Triggers, approvals, and notifications

Exam alignment: DOP-C02 Domain 1 task statements for pipelines, testing, artifacts, or deployment.

Learning objective

Control pipeline entry, automated gates, accountable approval, and actionable feedback.

Difficulty / Schwierigkeitsgrad	Intermediate
Study time / Lernzeit	120 minutes
Prerequisites / Voraussetzungen	Previous lessons in this volume

Professional scenario

Every commit deploys to production and approvals arrive without test evidence.

Core concepts

• Triggers select repository events.
• Manual approval is not a substitute for testing.
• Evidence must reference the exact release candidate.
• EventBridge and notification rules route state changes.

Architecture flow

1. Identify the release input and immutable identity.
2. Select the managed AWS control plane and least-privilege role.
3. Execute build, test, artifact, or deployment work.
4. Collect service events, logs, reports, and runtime metrics.
5. Stop, retry, or roll back according to explicit rules.

Decision matrix

Requirement	Preferred choice	Reason
PR feedback	Validation trigger	No production side effects
Deterministic rule	Automated gate	No human wait
Risk acceptance	Recorded approval	Human accountability

Failure modes and troubleshooting

• Trigger includes unintended branches.
• Approval occurs before final tests.
• Timeout has no escalation path.

Security and operations

• Use short-lived service roles and least privilege.
• Encrypt artifacts and protect logs from secret exposure.
• Record changes and approvals for audit.

Hands-on lab

Goal / Ziel: Design PR, main, and production approval behavior.

Tasks

1. Create the smallest safe test architecture.
2. Implement or simulate the main workflow.
3. Introduce one controlled failure.
4. Diagnose it from service evidence.
5. Document cleanup and one improvement.

Validation

• The workflow uses an immutable version.
• A required failure blocks promotion.
• The diagnosis identifies the first failed transition.

Cost control / Kostenkontrolle: Keep resources short lived; read cleanup before starting.

Cleanup

1. Delete pipeline/build/deployment resources.
2. Delete temporary artifacts, images, logs, and roles.

Exam traps

• Manual approval for every automated check.
• Notifications containing secrets.

Key takeaways

• Triggers select repository events.
• EventBridge and notification rules route state changes.
• Decisions must be justified by requirements and failure behavior.

Review questions

1. What is the immutable release identity?
2. Which evidence proves failure or success?
3. What is the safest recovery action?

Answers

1. A version, digest, or uniquely versioned artifact.
2. Service events, logs, reports, health checks, and runtime metrics.
3. Restore the known-good version using the configured rollback path.