AZ-400 Practice Question: Design and implement build and release pipelines
Your team needs to automatically run a pipeline whenever a pull request is created in GitHub. Which trigger should you configure in Azure Pipelines?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse the continuous integration trigger (which runs on branch pushes) with the pull request trigger, failing to recognize that CI triggers do not activate on pull request creation events unless the PR branch is also pushed to, which is not the same as the PR event itself.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Pull request trigger
Azure Pipelines provides a dedicated pull request trigger that automatically starts a pipeline when a pull request is created or updated in GitHub. This trigger validates proposed changes before merging, ensuring code quality and preventing broken builds from entering the main branch.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Pipeline completion trigger
Why it's wrong here
A pipeline completion trigger starts a pipeline after another pipeline finishes, used for chaining dependent builds or deployments. It does not react to pull request creation or updates, so it is incorrect for validating PRs automatically.
- ✗
Scheduled trigger
Why it's wrong here
A scheduled trigger runs a pipeline at defined times using cron expressions, independent of any code changes or PR activity. Since the team needs the pipeline to run on each pull request, a time-based trigger would miss most PRs and is therefore wrong.
- ✓
Pull request trigger
Why this is correct
A pull request trigger automatically runs a pipeline whenever a pull request is created, updated, or reopened against the target branch, enabling validation of the proposed changes before merge. This directly matches the requirement to run a pipeline whenever a PR is created, making it the correct choice.
- ✗
Continuous integration trigger
Why it's wrong here
A continuous integration (CI) trigger runs a pipeline when code is pushed to a branch, such as after a merge. It does not specifically respond to the creation of a pull request, so without a separate PR trigger the pipeline would not run at PR creation time, making this option incorrect.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to DevOps and Azure DevOps
Key term
GitHub
GitHub is a cloud-based platform for storing, tracking, and collaborating on code using Git version control.
Key term
Pipeline
A pipeline is an automated series of steps that takes code from development to production, ensuring quality and speed.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-400 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-400 exam.