Audience-based releases

This topic explains how audience-based releases let you validate changes with lower-risk audiences first. LaunchDarkly can automatically advance the release through each audience and manage the transition for you.

Audience-based releases let you roll out a feature or AgentControl config to specific audiences in a defined sequence. LaunchDarkly applies the same rollout configuration and optional metrics to each audience in order.

With automatic phase advancement, LaunchDarkly starts each new phase for you as soon as the current phase completes. LaunchDarkly monitors the release and triggers each audience. If LaunchDarkly detects a regression in one audience, it can pause or roll back the release. This happens before the next audience begins.

How audience-based releases work

An audience-based release is composed of multiple phases. Each phase targets a different audience, and only one audience receives the release at a time. LaunchDarkly completes one phase before starting the next.

For example, a typical audience-based release might progress through the following phases:

1. Validate functionality with internal users.
2. Confirm behavior with beta customers.
3. Expand to a subset of production traffic with regional users.
4. Complete the release for all users.

Automatic phase advancement

Automatic phase advancement starts each phase for you as soon as the previous phase completes. LaunchDarkly manages the transition between audiences and tracks rollout progress.

Your team can define the full audience sequence when you create the release. LaunchDarkly runs the release through each phase in order.

You can also select manual phase advancement if you prefer to start each phase yourself. To learn how to choose a phase advancement option, read Creating audience-based releases.

Within each phase, LaunchDarkly gradually increases the percentage of contexts in that audience receiving the new variation according to the configured rollout steps. Each subsequent phase becomes active only after the previous one completes.

Guarded rollouts share the same rollout duration, steps, metrics, and rollback configuration across all phases. LaunchDarkly evaluates metrics for each phase as it runs. If LaunchDarkly detects a regression during a phase, it can pause or roll back the release. The action it takes depends on your configuration.

You can define audiences using segments or targeting rules. Each audience is represented as a rule in the flag or AgentControl config targeting configuration. LaunchDarkly evaluates each audience using the same context kind you select for the rollout.

Rollout types for audience-based releases

LaunchDarkly uses the rollout type to manage traffic and evaluate performance for each audience in sequence:

• Choose guarded rollouts to monitor metrics during each phase. LaunchDarkly can automatically pause or roll back the release if a regression occurs. To learn more, read Guarded rollouts.
• Choose progressive rollouts to increase traffic to a variation automatically over time, without metric monitoring or automated rollback. To learn more, read Progressive rollouts.