Pull Request Exclusion Rules

Exclude noisy pull requests from analytics, and the git logic behind each rule

Exclusion rules remove specific pull requests from PR analytics — release-train merges, environment-promotion PRs, automated sync PRs, bot branches, and other noise that would otherwise inflate throughput and distort cycle time. Rules are per organization and don’t delete data; disabling or deleting one restores the affected PRs on the next refresh.

In the dashboard, open the PR exclusion rules settings and choose Add rule.

How rules work

A rule describes the pull requests to throw away — a PR that matches an enabled rule is dropped. There’s no “keep only these” mode; to keep a narrow set, exclude everything that isn’t in it using the negated match types.

• Within a rule, the conditions (repositories, source branch, target branch, title) are AND-ed — a PR matches only if it satisfies all of them.
• Across rules, matching any enabled rule is enough to exclude a PR. Add more rules to exclude more things.

Git terminology: source vs target

A PR always flows source → target.

Field	Git concept	Column	What it is
Source branches	head	branch_name	The branch merging from — the feature/topic branch.
Target branches	base	base_ref	The branch merging into — e.g. main, production.

base_ref is the target branch, not the source. In git PR terms, base is the branch you merge into. “Exclude PRs that go into production” is a Target branch condition.

The mapping is the same across GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps.

Conditions and match types

Repositories has no match type — listed repos scope the rule to those repos; empty means all repos. The other three fields take a list of values (comma- or newline-separated) plus a match type. Matching is always case-insensitive. Leaving a field blank ignores it.

Match type	Meaning
Equal	Field equals one of the listed values
Prefix	Field starts with one of the listed values
Not equal	Field equals none of the listed values
Not prefix	Field starts with none of the listed values

The negated types are how you express “keep only X”: exclude every PR whose target branch is not production keeps exactly the production-targeting PRs.

Example: keep only one target branch in one repo

Goal: in one repository, keep only PRs merging into production and exclude everything else, leaving all other repositories untouched.

Field	Value	Match type
Repositories	(the repo)	—
Target branches	production	Not equal

This excludes any PR in that repo whose target branch isn’t production. Because the repository is scoped, no other repo is affected.

Don’t use Equal here — that would drop the production PRs you want to keep. The negation (production + Not equal) is correct.

Common patterns

Each row is one rule. Conditions within a rule are AND-ed — to exclude on either of two conditions independently, create two rules.

Goal	Repositories	Source	Target	Title
Drop release-train merges into main	(all)	—	main Equal	release: Prefix
Exclude everything except work merging into main/master	(scoped)	—	main, master Not prefix	—
Drop bot/automation branches	(all)	dependabot/, renovate/ Prefix	—	—

Rules apply only to enabled rows and take effect on the next analytics refresh. They don’t modify underlying data.