azure devops - Tags as variables are not supported in environment

Question

I was trying to use a variable as tag while executing the deploy job using the environment template. But from https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/1015274/yaml-variable-names-not-expanded-for-tags-on-envir.html, it's evident that ADO doesn't support variables as tags in environment deployments. For example, this works

   variables:
      envName: 'EnvironmentName'
      vmTag: 'vm-test-01'
   environment: 
     name: "EnvironmentName"
     resourceName: 'vm-test-01'
     resourceType: "virtualMachine"
     tags: "vm01"
   strategy:
     runOnce:
        deploy:
          steps:
             - powershell: write-host "This is $(VMName)"

but this doesn't

     name: "$(envName)"
     resourceType: "virtualMachine"
     tags: "$(vmTag)"
   strategy:
     runOnce:
        deploy:
          steps:
             - powershell: write-host "This is $(VMName)"

Does anyone know of an alternate or a workaround for this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Try using parameters instead of variables:

parameters:
- name: envName
  default: EnvironmentName
jobs:
- deployment: VMDeploy
  displayName: Test_script
  environment:
    name: ${{ parameters.envName}}
    resourceType: VirtualMachine