Release Branch Auto-Cutter

Overview

This flow puts a governance checkpoint in front of GitHub release-branch creation. A developer or release manager starts the flow with a single text input (e.g. 2026.04 or 1.2), which kicks off an approval request. Once the designated approver (typically the release manager) approves, the flow reads the current head SHA of the base branch in the configured GitHub repository, creates a new release branch from that SHA, and posts a link to the new branch in a Teams release channel. If the request is rejected, the Teams channel is notified of the rejection instead.

The flow uses three premium / standard connectors — Approvals, GitHub, and Microsoft Teams — and is fully configurable through environment variables, so it can be repointed at any repository, base branch, or Teams channel without touching the flow definition.

Use Case

Release-branch creation is typically a two-step process: a release manager decides *when* to cut the branch, and someone with write access to the repo actually creates it. Doing this manually works fine for small teams, but as release cadence tightens and more teams touch the same repo, manual branch creation becomes both a coordination bottleneck and an audit-trail weakness — there's no record of who approved the cut, when, or for which sprint.

This flow formalizes the process: the sprint owner triggers the flow with the sprint identifier, the release manager gets a standard Power Automate approval request, and on approval the branch is cut programmatically. The Teams channel message provides an immediate, searchable notification to everyone on the team, and the Approvals history provides a durable audit trail.

The flow is ideal for teams that:

• Cut sprint or release branches on a predictable cadence and want to remove manual git-ref-creation overhead.
• Need an auditable record of who approved a release cut and when.
• Want non-technical stakeholders (release managers, product owners) to initiate branch cuts without needing to use git directly.
• Already use Power Automate Approvals and Teams for other governance workflows.

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Target a different repo

Update flowlibs_GitHubOwner and flowlibs_GitHubRepo env vars. No flow definition changes needed.

Cut from a branch other than main

Set flowlibs_GitHubBaseBranch to develop, trunk, or whatever the repo's long-lived base branch is named.

Use a different branch naming convention

Change flowlibs_ReleaseBranchPrefix to e.g. rc/, releases/, or hotfix/.

Route approvals to a different approver

Change flowlibs_ApproverEmail. To route to a group, pass a semicolon-delimited list of emails.

Post to a different Teams channel

Update flowlibs_TeamsGroupId and flowlibs_TeamsChannelId.

Add multiple approvers in sequence

Replace Start_Release_Approval with two chained approvals.

Emit more metadata

The Teams message composes an HTML string via concat(). Add additional variables to enrich the announcement.

Swap Teams for Slack or email

Replace the PostMessageToConversation actions with Slack PostMessage or Outlook SendEmailV2.

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

concat(variables('varReleasePrefix'), variables('varSprint'))

outputs('Get_Base_Branch_Reference')?['body/object/sha']

concat('refs/heads/', variables('varReleaseBranchName'))

equals(outputs('Start_Release_Approval')?['body/outcome'], 'Approve')

concat('<p><strong>Release branch cut:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/',
       variables('varGitHubOwner'), '/', variables('varGitHubRepo'),
       '/tree/', variables('varReleaseBranchName'), '">',
       variables('varReleaseBranchName'),
       '</a> (from <code>', variables('varBaseBranch'), '</code>)</p>',
       '<p>Sprint: ', variables('varSprint'),
       '<br/>Approved by: ', variables('varApproverEmail'), '</p>')