Getting Started Guide
Welcome to Rely.io, your go-to Internal Developer Portal designed to streamline your tech-stack management.
This guide will dive you right into action by first populating your catalog using plugins. After that, we'll explore the core concepts of the software catalog in Rely.io. Here’s what we’ll cover:
Plugins and Automation
How to install plugins and automatically populate your catalog.
Understanding the automation rules to keep your catalog up to date.
The Software Catalog
Navigating your filled catalog.
Managing entities with properties and relations.
Customizing entity views and understanding catalog navigation.
Note: Bookmark this page in your browser to easily revisit this example entity and guide. You can delete this entity from your catalog once it's no longer relevant.
For additional details on features not mentioned here, explore our official docs. Let’s jump in!
Plugins and Automation
Let's kickstart your Rely.io journey by populating your software catalog. With our plugins, you can seamlessly import services, cloud resources, and many more things into your developer portal.
Navigate to the Plugins Page: Initially, you'll see our built-in plugin for the Rely.io API, designed for creating and updating entities programmatically.
Create Your First Plugin: Click on “Create Plugin” and select from the available options. Starting with your Git provider (Github or Gitlab) is recommended, as it populates your service catalog efficiently - but it is not the only option.
Credentials and Asset Selection: Follow the installation steps. You might be redirected for authorization or need to input an access token, depending on the plugin. Subsequently, select the assets (e.g., repositories, issues, etc.) you wish to import.
Understanding the Magic Under-the-Hood:
Data Model Expansion: Installing a plugin triggers an expansion of your data model within Rely.io. This expanded model now can accurately represent and display entities related to the plugin's data source.
Mass Discovery Run: Post-installation, Rely initiates a mass discovery run to query the data source, ingesting entities based on the assets you selected. This ensures your Rely catalog mirrors the external data source accurately.
Synchronization: Rely employs webhooks for real-time updates from your data sources, ensuring changes are reflected immediately in your catalog. For plugins without webhook support, Rely schedules periodic discovery runs to keep your catalog synchronized.
Automation Rules: Once a plugin is installed, Rely.io automatically creates automation rules for you to link, map, and auto-populate your key assets (like services and resources) based on the data provided by the plugin’s data source. For example, installing a Git provider plugin means repositories identified during the discovery phase will automatically create service entities in your catalog. These entities will be enriched with vital information such as the code languages, repository links, README content, etc. As more plugins are installed and more automation rules created, your catalog becomes more rich and detailed enhancing your understanding and management of your tech ecosystem.
Submit Your Plugin Installation Form: Now that you understand what will happen, go ahead and submit your plugin installation form. The initial discovery run can take a few minutes to complete. As you await the results, this is the perfect opportunity to dive deeper into how you can utilize the data that plugins provide, by exploring the core features of the software catalog.
The Software Catalog
With your software catalog now beginning to populate with entities from your chosen plugins, let's explore how to make the best use of this data. The Software Catalog in Rely.io acts as the central hub for all entities within your organization's tech ecosystem, offering a comprehensive and organized view of your software assets, systems, services, and more.
Upon the creation of your account, a few example entities were created to illustrate and educate. Among these is a "Getting Started" service, accessible via this link, assuming it has not been removed. Within this service, you'll discover a README file that mirrors the instructions in this guide. Moving forward, this guide will presume actions are taken from within this particular entity.
At the core of the Rely.io experience are entities, which are built from metadata, properties, and relations, forming the foundational elements through which your tech ecosystem is mapped and managed.
Properties
Each property within an entity is of a certain data type which defines the type of data it can hold. Data types span from simple things like strings, URLs, and dates to more complex things like Markdown, JSON or time-series. You can learn more about available data-types is our official docs.
How to update a property value:
Navigate to the "Overview" tab of this entity.
Open it in a different browser tab in order to keep this guide open.
You'll find the "Code Language" field for this service is set to “Python”.
By hovering over that property, the edit icon will become available. Go ahead and click it.
Pick a different programming language.
You have just configured your first property value!
Relations
Beyond standalone properties, entities in Rely.io are interconnected, mimicking the real-world intricacies of your tech landscape. Relations link entities highlighting dependencies and operational structure. Editing relation is pretty similar to editing relations, with the difference that, the values that you’re able to pick from are bounded by the existing entities in your software catalog.
How to edit relations and navigate between entities:
Navigate to the "Overview" tab of this entity.
You’ll the “Team” field of this entity is empty, go ahead and edit it.
Select the available team from the drop-down menu.
You’ve just linked two entities together.
You can click the value that you just set to navigate to your “Team” entity.
There are two ways for you to keep track of all the relations an entity is involved in.
Down bellow the "Overview” tab, there’s a section called Related Entities which groups all related entities by their type.
The ”Dependencies” tab displays similar information via a graphical interface.
Customisation
Each entity-details page comes with four built-in tabs:
The Overview tab lists all available fields in the entity (metadata, properties and relations). You can freely customise what is displayed here by hiding certain fields.
The Dependencies tab offers a graphical interface of all related entities
The Audit Logs tab helps you keep track of all the recent changes to an entity whether those were performed the UI, the public API or by one of your plugin integrations.
The Code tab provides you with the programmatic representation of your entity which can be useful for programmatically interacting with our public API or for mass updating your entity.
Besides the built-in tabs you can customise your entity-details page with other tabs pointing to special text properties (markdown, JSON, YAML, iframe, swagger, etc.), specific property-groups or even agglomerate all of the above with dashboards. You can learn more about these custom views tabs in our docs.
Navigation
Each unique entity type (or blueprint) has its catalog, composed of a list of entities of that type. You can access these catalogs through the side panel in the “Software Catalog” section. Customize your sidebar by pinning or hiding entity types according to your preference.
Click “Services” to access your service catalog. In this view, you can scroll sideways to explore the metadata, properties, and relations fields available for your services. Customize your view by hiding certain columns, changing their order, grouping by a specific field, or sorting by a particular field, and then save your customized view for future reference. Clicking on a specific row allows you to access a particular service's entity page for further insight.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you just finished the onboarding guide for Rely! The journey is just getting started, feel free to:
Last updated