Centralize user and team data for streamlined automation and software ownership tracking
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Centralize user and team data for streamlined automation and software ownership tracking

Jim Armstrong
Jim Armstrong

March 17, 2025

Flexible structures for unique organizations
Start your journey toward smarter team management today! 

Ready to start?

Centralize user and team data for streamlined automation and software ownership tracking

Users and teams are perhaps the most essential cog in developing and delivering great software, so Port is giving them the first-class treatment they deserve. We’re pleased to announce that one of our most requested features — the ability to customize users and teams to fit your company’s unique structure — is now available in Port! 

Rather than prescribe a rigid definition of a user and team, or perhaps import one from an authentication tool, you can now use Port’s blueprints to model your users and teams however you desire. 

It’s common for user data to be scattered across several tools. Authentication details from one source, a GitHub ID, an Atlassian ID, a Slack account or maybe several. Teams are similar: there’s the management hierarchy, but engineering teams might group together on a project. There could be domain experts, dedicated project and team communications channels. Using Port blueprints, you can gather all this information in one place and use it to make Port work the way your teams do.

Note: User and Team blueprints will be required for all Port users starting 1 May 2025. If you created your Port instance prior to 14 January 2025, you will need to perform a migration prior to 1 May to ensure smooth operations. If you created your Port account after 15 January  2025, you already have the User and Team blueprints feature and no additional steps are required. 

Flexible structures for unique organizations

Your internal developer portal is meant to be the source of truth about your software and the teams that create and manage it, across all the tools in your software lifecycle. Blueprints in Port describe the data you want inside your software catalog and also the relationships between items. With user and team blueprints in Port, you can capture all the relevant metadata you need about the people in your portal, which in turn enables powerful automations and workflows, as well as clear ownership and visibility throughout your SDLC. 

This innovative approach enables organizations to add layers of custom properties to users and teams, creating intricate networks of relationships that extend beyond traditional boundaries. In the first figure below, users in Port have the usual details like email addresses and names, and they’re linked to authentication systems. But we’ve included additional details like language and security expertise, and functional roles. We could add in their GitHub ID and Slack handle, details about their use of an AI coding tool – really anything we want.

A sample user configuration in Port that includes useful data about skills, functional roles.

In the second figure, we’ve configured our teams. Here we’ve pulled in Slack channel info, a team’s design board in Figma, and details across several Atlassian tools. We’re also aggregating specific data on each team like their GitHub Copilot usage stats and several engineering metrics.

A team blueprint in Port, which incorporates details from Slack, Atlassian tools, and design tools.

Start your journey toward smarter team management today! 

New to Port? Explore our demo or sign up for a free Port account and start using the new Users and Team blueprints today. More details are available in the Port docs.

Signed up for Port before 15 January 2025? 

On 1 May 2025 this blueprint approach will be the default for everyone, so we encourage existing users to begin their migration plans and to reach out to us if you have any questions. Migration is also required if you were using the beta version of the user and team blueprints.

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Example JSON block

{
  "foo": "bar"
}

Order Domain

{
  "properties": {},
  "relations": {},
  "title": "Orders",
  "identifier": "Orders"
}

Cart System

{
  "properties": {},
  "relations": {
    "domain": "Orders"
  },
  "identifier": "Cart",
  "title": "Cart"
}

Products System

{
  "properties": {},
  "relations": {
    "domain": "Orders"
  },
  "identifier": "Products",
  "title": "Products"
}

Cart Resource

{
  "properties": {
    "type": "postgress"
  },
  "relations": {},
  "icon": "GPU",
  "title": "Cart SQL database",
  "identifier": "cart-sql-sb"
}

Cart API

{
 "identifier": "CartAPI",
 "title": "Cart API",
 "blueprint": "API",
 "properties": {
   "type": "Open API"
 },
 "relations": {
   "provider": "CartService"
 },
 "icon": "Link"
}

Core Kafka Library

{
  "properties": {
    "type": "library"
  },
  "relations": {
    "system": "Cart"
  },
  "title": "Core Kafka Library",
  "identifier": "CoreKafkaLibrary"
}

Core Payment Library

{
  "properties": {
    "type": "library"
  },
  "relations": {
    "system": "Cart"
  },
  "title": "Core Payment Library",
  "identifier": "CorePaymentLibrary"
}

