You can now start using the Harness plugin in your instance. Additionally, you won’t have to manually unregister teams and users when using GitHub to source these entities: Roadie now does it automatically.

For Tech Insights customers, you’ll now be able to create Checks that fail unless a set of values is set in the property. Also, we shipped a handful of bug fixes and UX improvements.

New plugin: Harness

If you use Harness, you can now connect your services to Roadie and view details about their executions.

To get started using the Harness plugin, check out our guide.

Groups synchronized when deleted from GitHub

If you’re using GitHub as a source for your teams, you may have noticed that they would continue to live in Roadie after they were deleted from GitHub. We now track these kinds of deletions from GitHub and reflect them in Roadie.

Tech Insights: Contains mandatory values operator

You now have a new operator available: Contains All. This means that all values in the rule should be present in the set of values that you’re assesing. This operator if useful when, for example, you want to check that an AWS resource entity contain all label keys [owning-team, environment, some-cost-tagging-label].

In close collaboration with design partners, we’ve pushed a sprint dedicated to expanding the use cases of Tech Insights so it delivers value to more developers on a day-to-day basis. For example, it’s now possible to share ready-only Scorecards/Checks/Data Sources to your org, but only Roadie admins can modify them. Furthermore, Tech Insight now supports using PagerDuty and manually curated entries as data sources. You can also drive the quality of your Catalog metadata up with our extensive entity checks. We also made several UX improvements to the product.

Open up Tech Insights for the rest of your teams

Once you’ve set up your Tech Insights checks and Scorecards, you probably still want dev teams to know how their services are doing. That’s when having read-only Tech Insights come in handy: you can now decide whether Tech Insight is visible to anyone or just the Roadie Admin group.

This feature is available to customers who have purchased Tech Insights addon. To start using this feature, head to /administration/settings/tech-insights and check the corresponding checkboxes.

Bring PagerDuty service info and analytics to your Scorecards

If you use PagerDuty, it might be interesting to review how your services are performing in terms of incident management. You can now create checks against PagerDuty Service information, such as whether a service has escalation policies or support hours set up. Additionally, you can create checks against PagerDuty Analytics, such as mean seconds to resolve or total business hours interruptions.

This feature is only available to customers who have purchased Tech Insights addon. To start using PagerDuty checks, go to /tech-insights/checks/add

Support for Manually Curated data sources

Let’s say you want to check if critical services have completed their corresponding pentesting assessment within the expected timeframe. This process is usually done by a third-party vendor, perhaps once a year or so, which means there’s little chance for it to be found in a Cloud service or logged in by developers. In these cases, it is convenient to check manually curated sources like an entries file.

This feature is available to customers who have purchased Tech Insights addon. For more information on setting up Manually Curated data sources, check out our beta guide.

Achieve better Catalog metadata

You now have more options to check if the metadata in your entities is correct, and you can enforce that certain labels are set in the corresponding YAML file. We’ve added several facts to the built-in entity metadata, such as GitHub project slug, tags, or annotation keys. Plus, you can combine these facts with operators that let you clearly define expectations for your component’s entries.

This feature is available to customers who have purchased Tech Insights addon. Check out this video tutorial by David to learn more.

UX Improvements

We continue to improve the UX of Tech Insights. For example, we fixed how empty values from certain Data Sources are presented.

This week we’ve shipped support for Splunk On-Call and updated several dependencies in your instance. For Tech Insights customers, you can now use JSONata to do advanced processing of JSON or YAML sources and get a better experience thanks to UX improvements and bug fixes.

Integrate with Splunk On-Call

Providing support for Incident management is one of the most popular use cases in Backstage. If you use Splunk On-Call for such purposes, you can now integrate it into your Roadie instance.

Check out our guide on Configuring Splunk On-Call to get started.

Browse logs at ease without the Locations log auto-refresh

Previously, the locations log would auto-refresh while you were trying to go through the entries. This behavior made it difficult to sort and filter the location log table because it would refresh everything and reset the filters. We’ve removed the auto-refresh behaviour, and instead added a “Refresh Log Data” button to make it a controlled process.

