Release process

How code gets from a merge request to customers. Short version: identity-service and notifier deploy from main several times a week, region by region; the portal ships from a release branch every two weeks; features are switched on per client with a flag.

Before anything merges

• A merge request names its Jira issue (ENG-…) or its Emargen task in the title.
• CI on GitHub Actions passes: tests, static analysis, the formatter, a dependency scan.
• One approving review; two for src/Saml, src/Approvals and anything that touches regions (CODEOWNERS asks Marek and Mira).
• A merge request written by Codex or Claude Code is reviewed like anyone's. The person whose token ran the agent is its author and answers for it.

identity-service and notifier

1. Merging to main deploys to staging.
2. Deploy to production by region, smallest first: US, then UK, then EU. The pipeline waits for the smoke tests (a password sign-in, a phone code to our test number, a SAML sign-in against the test IdP, a request and an approval) to pass in one region before the next.
3. Deploy Monday to Thursday, before 16:00. Friday: fixes only, and only with Oskar or the on-call engineer watching.
4. Database migrations run before the new code and must work with the old code too. Nothing destructive in the same release that stops using a column.
5. If the smoke tests fail, the pipeline stops and rolls that region back. Tell #eng.

portal

• Every second Tuesday we cut release/4.N from main.
• Hanna runs the release checks on staging that week: the regression list, accessibility spot checks, and any test plan from the release's initiatives.
• It ships on the Thursday after the checks pass. Fixes go to the release branch and back to main.
• release/4.12 was cut on Tue 29 Sep and shipped on Thu 1 Oct with ACM-247's screens. The next cut is Tue 13 Oct.

Flags per client

New behaviour ships switched off and is turned on per client (client_features) on the date product agrees with the customer. That is why "shipped" dates fall on any weekday. A flag is removed once every client has it, within two releases.

Release notes

Leo writes release notes for customers. The "Release notes draft" agent task in Emargen runs every other Friday at 15:00 from the ENG issues closed and the initiatives done since the last run; Leo edits it and publishes Release notes. If your change is visible to customers, put one plain sentence in the issue or task saying what changes for them.

Freezes

The change calendar lists freezes. Planned now: Kelderby's switch weekends and its go-live. During a freeze only fixes go out, agreed with Oskar.

Change history

Version	Date	Who	What
14	29 Jun 2026	Hanna	Release checks on the portal branch
15	20 Jul 2026	Leo	Release notes
16	30 Sep 2026	Lukas	Merge requests from agents; Emargen tasks in titles
17	7 Oct 2026	Lukas	Release 4.12; freezes for Kelderby