Azure Pipelines how filter artifacts per stage for "Manual only" triggered Releases

Question

Let's say I have these 3 Stages: Dev, QC, Prod.

My requirements are:

1. Artifacts only from specific branches(release/*) can be deployed to QC/Prod
2. Artifacts from all branches can be deployed to Dev

I can achieve what I want using Artifact filters for "After stage" triggered Releases but I need this for "Manual only".

Is there a workaround that will let me control/filter which artifacts are available for deployment for specific stages/environments?

Basically, I need the Azure DevOps equivalent of Octopus Channels.

Update
I think I'm close to a solution.
In the "Pre-deployment conditions", I can add a new Deployment Gate which makes a Rest API call. e.g URL suffix=/Release/releases/76

Now, I just need to correctly parse the ApiResponse because the below Success criteria doesn't work

eq(root['artifacts[0].definitionReference.branch.id'], 'refs/heads/master')

Evaluation of expression 'eq(root['artifacts[0].definitionReference.branch.id'], 'refs/heads/master')' failed.

Answer 1

As you said, you can do this using Deployment gates on your stages.

1. Create a new Generic service connection from Project Settings -> Pipelines -> Service Connections.
   For service URL something like https://vsrm.dev.azure.com/{OrgName}/{ProjectName}/_apis

2. On your stage, open the Pre-Deployment Conditions

3. Enable the Gates option.

4. Add a new Invoke REST API gate and set the Delay before evaluation to 0 minutes.
   4.1 Set the connection type to Generic.
   4.2 Select the service connection you created in step 1.
   4.3 Set the method to GET.
   4.4 Set the URL suffix to /Release/releases/$(Release.ReleaseId)
   4.5 On the Advanced area, set the Completion Event to ApiResponse.
   4.6 On the Advanced area, set the success criteria to (or startsWith)
   eq(root['artifacts'][0]['definitionReference']['branch']['id'],'refs/heads/master')

Now, if you try to deploy an artifact not from the master branch, the deployment will fail

Answer 2

There is a workaround:

In the QC/Prod stages add a custom condition that the job will be executed only where the artifacts source branch is release/*:

startsWith(variables['Release.Artifacts.{Artifacts-Alias}.SourceBranch'], 'refs/heads/release')

Now, when you manually run the QC/Prod stages and the artifacts not came from the release the job not will be executed:

Answer 3

This works

and(contains(variables['build.sourceBranch'], 'refs/heads/release'), succeeded())