Manually triggering a deployment

This method works for external git/Mercurial repositories, DropBox and OneDrive.

Here's how to trigger a (fetch) deployment from an external repository:

e.g. You have a git repository at https://example.com/git/RepositoryName.git and you'd like to notify Kudu to trigger a deployment for every new commit.

Raw POST

POST /deploy HTTP/1.1

Host: $SiteLevelUsername:SiteLevelPassword@<SiteName>.scm.azurewebsites.net
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/json
X-SITE-DEPLOYMENT-ID: <SiteName>
Transfer-encoding: chunked

{
    "format":"basic",
    "url":"https://username:password@example.com/git/RepositoryName.git"
}

For Mercurial (hg) add "is_hg": true to the JSON payload.

$SiteLevelUsername:SiteLevelPassword are Site-Level credentials. They are a good fit here being distinct for each site and randomly generated.

Deploy from specific commit id

You could in addition specify commit id (or branch) as part of git URL to deploy from; for instance, ..

    "url":"https://username:password@example.com/git/RepositoryName.git#commit_id"

Azure App Service Specific (using Azure PowerShell):

e.g. Using the "External Repository" deployment method in the Azure Portal.

In addition to the POST above you can accomplish the same thing by calling Invoke-AzureRmResourceAction:

# Action sync
Invoke-AzureRmResourceAction -ResourceGroupName <ResourceGroupName> `
                             -ResourceType Microsoft.Web/sites `
                             -ResourceName <WebAppName> `
                             -Action sync `
                             -ApiVersion 2015-08-01 `
                             -Force -Verbose

For a GitHub specific guide see this page here: Deploying from GitHub