Rest easy: we’ve updated your dependencies

Roadie takes care of not only updating your Backstage instance core libraries. We regularly keep every dependency up to date to get you the most recent versions to tighten the security of your Developer Portal. This week we updated 27 plugins and other associated dependencies in your instance.

Tech Insights: sophisticated checks with JSONata

Let’s say you want to ensure all your teams target a minimum node Orb in their CircleCI builds. You can confirm this by checking the CircleCI config file in each repository, but you need to exact the node version.

You can use TechInsight’s JSONata parser to perform JSONata queries to get just to the value that you want to exact as a fact.

The new parser is not limited to treating only static files. We use it internally at Roadie to track how much progress we’re doing in Tech Insights by using our Shortcut API and tracking the amount of open, closed, and unstarted epics.

Your instance has been upgraded to Backstage 1.9, the latest available release. You’ll be able to see and test the available Scaffolder Fields so it’s easier to construct form templates. We’ve also added support for dates in Checks and improved how we refresh their calculation.

You’re running on Backstage 1.9

The new release includes significant progress in internal APIs, such as the new backend system, new Catalog endpoints, and a new events API. As a Roadie customer you don’t have to worry about learning them; our team will leverage everything for you.

Scaffolder Fields Explorer

With the new upgrade in the Scaffolder, you’ll be able to see a list of the fields available for composing templates. In the Fields Explorer, you can also play around with the available options.

To find it, go to Create > Template Editor > Custom Field Explorer. The Template Editor can be found in the top-right corner context menu of the Create page.

Tech Insights: Check if dates are older or younger than expected

You can create Checks based on dates using date-specific operators. You’ll also notice an improved performance of the whole plugin, featuring faster page loads and synced checks recalculations.

Happy new year! Welcome to Roadie in 2023, packed with new features:

• You now have 6 new actions available in the Scaffolder to do more with JSON and YAML files in your templates.
• You can now embed markdown within an HTML snippet in your TechDoc files and see images stored in a private repo in their corresponding README card and Markdown homepage card.
• Also, we’ve updated the Support Guidelines for Growth Plan customers.

JSONata and XML APIs in the Scaffolder

You can now make more sophisticated manipulations when using JSON and Markdown files in your Scaffolder templates. We’ve enabled some actions that let you serialize, process, and transform JSON and YAML files using the JSONata syntax.

You can find details on how to use the new actions under your Scaffolder > Installed Actions page (find it under the Three-dots Context menu at the top right in the Create page). These are the actions you’re looking for:

• roadiehq:utils:serialize:yaml
• roadiehq:utils:serialize:json
• roadiehq:utils:jsonata
• roadiehq:utils:jsonata:yaml:transform
• roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform

Additionally, we’ve added support for XML API calls in the http:backstage:request action. Below is an example:

steps:
  - id: xml-request
    name: Send XML request to service
    action: http:backstage:request
    input:
      path: '/api/proxy/foo',
      method: 'POST',
      body: '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"><node>asdf</node>'

Clarification for “Other kinds of support” in the Support Guideline

For customers in the Growth Plan, we’ve specified how we handle prioritization and outlined what is not covered in the plan’s included support. Mainly, we clarify that helping customers write their software templates is out of the scope of Roadie’s Goalie.

We want our customers to be successful, so if you are in need of help beyond the Guideline specified scope, reach out to us on Slack or to [email protected] to request additional support services.

You can find the updated Support Guideline in your Slack channel if your team is on a Growth Plan.

TechDocs: support for Markdown in HTML blocks

You can now nest markdown in HTML blocks within your TechDocs files. A common use-case for this feature is when you have a collapsable section in your docs, and you want to use markdown within those sections instead of having to continue with HTML. For example:

<details markdown="1">
<summary>Collabsable Title</summary>

Content of the collapsable and an image below

![asdf](align.jpg)

</details>

Learn more about what you can do with TechDocs in our documentation.

Support for private images in the README card and Markdown Homepage card

Previously, if you referred to an image of a private repository, you’d get a 404 in the README card and the Markdown Homepage card. Now, you’ll correctly see images from the private repo displayed in both places. Previously, if you referred an image of a private repository, you’d get a 404 in the README card and the Markdown Homepage card. Now, you’ll correctly see images from the private repo displayed in both places.

