If you need to get started quickly with\u00a0Release Management\u00a0service in Visual Studio Online, just download the Release Management Extension from Visual Studio gallery<\/a>. You can create\u00a0release artefacts\u00a0directly from within the Visual Studio IDE using Release Management as a service with a Visual Studio Online account. You must use an Azure subscription to deploy to your Azure VMs with this release definition.<\/p>\n Step 1<\/strong>: Download the Release Management Tool for Visual Studio 2013 from Visual Studio gallery<\/a><\/p>\n Step 2<\/strong>: Create release artefacts in Visual Studio Online using Build Definition menu<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Learn more about Release to Azure from Visual Studio IDE<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This blog describes\u00a0how you can connect Release Management client to\u00a0VSO service to set up and manage releases.<\/strong><\/p>\n Before you start, you’ll need:<\/p>\n Here are the steps to set up and manage releases to Azure using Release Management service on Visual Studio Online:<\/p>\n In order to use Release Management service on Visual Studio Online, you need to connect Release Management client to Visual Studio Online service. Once you download the Release Management client, enter the Visual Studio account URL for which you are admin<\/strong>, in the Configure Services<\/strong> window:<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n This will pop up an authentication browser window where you should enter your Microsoft account credentials corresponding to an admin<\/strong> account for the Visual Studio account URL.<\/p>\n Once authentication is successful, Release Management client window will appear and you can now set up and manage your releases.<\/p>\n Note<\/strong>: The account owner and project collection administrators (at the time of first-connection to Release management features in VSO) will automatically become \u201cRelease Managers\u201d. So if you would like to enable more people having access to Release Management, one of these users has to sign in using the WPF client, and then add the rest of the users as release managers.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Decide on the number of stages you would like to have in your deployment pipeline. Now go to Administration<\/strong> tab —\u00a0Manage Pick Lists<\/strong> and add the stages:<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n More details on adding Stages can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In order to release to Azure environments,<\/p>\n 1. You should have Azure VMs ready. If you need to create them,\u00a0here’s how<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2. Import the Azure Environments to Release Management. If you need to import them, here\u2019s how<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n a.<\/strong>\u00a0Download the settings file<\/a>\u00a0from the Azure portal and open\u00a0it with a text editor, such as Notepad,\u00a0to get your subscription ID and Management Certificate key. (After using the settings file, consider deleting or securing\u00a0it as it contains information that can be used by others to access your Azure account.)\u00a0 Go\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0 to get the name of an existing storage account or add a new storage account using the Azure portal.\n<\/p>\n \n b<\/strong>. Now go to Administration<\/strong> tab —\u00a0Manage Azure<\/strong>. Click on New vNext: Azure<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0 \n c<\/strong>. Add the subscription by putting in the following details of your Azure subscription as obtained in Step (a)\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0i.<\/strong> Subscription Id\n<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0ii.<\/strong> Management Certificate key<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0iii.<\/strong> Storage Account Name<\/p>\n \n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n d.<\/strong> Now go to Configure Paths<\/strong> — Environments<\/strong> tab and click New vNext: Azure<\/strong>. Add the Environments one by one here.\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0 \n \u00a0 \n e.<\/strong> For each Environment, you need to add the Servers (Azure VMs that you would have created).\n<\/p>\n \n \n \n \u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0You are done now importing the Azure environments to Release Management.<\/p>\n To create a Release template and start your release, you need to follow the following steps. Detailed steps are also covered here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> Create a release path to represent the stages that your release must go through<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Choose the environment and approvers to use for each stage of your release. You can add multiple final approvers for each stage if you want to.<\/p>\n \u00a0 2.<\/strong> Create required components of your app that you need to deploy separately<\/p>\n Go to Configure Apps<\/strong> —\u00a0Components<\/strong>, click **New vNext **<\/p>\n Select Builds with application<\/strong>\u00a0and put component path w.r.t. Build drop folder as\u00a0**Path to package. **Here we are putting the whole build as single component, for simplicity.<\/p>\n \u00a0 3.<\/strong> Create a release template and use the release path that you just added<\/p>\n \n a.<\/strong> Go to Configure Apps<\/strong> —\u00a0vNext Release Template<\/strong>. Click New. <\/strong>Provide the Release Path you created earlier. Select the Build definition by clicking on the Edit<\/strong> button. If you would like to trigger a new release every time a new build is available, check the box for \u201cCan Trigger a Release from Build?<\/strong>\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n \u00a0b.<\/strong> Add the component you created by right click on Component on the left pane and Add. <\/strong>Add the component you created earlier.\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0c. <\/strong>Drag and drop the Action \u201cDeploy Using PS\/DSC\u201d to the deployment sequence canvas\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n \n d.<\/strong> Add the following details to the action.\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0 \n e.<\/strong> Copy this deployment sequence and paste it to QA stage. Click Save & Close.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n \n \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n The Release Template is now ready. You can trigger a new Release from here (select Release Template and click \u201cNew Release\u201d) or if you have selected \u201cCan Trigger a Release from Build?<\/strong>\u201d option while creating this Release Template, a new release will be triggered as soon as a new build is available. To test this, go to Visual Studio IDE, Team Explorer<\/strong> —\u00a0Build<\/strong>. Right click on your build definition and select \u201cQueue New Build<\/strong>\u201d. On completion of a successful build, go to Release Management client \u00e0 Releases<\/strong> tab and you will see a new Release has been triggered.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Note<\/strong> that with Release Management service on Visual Studio online:<\/span><\/p>\n With Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 RTM, you can use Visual Studio Online(VSO) service to set up and manage your releases to Azure. This means you can configure Release Management client to connect to Visual Studio Online service instead of Release Management server used for on-premises setup. Getting started with Release Management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":45953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[253,226,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-azure-devops-server","category-ci","category-devops"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" With Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 RTM, you can use Visual Studio Online(VSO) service to set up and manage your releases to Azure. This means you can configure Release Management client to connect to Visual Studio Online service instead of Release Management server used for on-premises setup. Getting started with Release Management […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/6837.01.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/7178.11.png\")
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Configure Release Management client to use Visual Studio Online service<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/7360.RM-Configure20Services.png\")
<\/p>\nSet up Stages<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/6201.RM-Add20Stages.png\")
<\/p>\nSet up Microsoft Azure environments<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/4657.New20Azure20Subscription.png\")
<\/a><\/span>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/0250.RM-Add20Azure20subscription20details.png\")
<\/a><\/span>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/8321.New20Environment20button.png\")
<\/a>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/7532.RM-Add20Azure20Envs.png\")
<\/a>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/0081.RM-Link20Servers.png\")
<\/a>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/7750.RM-Link20Servers20-202.png\")
<\/a><\/span>\n<\/p>\nCreate release template and start your release<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/0537.RM-new20RP.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/6232.RM-RP20done.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/6355.RM-component-done.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/6232.RM-RT20create.png\")
<\/a><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/8473.RM-Deploy20Using.png\")
<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/6138.DS_.png\")
<\/a>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2014\/11\/5807.RM-Copy20DS.png\")
<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n
Other Release Management Resources<\/h2>\n
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