How to publish and release
What this feature does
Publishing commits a new version of a workflow or decision, making it available for testing and inclusion in releases. Releasing creates a versioned snapshot of all published artifacts in a project, deploying them to production. Regression testing validates that changes have not broken existing behaviour before release.
Scope: This guide covers publishing, regression testing, and release management. It does not cover building workflows or decisions (refer to the respective how-to guides) or API execution (refer to How to execute via API).
Who this applies to
- Audience: Developers and administrators managing the deployment lifecycle in Opus
- Access required: Editor (publish) or Administrator (release, access tokens)
- Assumed knowledge: You have tested workflows or decisions ready for deployment. Refer to How to test and run workflows or How to test decisions.
Steps
Step 1: Publish changes
Publishing commits draft changes, making them available for releases.
- Navigate to the Publish page.
- Review the changes for each workflow, decision, and test suite.
- Select the items to publish (you can publish selectively — not all draft items need to be included).
- Select Publish and enter a publish message describing the update.
Only users who last modified an entity or administrators can publish it. Test suites are always published with their associated decision.
Step 2: Run regression tests
Regression testing validates all test suites across the project to catch unintended breakages.
- Navigate to the Regression Test page.
- Select Run Regression to execute all test suites for all decisions and workflows in the project.
- Review the results — each test case shows pass/fail status with actual vs expected output.
Run regression tests after publishing and before creating a release.
Step 3: Create a release
A release creates a versioned snapshot of all published artifacts for production deployment.
- Navigate to the Release page.
- Select Create Release.
- Enter a release version (e.g.,
1.0.0) and release notes. - Select Create. The release is now available for execution in production.
Step 4: Verify the release
- Confirm the release appears on the Release page with the correct version number.
- Execute a test call against the production endpoint to verify the release works as expected.
Constraints and limitations
| Constraint | Detail |
|---|---|
| Draft versions | Cannot be executed via API — must be published first |
| Selective publishing | You can choose which items to include in each publish |
| Release scope | Releases include all published versions across the entire project |
Related features
- How to execute via API — call published workflows and decisions from external systems.
- How to test and run workflows — test before publishing.
- How to test decisions — test before publishing.