You’re now running on Backstage 1.8, which brings two main new features: an $openapi resolver that follows any $ref found in the definition and a GitHub-based authentication for manual Catalog registration.

OpenAPI resolver with $ref support

For entities of type API, you can now specify a $openapi resolver to fetch their definition. This new resolver will parse the OpenAPI reference that you provide and if it encounter a $ref, it will resolve it automatically.

You can start using the $openapi resolver in your API’s YAML file under spec.definition. To learn more about managing OpenAPI in Roadie, refer to our Using OpenAPI Specs guide.

GitHub-based authentication for manual registrations

In the past, Backstage would rely on the frontend to register entities when using the manual option, which implied using authentication credentials in GitHub, which caused permissions problems in some cases.

Roadie engineers fixed this issue upstream in the OSS version, and now Backstage uses backend credentials that are mindful of GitHub permissions. This fix is now available to all Roadie customers and every Backstage adopter worldwide using v1.8.

Other improvements in 1.8

Backstage 1.8 brings other improvements behind the scenes, like a new events API, an upgrade in the Node version, and new metrics recorded in the Scaffolder. However, as a Roadie customer you don’t have to concern yourself with new internal APIs or dependencies upgrades: we’ll keep things running smoothly and bring you all the features.

As a Roadie customer, you are immune to Backstage’s recently disclosed RCE vulnerability. Additionally, you can now use the Apache Airflow and the New Relic Dashboard plugin. Last but not least, there are now public docs available for Tech Insights that show how to use the paid add-on.

Roadie is not affected by Backstage’s RCE vulnerability

Roadie customers are unaffected by the recently disclosed vulnerability found in Backstage because their instances are upgraded regularly (currently at v1.8) and due to extra security measures in the Scaffolder implemented in Roadie from the beginning.

Learn more about how Roadie protects you against the RCE vulnerability in our blog.

Newly added plugin: Apache Airflow

If you use Apache Airflow, you’ll now be able to see information about your instance right in Roadie. You can view information about the instance’s version and status, as well as the DAGs along their meta information and status.

To use this plugin, refer to our Apache Airflow plugin guide in the Roadie Docs.

Newly added plugin: New Relic Dashboard

The newly added plugin lets you add New Relic Dashboards to your entity pages by specifying a dashboard_guid in the entity’s metadata.

Roadie also includes another plugin for you to see all your New Relic Application Performance Monitoring (APM) data on a dedicated page.

To use either of the New Relic plugins, refer to our New Relic plugins guide in the Roadie Docs.

Tech Insights Docs are now available

Roadie Tech Insights is Roadie’s first paid add-on that helps you keep track of all of your software assets and ensure they meet your quality and compliance targets. The new public docs explain how to create Data Sources, define Checks, and compose Scorecards from Roadie’s UI.

Check out Tech Insights docs!

You can now try out pages in sandbox mode and debug your Catalog more easily through our renewed Locations Log. You’re also running on the latest Backstage version, 1.7.

Roadie exclusive: Preview pages in Sandbox mode

As you work on configuring a page, you don’t always want it to be visible for everybody. Using the sandbox mode, you can now set up pages at your own pace and only made them available when they’re ready. You can find sandbox pages under Administration > Sandbox. Learn more in our docs.

Improved Locations Log

Locations are used to keep track of references of the entities registered in the Catalog. Roadie offers a proprietary panel that helps you manage them through a UI. We’ve improved the Location management experience by improving the interface and incorporating recent features from the Open Source APIs. Lean how you can manage locations in our docs.

You’re running on Backstage 1.7

Every Roadie customer is using Backstage 1.7, released last week. The upgrade doesn’t affect end users, it consists mainly of Catalog improvements that Roadie contributed and migrations for libraries used internally in the framework, like jest and react-router.

You can now bring your own API renderer to Roadie and access software template recipes. Backstage is being endorsed by industry leaders, who’ll start contributing to it soon.

