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Release pipelines are in betaRelease pipelines are in beta, and are available only to certain customers on an Enterprise plan. Aspects of this feature may change without notice or become deprecated in favor of other release management features.
This topic explains how you can use release assistant features, including release pipelines, to standardize and automate the release process for your feature flags. Release pipelines let you move flags through a series of phases, rolling out flags to selected environments and audiences following automated steps. This combination of release pipelines and automated steps is called Release assistant in the LaunchDarkly user interface.

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Release strategies

You can set up one or more release strategies for each phase, determining:
  • The environment to roll out to
  • The audience to roll out to within the environment, including either everyone, or only selected segments
  • Whether approvals are required
  • Whether to release immediately, or use a guarded rollout to roll out gradually and prevent regressions
When you add a flag to a release pipeline, LaunchDarkly automatically performs the actions you set up as the flag moves through each phase.
Automated releases is available for boolean flags onlyJSON, string, and number flags cannot be added to a release pipeline.

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View release pipelines

Expand Release in the left sidebar, then click Release assistant to view the default release pipeline within a project:
The default release pipeline. This one is named "Primary release pipeline."

The default release pipeline. This one is named "Primary release pipeline."

Each project can have up to 20 release pipelines. Click the dropdown menu with the release pipeline name and choose Manage release pipelines to view the list of release pipelines within a project:
The "Release pipelines" list.

The "Release pipelines" list.

You can also use the REST API: Get all release pipelines, Get release pipeline by key
When a flag is included in a release pipeline, you can view each phase in the pipeline in the flag’s right sidebar. To see the steps required for each phase, click the expand arrows for the phase:
An expanded phase in a release pipeline in a flag's sidebar with the expand arrows called out.

An expanded phase in a release pipeline in a flag's sidebar with the expand arrows called out.

You can also use the REST API: Get release for flag
Release pipelines are one of several options that LaunchDarkly provides to help you release features to production safely and gradually. To learn more about options for releasing features gradually and safely, read Releasing features with LaunchDarkly. To learn how to create, manage, and delete release pipelines, read the topics in this category: