chore: Add AZD Template Validation Workflow (Scheduled & On-Demand) and Refactor Azure Deployment Pipeline for RTI

[Tejasri-Microsoft]

This pull request updates the GitHub Actions workflows for Azure deployments and template validation. The main changes improve environment variable management, enhance environment name uniqueness, and adjust workflow triggers to streamline CI/CD processes.

Workflow trigger and scheduling changes:

• The azd-ai-template-validation.yml and azure-dev.yml workflows are no longer triggered automatically on pushes to main or dev branches; instead, they can be run manually or on a scheduled basis (every Thursday at 1:30 AM UTC for validation). [1] [2]

Environment variable management:

• Common environment variables (such as TEMPLATE_USE_DEV_CONTAINER, TEMPLATE_VALIDATE_AZD, TEMPLATE_VALIDATE_TESTS, and AZURE_DEV_COLLECT_TELEMETRY) are now set globally at the workflow level, reducing duplication and ensuring consistency across jobs. [1] [2]

Environment name generation improvements:

• The environment name generation now includes the current UTC hour and minute (HHMM) in addition to a timestamp, making the names more unique and less likely to collide. This change affects both the validation and deployment workflows. [1] [2]

Job environment variable usage:

• In the template validation job, environment variables are referenced from the workflow-level env context instead of being set per job, and the environment name now incorporates the new HHMM component.

These changes should make the workflows more robust, easier to maintain, and better suited for scheduled and manual runs.## Purpose

• ...

Does this introduce a breaking change?

• Yes
• [x ] No

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What to Check

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Other Information

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates the repository’s GitHub Actions workflows to shift Azure deployment and AZD template validation toward manual/scheduled execution, reduce duplicated environment variable configuration, and improve generated environment name uniqueness to reduce collision risk.

Changes:

• Removed automatic push triggers for Azure deployment and template validation workflows; added a scheduled cron trigger for template validation.
• Centralized several shared template-validation-related environment variables at the workflow level.
• Updated environment name generation to include UTC HHMM for increased uniqueness.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
.github/workflows/azure-dev.yml	Removes push triggers and updates environment name generation to include HHMM; adds shared template-validation env vars at workflow scope.
.github/workflows/azd-ai-template-validation.yml	Removes push triggers, adds weekly schedule, lifts common env vars to workflow scope, and updates validation environment naming to include time-based uniqueness.

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[github-actions]

🎉 This PR is included in version 1.3.1 🎉

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