Bring your own API docs renderer

If you have an API type other than OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, GraphQL, or gRPC, you can now bring it into API Docs too. You’ll need to write a custom renderer, publish it as a plugin to Roadie, and set up the render in your Roadie instance.

For more information, check out the documentation page.

Introducing the Scaffolder cookbook

The Scaffolder is growing in adoption for most Roadie users (and in the overall Backstage community), so we’ve decided to start sharing recipes for common software templates. At the moment, we have two available but we’ll start adding more over time so bookmark the page!

If you have a handy template you want to share with the community, ping us and we’ll be happy to publish it!

Check out the Scaffolder Cookbook!

You’re on the right track with Backstage

Thoughtworks, Red Hat, Gartner, VMWare, and the Linux Foundation endorse Backstage as a solution for improving the developer experience of growing engineering teams through a Developer Portal. As a Roadie customer, you’re about to get all the benefits from these substantial contributors without having to do anything.

Read more about Backstage’s role in the ecosystem.

You can now create collections of entities for yourself or to share them with others in your org, you can now register the identity of the user running a software template. You’re now running on Backstage 1.6, but this has no practical effects for you because Roadie takes care of the internal changes for you.

Entities collections through Playlists

In every devs day-to-day work, there’s a handful of websites, APIs, and services that you interact with more often, so it might make sense to group them together for easier access. Or, you may want to curate a subset of entities for your new hires. With the Playlists plugin, you can create collections of entities for yourself or share them with others.

To enable the Playlist plugin, go to Administration > Settings > Playlist

Register user identity in Scaffolder templates

You can now register the user’s identity in any software template. In your software template, you’ll be able to access user.ref as described in the following example:

- id: log-name
      name: Log Message
      action: debug:log
      input:
        message: 'Hello, ${{ user.ref }} ${{ user.entity.metadata.name }} !'

You’re running on Backstage 1.6

We have upgraded all our tenants to Backstage 1.6. Most of the changes in this version are related to internal changes, such as updates in React libraries or Yarn support in the framework. Therefore, you’re not going to be affected by this change.

This week, our engineers have managed to shave up to 38% off the total loading time on the Catalog list page, we continue our efforts on this front. Roadie will be at BackstageCon and KubeCon in Detroit, and we’d love to meet you there. Let us know if you’re going (and if you need a BackstageCon ticket)!

Performance improvements and upcoming work

Every Roadie instance behaves differently and may show different loading times, depending on the Catalog size and configured integrations. Our focus this week has been on removing duplicated API requests and ordering the API calls better. Our improvements are already deployed to your instances so you should be able to see a difference already vs. last week.

The most significant factor introducing an extended loading time is the lack of support for pagination in the Catalog API. We’re working with the Backstage maintainers to make this a reality in the near future. In the meantime, our improvements have managed to shave off up to 38% of the total loading time by cutting down half of the API calls we make.

Following the same approach with API calls, we have also reduced the docs list page significantly. Most pages are affected by the API optimization and should report improvements in their loading time.

We continue to investigate performance. We’ll be working on more optimizations.

Roadie at KubeCon NA + free passes to BackstageCon

Our team will be at BackstageCon and KubeCon in Detroit. If you’re attending, we’d love to meet up with you! Please let us know in the slack channel to make sure we connect over there.

Roadie will have a sponsor table at BackstageCon on Monday 24th, where our staff will deliver two talks. We’ll also have a booth at KubeCon, next to the CNCF Projects Pavillion.

We have two BackstageCon tickets that we’ll to give away to our clients on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you already have a KubeCon ticket and want to attend BackstageCon, let us know and we’ll give you a coupon code for a complimentary BackstageCon pass.

You can now arrange your software templates in groups in the Scaffolder. We have started to review the UI performance issues raised by some of our customers: expect improvements soon. Also, learn more about our new webhooks-based GitHub integration.

Group Scaffolder templates

When you offer more than a few software templates, it becomes trickier for your users to find the one they’re looking for. You can now group templates together by tags that you specify in the Administration panel. To enable this feature, go to Administration > Settings > Scaffolder.

Learn more on how to set up the Scaffolder in our documentation.

