Azure DevOps Using Taskgroup in YAML Build - azure-devops

Question

I've created a Task group to encapsulate some functionality.
If I use a regular build, I can add the task group through the normal wizard.
Unfortunately, I need to use the task group inside a YAML build. I can't view the YAML of the "old" build to view how this should gonna happen.
The things I've tried:
- task: TaskGroupName#1
displayName: 'RunTests'
inputs:
TestConfiguration: 'some.xml'
TestCaseFilter: $(TestCaseFilter)
UnitTestFolders: $(UnitTestFolders)

Answer 1

According to the docs, Task groups are not supported in the YAML pipelines.
Instead, in that case you can use templates.
Documentation for templates: See here

Answer 2

You can pass parameter 'objects' into a template YAML file to pretty much do what you want; the only tricky bit I found was to have multiple properties per instance parameter 'object' and using the new template {{ each }} expression to iterate over them.
Below is how I constructed my yaml files for this solution:
azure_pipelines.yml
pool:
name: Hosted VS2017
demands:
- npm
- msbuild
- visualstudio
- vstest
steps:
- template: azure_webapp_template.yml
parameters:
webapps:
- name: Customer 1
url: customer1.azurewebsites.net
- name: Customer 2
url: customer2.azurewebsites.net
- name: Customer 3
url: customer3.azurewebsites.net
- name: Customer 4
url: customer4.azurewebsites.net
As you can see above, we are creating an object webapps and then we have some nested properties for each 'webapp'.
Then in our 'template' we can iterate over each of the objects in the webapps parameter and expand the property in our iterated tasks.
azure_webapp_template.yml
# Proving ability to loop over params a number of times
parameters:
- name: 'webapps'
type: object
default: {}
steps:
- ${{ each webapp in parameters.webapps }}:
- task: PowerShell#2
displayName: 'Task Group Test 1 ${{webapp.name}}'
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
Write-Host "Name: ${{webapp.name}} with url ${{webapp.url}}"
failOnStderr: true
workingDirectory: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)'
- task: PowerShell#2
displayName: 'Task Group Test 2 ${{webapp.name}}'
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
Write-Host "Name: ${{webapp.name}} with url ${{webapp.url}}"
failOnStderr: true
workingDirectory: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)'