Only releases with status draft may be created on draft app. How do I tell Azure DevOps to mark a release as "draft"?

Question

I have

1. developed a skeleton Android App in Android Studio

2. the Build pipeline in Azure DevOps

3. An Internal Testing track for this app on my Google Dev Console

4. Uploaded MANUALLY via the GUI of the Google Dev Console the signed .aab bundle produced via Android Studio to the Internal Testing Track

5. The testers that had been set up for the track have been able to install the app on their devices and test it

The steps above work fine.

I then implemented the following

6. Created a Release Pipeline in Azure DevOps using the editor (not in YAML)

7. In this Release the Google Play Release Bundle plugin has been used (see pics below) with its Track Property set to "Internal test" as per the available dropdown value

8. Added a Deploy Stage following this Release (see pics below).

However, when the Release pipeline runs I get the error in the title (Only releases with status draft may be created on draft app.) that is also visible in the screenshots below.

I read the SO posts below

• Only releases with status draft may be created on draft app

• ERROR: Only releases with status draft may be created on draft app

and also articles/documentation like the following

• Trigger Azure Pipelines with Postman and Parameters

• Release pipelines - What is a draft Release

• Releases - Create

• How do I specify variables I want to edit when a release is created?

• Publish to Google Play Store

I suspect that to remove the error I need to somehow create a release such that

isDraft = true;

that is a draft release that would not be rejected on deployment by the Azure Dev Console Internal Testing Track, but I am a bit at loss with it as I would have expected the Google Play Release Bundle plugin to take care of this detail for me but something apparently goes wrong or I do not clearly understand and I cannot figure out what it is or how to approach this problem in the best/simplest way.

Intercept

Have you tried manually uploaded the first APK to the Alpha channel in the Play console? Then do it with Azure devops. – Interventionist

Hello Leo, no I have not. I apologise but I think I might not have well understood the process. For now, I've only set up on Dev Console an Internal Testing Track not an Alpha track and I'd like to have Azure DevOps to be able to replace that .aab with a new one when I run the release pipeline. I have not got so far as having an Alpha testing track and I do not understand whether it is necessary at this stage. Is it not possible to just use the Internal Testing Track as I hope and later after a few sprints begin to think of the Aplha track? Thank you very much for your interest in my post. – Intercept

@Intercept Did you ever solve this? I am just encountering this now. I have manually uploaded an aab to internal testers via the google play console but my pipeline task gives me the same error. – Stacystadholder

I have the same issue. This is what I am trying now: enable Closed Testing with the same .aab so that the app is not in draft state anymore. Next, continue uploading to the internal testing track. I will edit my comment once the app passes the review and the above works. – Halvah

This question has similar answers like my comment above. – Halvah

@hammady, Were you able to solve this with internal testing track? – Ninnetta

@RavikumarB Yes as explained. My CI uploads to internal and I promote manually to Closed track (I could upload it directly to Closed though). – Halvah

Answer 1

We run in the same issue. After ong search, we found that this is solved by a not well documented flag isDraftRelease.

- task: GooglePlayRelease@4
  inputs:
    serviceConnection: '...'
    applicationId: '...'
    action: 'SingleBundle'
    bundleFile: '...'
    track: 'internal'
    isDraftRelease: true

If you are using the UI, you can find this in Advanced Options - Release as Draft.

Potsherd