Basic Azure DevOps flow for ASP Net

Question

I have a custom build script and publish profile that builds my solution, copies some files, and publishes the web project with a single call to MSBuild. I want to do the same in Azure DevOps but, here both build and publish are separate steps. 

• How do I control what ends up in the "artifacts" folder of the build?
• Does the release step just copy all artifacts to the destination (a VM in this case)?