Performance optimizations on the way

Our engineering team is currently analyzing the bottlenecks that cause performance issues for some of our customers. Our objective is to reduce the loading times for an improved experience. We have found several points that can be optimized immediately and will begin to ship improvements as soon as possible. We are also filing mid-term and long-term improvements as we discover them.

Edge cases in the new GitHub integration

A few weeks ago, we released a new GitHub integration for the Catalog that lets you immediately see the changes you make in your YAML files reflected in Roadie Backstage. We have written a blog post detailing the tech behind this feature, and describing a couple of cases in which this integration works differently from the previous one. Learn more our blog post.

You can now define drop-down fields with options coming from an external API in your software templates, as well as use randomized valued based on a timestamp in your Scaffolder values. We also added the ability to set up authentication via a service token in the k8s plugin.

Dynamic drop-downs in the Scaffolder

Let’s say your software templates include a step in which the user has to select a database. Instead of having them figure out the DB reference and write it down, you can now give them a drop-down with valid values. We’ve added the ability for you to define drop-down fields in your software templates that show options fetched from an external API. Get started with drop-downs fed from external APIs.

Use randomized values in your Scaffolder template

If you’re writing a software template that generates, for example, a PR in a repo, you want to be sure the name of the branch you generate is unique. You can now use timestamp-based values to randomize data in the Scaffolder using ${{ '' | now }}. Check the following template for reference on how to use it:

apiVersion: scaffolder.backstage.io/v1beta3
kind: Template
metadata:
  name: test-now-filter
  description: test the new now filter
spec:
  type: service
  owner: user:default/kissmikijr
  steps:
    - id: fetch
      name: Fetch Skeleton + Template
      action: fetch:template
      input:
        url: template-url
        values:
          component_id: ${{ '' | now }}
          description: ${{ '' | now }}

Authenticate k8s via a service token

Previously, we only supported AWS EKS and Google Cloud’s GKE for configuring the k8s plugin. However, if you’re self-deploying k8s, the usual mechanism for authenticating is a service account token. Roadie now supports this mechanism in the plugin’s admin panel.

Now you’ll see nearly instant updates in you Catalog thanks to our new webhook-based GitHub integration. Our engineering team went through the recent Backstage Security Audit Report and confirmed the framework’s vulnerabilities are remediated in Roadie. Check out the latest developments of Tech Insights in a video demo by David.

Nearly instant Catalog updates via webhooks

Previously, Roadie used Backstage’s default GitHub integration, which relies on polling for discovering and updating entities. This approach had limitations due to API rate limits and could take time to reflect changes from your YAML files into the Catalog.

Roadie implemented a proprietary GitHub entity provider based on webhooks, so updates are done more efficiently. You’ll get nearly instant updates in the Catalog when you add a new entity, change a YAML file, or delete an entity.

No action is required on your end. For more information, check out our guide on autodiscovery.

Reviewing Backstage’s Security Audit

Our engineering team reviewed the full security audit report commissioned by the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund on Backstage OSS software. Most security issues had been addressed since Backstage 1.3, and all Roadie customers are using Backstage 1.5. Our team confirmed that all issues are mitigated for all our tenants.

Tech Insights demo

We keep working on Tech Insights with the help of our design partners. David has put together a demo to showcase what is currently available in Roadie Tech Insights and the direction that the team is taking. Check out the video demo.

You’ve been upgraded to Backstage 1.5. We keep making progress in Tech Insights and are taking on design partners, check out our new article and reach out to David or Orla if interested.

You’re running on Backstage 1.5

You’re using the latest stable release from the framework, which is mainly about requesting feedback on the refactoring of internal APIs surrounding Backstage’s backend and plugins. Roadie customers are not affected by these internal API changes because our team takes care of adopting the new practices for you.

More progress on Tech Insights

David, Roadie’s CEO, wrote an article outlining the reasons we’re building Tech Insights - Roadie’s first major proprietary feature on top of Backstage. We’re currently taking on design partners who will help us guide this work. Reach out to David or Orla if you’d like to take part.

