Adobe Launch Release Standards

[Alexis_Cazes_]

This post is part of a series about auto-tagging

Adobe Launch release process is by design simple. This simplicity sometimes comes at a cost as quality checks are often missing before code goes to production. You should also have tagging and coding standards set up to facilitate the release process.

Peer review

Adobe Launch publishing process is built in a way that your build should be approved before being pushed to production. During this approval process, you should have one of your tagging peers to review the build and validate that the tagging and coding standards are being followed.

You should also use a tool like JIRA to document the peer review process and only if an "approved" comment is present should you then release to production.

Release types

While it is possible to deploy Adobe Launch build when and how you see fit, it is a good idea to understand when the best time is to deploy sensitive changes to the website. This will minimise the impact of any issues.

Normal release

A normal release will usually contain one or more logic, configuration, and code changes. These changes are the most sensitive. While you would have done the necessary tests on the dev or stage instances, there is always a slim chance that things can go wrong.

To minimise the impact of any issues you should always deploy in the morning from Monday to Thursday. In the morning because usually this is where the traffic of your site will be low enough. You should avoid releasing on Friday as it is unlikely someone will monitor your changes over the weekend, and you run the risk to introduce an issue over the whole weekend.

Configuration changes

Usually, configuration changes are minimal and should only have changes related to data elements. Data elements will hold specific logic to return the configuration needed for a marketing pixel to fire correctly.

You should still apply same timeframes as for normal changes unless your campaign goes live later during the day or on a Friday.

Hotfix changes

There will be times where you tagging build simply breaks something due to your release or the platform release. It has not been caught during testing and every minute you wait costs money.

For hotfixes it is usually accepted to release whenever the fix is ready and tested, may it be day or night, weekday, or weekends.