Cart Service JSON

{
 "identifier": "CartService",
 "title": "Cart Service",
 "blueprint": "Component",
 "properties": {
   "type": "service"
 },
 "relations": {
   "system": "Cart",
   "resources": [
     "cart-sql-sb"
   ],
   "consumesApi": [],
   "components": [
     "CorePaymentLibrary",
     "CoreKafkaLibrary"
   ]
 },
 "icon": "Cloud"
}

Products Service JSON

{
  "identifier": "ProductsService",
  "title": "Products Service",
  "blueprint": "Component",
  "properties": {
    "type": "service"
  },
  "relations": {
    "system": "Products",
    "consumesApi": [
      "CartAPI"
    ],
    "components": []
  }
}

Component Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "Component",
 "title": "Component",
 "icon": "Cloud",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {
     "type": {
       "enum": [
         "service",
         "library"
       ],
       "icon": "Docs",
       "type": "string",
       "enumColors": {
         "service": "blue",
         "library": "green"
       }
     }
   },
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {
   "system": {
     "target": "System",
     "required": false,
     "many": false
   },
   "resources": {
     "target": "Resource",
     "required": false,
     "many": true
   },
   "consumesApi": {
     "target": "API",
     "required": false,
     "many": true
   },
   "components": {
     "target": "Component",
     "required": false,
     "many": true
   },
   "providesApi": {
     "target": "API",
     "required": false,
     "many": false
   }
 }
}

Resource Blueprint

{
 “identifier”: “Resource”,
 “title”: “Resource”,
 “icon”: “DevopsTool”,
 “schema”: {
   “properties”: {
     “type”: {
       “enum”: [
         “postgress”,
         “kafka-topic”,
         “rabbit-queue”,
         “s3-bucket”
       ],
       “icon”: “Docs”,
       “type”: “string”
     }
   },
   “required”: []
 },
 “mirrorProperties”: {},
 “formulaProperties”: {},
 “calculationProperties”: {},
 “relations”: {}
}

API Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "API",
 "title": "API",
 "icon": "Link",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {
     "type": {
       "type": "string",
       "enum": [
         "Open API",
         "grpc"
       ]
     }
   },
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {
   "provider": {
     "target": "Component",
     "required": true,
     "many": false
   }
 }
}

Domain Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "Domain",
 "title": "Domain",
 "icon": "Server",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {},
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {}
}

System Blueprint

{
 "identifier": "System",
 "title": "System",
 "icon": "DevopsTool",
 "schema": {
   "properties": {},
   "required": []
 },
 "mirrorProperties": {},
 "formulaProperties": {},
 "calculationProperties": {},
 "relations": {
   "domain": {
     "target": "Domain",
     "required": true,
     "many": false
   }
 }
}
{{tabel-1}}

Microservices SDLC

  • Scaffold a new microservice

  • Deploy (canary or blue-green)

  • Feature flagging

  • Revert

  • Lock deployments

  • Add Secret

  • Force merge pull request (skip tests on crises)

  • Add environment variable to service

  • Add IaC to the service

  • Upgrade package version

Development environments

  • Spin up a developer environment for 5 days

  • ETL mock data to environment

  • Invite developer to the environment

  • Extend TTL by 3 days

Cloud resources

  • Provision a cloud resource

  • Modify a cloud resource

  • Get permissions to access cloud resource

SRE actions

  • Update pod count

  • Update auto-scaling group

  • Execute incident response runbook automation

Data Engineering

  • Add / Remove / Update Column to table

  • Run Airflow DAG

  • Duplicate table

Backoffice

  • Change customer configuration

  • Update customer software version

  • Upgrade - Downgrade plan tier

  • Create - Delete customer

Machine learning actions

  • Train model

  • Pre-process dataset

  • Deploy

  • A/B testing traffic route

  • Revert

  • Spin up remote Jupyter notebook

{{tabel-2}}

Engineering tools

  • Observability

  • Tasks management

  • CI/CD

  • On-Call management

  • Troubleshooting tools

  • DevSecOps

  • Runbooks

Infrastructure

  • Cloud Resources

  • K8S

  • Containers & Serverless

  • IaC

  • Databases

  • Environments

  • Regions

Software and more

  • Microservices

  • Docker Images

  • Docs

  • APIs

  • 3rd parties

  • Runbooks

  • Cron jobs

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