# Actions and Automations

Rely.io focuses on automating and simplifying developer workflows through the use of two powerful tools:

* Automations
* Self-Service Actions

## Automations

Data can be mapped from [Plugin Blueprint](/basic-concepts/user-blueprints-vs-plugin-blueprints.md#plugin-blueprints) entities to [User Blueprint](/basic-concepts/user-blueprints-vs-plugin-blueprints.md#user-blueprints) entities via automation rules. 

This mapping creates a dynamic abstraction layer, allowing data from various sources to be filtered, manipulated, standardized, and centralized according to your needs. Automation Rules serve two main purposes:

1. Unified Entity Representation: Different tools like git providers, incident management tools, and observability platforms represent a "Service" in various ways. Automation rules and user blueprints let you aggregate these diverse perspectives into a single, cohesive "Service" entity. This entity contains only what matters most from each source and reflects your organization's operational context.
2. Standardizing Cross-Tool Entities: For example, pull requests and merge requests from both GitHub and GitLab can be standardized into a unified format, as can issues from both Jira and Linear. This standardization enables large organizations to maintain uniformity and clarity in their Internal Developer Platform (IDP) across different team processes and toolsets.

{% hint style="info" %}
Rely.io takes a proactive approach by offering **pre-configured automation rules** for common use cases, which are automatically included when you install certain plugins. 

These default automation rules leverage:

* [The specific data model associated with each plugin](/basic-concepts/user-blueprints-vs-plugin-blueprints.md#plugin-blueprints)
* [The out-of-the-box data model Rely offers when first creating your organization](/basic-concepts/data-model.md#default-data-model)

These rules are designed to streamline processes and ensure seamless integration of plugin data with the most common [user blueprints](/basic-concepts/user-blueprints-vs-plugin-blueprints.md#user-blueprints). 
{% endhint %}

## Self-Service Actions


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