Release Gates: Releases with continuous monitoring built in

This post introduces the 'Approval gates in releases' preview feature in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). It allows for automated continuous monitoring of application health signals (e.g., Azure Monitor alerts, work items) before promoting a release to the next environment. Gates are configurable with sampling intervals, delays before evaluation, and timeouts. Built-in gates for Azure Monitor and Work Items are provided, with extensibility for other systems via Azure Functions. The post details how to add gates to release definitions, illustrating scenarios with successful, resolved, and unhealthy deployments.