releasedto

Releasedto is a metadata field used in software release management to indicate the intended deployment target or audience for a build or artifact. It helps teams determine where and to whom a release is made available, supporting organized and controlled distribution.

The primary purposes of releasedto are to enable phased rollouts, manage access control, and tailor release communications and documentation to specific groups. By labeling releases with a target audience or environment, organizations can align deployment activities with governance, testing, and compliance requirements.

Common values for releasedto vary by organization and tooling but typically include designations such as internal, beta, public, partner, or region-specific targets (for example, region-NA or region-EU). It can also reflect deployment stages such as dev, test, staging, or prod. In many systems, releasedto is stored as a tag, label, or property on the release artifact or in the release management tool’s metadata.

In practice, automation uses releasedto to gate deployments, route notifications, and customize feature availability or documentation. For instance, a pipeline may deploy to staging only when releasedto indicates an internal or beta audience, and initiate public deployment or customer-facing release notes when releasedto is set to public.

Limitations include potential ambiguity if values are not standardized or consistently applied across teams. Clear governance and documentation of releasedto values are important to maintain predictable release processes.

See also: Release management, Deployment, Access control, Rollout.