In my Azure DevOps YAML pipeline, the deployment of a website has been coded in a reusable template. This template will execute a step depending on the value of an input paramter:

# Template 'deployTemplate.yml'
parameters:
- name: preDeployApprovalRequired
  type: string

jobs: 
- job: PrintVariables
  steps:
  - ${{if eq(parameters.preDeployApprovalRequired, 'true')}}:
      - powershell: | 
          Write-Host "Pre deploy required: '${{parameters.preDeployApprovalRequired}}'"
    - ${{else}}:
      - powershell: | 
          Write-Host "Pre deploy NOT required: '${{parameters.preDeployApprovalRequired}}'"

and this template is called as follows

# Pipeline
# Beginning of pipeline is omitted, works as intended
- stage: Development
  variables:
  - group: Development  #Reference to Library
  
  jobs:
  - template: deployTemplate.yml
    parameters:
      preDeployApprovalRequired: $(PreDeployApprovalRequired)

Here $(PreDeployApprovalRequired) comes from the Library named ‘Development’, I’ve verified that the value is true, and as can be deduced from the code above, the value will be printed in the Powershell task. When running the pipeline, I see in the output: Pre deploy NOT required: 'true'. Why?? To make things even more puzzling, if I modify the last line in the pipeline to preDeployApprovalRequired: 'true' or preDeployApprovalRequired: true (no quotation marks around the word true), i.e. the value is hard-coded in the pipeline and does not come from the Library, the output is Pre deploy required: 'true', as expected.

Any ideas on how I can conditionally execute a task based on the value in a Library?