pipeline script downloads the artifact created by the ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CI’ pipeline and then deploys the artifact. A variable ‘version‘ defines the  ‘pipelineId‘  (line number 15 in the yaml script) which is the version of the artifact to be downloaded. The version will be passed to the pipeline when the pipeline is run from Accelerate.

The below picture shows the ‘pipelines-javascript-new’ repo defined as an application in Accelerate and the ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CD’ pipeline being mapped as a process in Accelerate.

The below picture shows the environment being mapped.

The deployment can be started by clicking on the deploy button in the drop down for the environment as show in the below picture.

The version to be deployed can be selected as follows.

When the deploy button is clicked, plugin will run the mapped Azure pipeline (pipelines-javascript-new-CD). The selected version number will be set as the value for the ‘version‘ variable in ‘pipelines-javascript-new-CD’ pipeline. The artifact with the above selected version will be downloaded and deployed to the Dev environment.

The below picture shows successful deployment.

In short, the following are the needed in order to orchestrate the yaml release pipeline from Azure.

• There should be a separate pipeline for build and / or test and separate pipelines for deployment to each environment.
• Each deployment pipeline must have an initial step to download the artifact. The download artifact step will download the artifact created in the CI pipeline. The download artifact step can specify the pipelineId using a variable named ‘version‘. (pipelineId: $(version)). The value of the ‘version‘ will be passed to the pipeline when it is run from Accelerate.

Notes

Plugin supports the release orchestration of:

• Scripted yaml pipeline for build and deployment
• Scripted yaml pipeline for build and release pipeline for deployment
• Designer UI yaml pipeline for build and deployment
• Designer UI yaml pipeline for build and Release pipeline for deployment

Plugin does not support release orchestration if the source code is not in Azure, i.e, if the source code is in GitHub or BitBucket, release orchestration from Accelerate is not possible.

Automation Tasks

The following automation tasks are available in the ServiceNow plugin:

• DeployApp

DeployApp

Use this step to deploy an Azure Devops application.

This step has no input properties.

Adding automation tasks to a release

After the plugin is integrated automated tasks are available to add as a task within a release.

1. Verify that the Azure Devops server is connected to the HCL Accelerate.
2. On the Create Task page, select the automation task from the Type field drop-down list.
3. Complete the properties required for the task.
4. Click Save.