Read the post

You can now use json:merge in your software templates and set up entity-specific content in the Iframe plugin.

New actions: json:merge

When defining a software template for the Scaffolder, you may find your self having to add options to a configuration file in a JSON format. In those cases, the json:merge action lets you merge an object into another. For example if you want to add a command to it your package.json, you’d do it as below:

- id: add-command
  name: Add command to package json
  action: json:merge
  input:
    path: package.json
    content:
      scripts:
        lsltr: "ls -ltr"

You can already start using json:merge in your templates without having to enable anything.

Iframe plugin v2

The v1 of the Iframe plugin was great for the homepage but it would display the same content for all entity pages. With this upgrade, you can specify entity-specific attributes that will be used to generate the iframe. Check out the guide to set entities Iframes up.

You can now enable the StackOverflow plugin and connect your company’s instance to Roadie. We’ve also added support for the Org plugin, which adds a “My Squads” item to the sidebar.

Connect your Stackoverflow today

We’ve enabled the homepage card for Stackoverflow. It accepts both public and private Stackoverflow questions. The plugin lets you add filters to the query so you can fine-tune what kind of questions and responses are featured on your instance’s homepage. To configure it, please follow the Stackoverflow plugin’s instructions.

Access your squads faster with the Org plugin

We’ve also added the Org plugin to Roadie, which will show logged-in users a sidebar nav item for ‘My Squad’ leading them to their squad page, or ‘My Squads’ if they belong to multiple teams.

You can now ingest Okta users and groups into your Catalog, sign up for our upcoming Backstage Users Unconference (September 8th), and check out progress with the Tech Insights paid add-on.

New feature: onboard Okta users and groups in your Catalog

If Okta is the source of truth for how your teams are organized and who is on which team, you can now make sure that these teams are up to date and represented in the Backstage model. We implemented an entity provider that allows you to ingest Okta users and groups in the Catalog. To enable this feature, refer to our documentation.

Upcoming event: Backstage Users Unconference

Roadie is co-hosting this free event for Backstage users to learn and share about managing an instance, from adoption strategies to domain modeling and everything in between. Sign up today!

More progress on Tech Insights

We’ve received great feedback and enthusiasm about the upcoming Tech Insights paid addon. Most of our engineers are focused on Tech Insights, and we’re making rapid progress. We’ll roll out experimental support for a subset of customers soon. Check out our latest progress demo:

That’s all for this week!

Cheers, Jorge L

You’ve been upgraded to Backstage 1.4, you can now document gRPC APIs, and new label filters in the Catalog.

You’re running on Backstage 1.4

Backstage 1.4 release is centered around security fixes and stabilizing APIs. Read more about the upgrade in our newsletter.

New feature: API Docs for gRPC/protobuf

As requested by some of our customers, we implemented support to render gRPC/protobuf API specs generated by protoc-gen-doc. We contributed the solution upstream and with the new release, we’re making it available to all our customers.

Better UI for labels in the Catalog

We’ve added a labels column to the Catalog. Additionally, you can now filter entities by label.

Roadie’s SOC2 Type 2 Compliance, Roadie 🤝 Spotify, a new way of previewing TechDocs locally, and a peek into TechInsights.

Announcement: Roadie’s achieved SOC2 Type Compliance

We have a set of mature and robust security and availability practices at Roadie and wanted to validate them against industry standards. We see this SOC2 Type 2 compliance achievement as a milestone in our ever-improving security journey. Read more in our blog post.

Roadie’s onsite: Deepening our relationship with Spotify

Last week, we met with Ben Lambert at the Spotify office in Stockholm, Sweden. We talked about our team’s ideas for the upcoming months and possible avenues for collaboration. Last month, we signed a partnership agreement with the team to continue to evolve Backstage and support our community.

New feature: Preview TechDocs locally

You can now generate your docs locally and check how they’ll look when deployed to Roadie. Check out the new feature’s documentation for more details.

Upcoming: A peek into TechInsights

As you may have already heard, Roadie is creating a TechInsights add-on that will allow you to have scorecards for your teams and services. We’ve made solid progress on the first iteration, check out our progress so far in this video demo: