📈 Progressive rollout

Overview

A progressive rollout refers to a gradual release of a new feature to a subset of users. Instead of making the feature available to everyone at once, it's rolled out incrementally automatically, often starting with a small percentage and gradually increasing it over time.

Define a progressive rollout

In GO Feature Flag, you can define a progressive rollout by setting the condition of the release ramp for the progressive rollout.

The condition to switch from one variation to another are based on dates and will roll out from 0% to 100% within the specified time frame.

To achieve this you will start by configuring the initial state of the flag and the end state of the flag.

• Before the initial date, the flag will return the initial variation
• Between the initial and end date, the flag will gradually shift from one variation to the other.
• After the end date, the flag will return the end state variation.

Format

info

The dates are in the format supported natively by your flag file format.

Field	Description
initial	The initial state of this flag. variation is the variation you intend to switch from. date is the date to start the rollout.
end	The end state of this flag. variation is the variation you intend to switch to. date is the date when rollout is completed.
percentage (optional)	It represents the ramp of progress, at which level the flag starts (initial) and ends (end). Default: initial = 0 and end = 100.

Example

Between the 2024-01-01T05:00:00.100Z and 2024-01-05T05:00:00.100Z, the flag will gradually shift from variationA to variationB.

progressive-flag:
  variations:
    variationA: A
    variationB: B
  defaultRule:
    progressiveRollout:
      initial:
        variation: variationA
        date: 2024-01-01T05:00:00.100Z
      end:
        variation: variationB
        date: 2024-01-05T05:00:00.100Z

Advanced: Using the percentage field

If you intend to partially rollout or keep both features, you can use the percentage field to define the ramp of progress.

    progressiveRollout:
      initial:
        variation: variationA
        percentage: 20   
        date: 2024-01-01T05:00:00.100Z
      end:
        variation: variationB
        percentage: 80
        date: 2024-01-05T05:00:00.100Z

• Before the initial date, the flag will return variationB 20% of the time and variationA 80% of the time.
• Between the initial and end date, the flag will gradually shift to return variationB more instead of variationA.
• After the end date, the flag will return variationB 80% of the time and variationA 20% of the time.
• This may not be intuitive. It starts with variationA as the dominant response and gradually shifts towards variationB.