Add, update, or remove a component's details

Components in Compass have details such as a name, description, owner, and tier, links to resources, and contacts. By adding all the available details to a component’s catalog listing, and by updating those detail when necessary, you can always keep the component's information current.

Add or update a component's basic details

Every component must have a name. Additionally, Compass assigns a default tier of 4 to components when you create them in Compass. Adding other basic details, such as a description and an owner, is optional. But, we highly recommend you add those details.

We'll show you how to add or update a component's basic details in Compass.

To add or update a component’s basic details:

1. Go to your component's overview page.
2. Update its name through inline edit. Select the name, update the text, and save your changes.
   • A component's name cannot be blank.
3. Add or update the description through inline edit. Select the description, update the text, and save your changes.
4. Select the Tier dropdown and choose a tier that’s appropriate to your organization’s standards. The lower the number, the more critical the component. Learn more about component tiers
5. Add or update the owner team.
   • Adding an owner team is optional. However, we highly recommend you add an owner for your component. Learn more about why adding an owner is important
   • If the component does not already have an owner, assign an owner team to it.
   • If the component has an owner, and a new team starts managing the component, change the component's owner team.

Assign a lifecycle stage to a component

A component passes through a series of stages throughout its lifetime — its lifecycle. At any time, a component is in any one lifecycle stage. Knowing the component’s lifecycle stage gives you more confidence to make informed decisions about utilizing the component.

To assign a lifecycle stage to a component:

1. Go to the component’s Overview page.

2. Select + Lifecycle stage and choose the stage your component currently is in.

Once assigned, you can see the lifecycle stage on the component’s Overview page.

You can also assign a different lifecycle stage or clear it from the lifecycle stage dropdown menu on the Overview page.

Add links to a component's resources

A component has several resources, such as repositories, documentation, projects, and more. If this information is scattered, people who use the component often struggle to find it when they need to know about the component.

Adding these resources to the component’s details provides other users with a central location to find the information they need.

Compass provides the following link types, where you can add links to the component’s resources:

• Repository
• Documentation
• Projects
• Dashboards
• Other links

Learn more about the available link types

To add links to a component’s resources:

1. Go to your component's overview page.
   • A component's details has the Repositories, Documentation, Projects, Dashboards, and Other links sections for different link types.
2. Select Add next to the section where you want to add the link.
   • For example, if you're adding a repository, select Add repository () next to the Repositories section.
3. Enter the URL.
   • Compass supports all schemes that have a valid URL format. Learn more about the valid and invalid URL formats
4. Optionally, enter the display text. The display text, if provided, appears as the link title.
5. Select Add.

Add a component's chat channel

A component’s chat channel, such as a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel, is where users can reach the owner team for information about the component.

Owner teams have multiple areas of responsibility, such as development or support, and might have different chat channels for different purposes. By defining a chat channel, you can inform the component’s users of the best place to contact the owner team.

To add a chat channel to a component:

1. Go to your component's overview page.
2. In the Chat channels section, select Add chat channel ().
3. Enter the URL.
   • Compass supports all schemes that have a valid URL format. Learn more about the valid and invalid URL formats
4. Optionally, enter a display text. The display text, if provided, appears as the link title.
5. Select Add.

Add a component's on-call schedule

A component’s on-call schedule, such as an Opsgenie or Pagerduty schedule, is where users can reach the people who handle incidents related to it.

An on-call schedule ensures that the right person is always available to manage incidents and outages. By defining an on-call schedule, you can inform the component’s users who to escalate to when something goes wrong with it. Users know which alarm to ring, thus shortening the time to resolution.

To add a component's on-call schedule:

1. Go to your component's overview page.
2. On the Component contacts card in the right sidebar, select + Add on-call schedules.
3. Enter the URL.
   • Compass supports all schemes that have a valid URL format. Learn more about the valid and invalid URL formats
4. Optionally, enter a link text.
   • The link text appears as the link's title if Compass can't resolve the title from the URL.
5. Select Add.

Add or remove a component's labels

What are component labels?

A component’s labels are keywords or tags that apply additional information to the component. Labels make it easier to group components or search for specific components in the catalog.

Annotating components with custom labels gives you extra context and provides important information about the component. A label can denote whatever you like. Some examples could be the component’s programming language or the cloud provider it uses. Or, maybe you’d like to specify a group of services that go together or the department it belongs to, or even that the component is obsolete.

Add labels to a component

You can add labels to a component from the component’s Overview page in Compass.

To add labels to a component:

1. Go to your component's overview page.
2. Select the field under the Labels section and start typing the label text.
3. Select an existing label from the list or select Add to create a new label.
4. Repeat the process for each label you want to add.

The labels are immediately added to your component.

Remove a component's labels

You can remove a component’s labels from its Overview page in Compass.

To remove a component’s labels:

1. Go to your component's overview page.
2. Select the field under the Labels section.
3. Select the remove icon () on each label you want to delete.

The labels are immediately removed from your component, but remain applied to any other components that have them.

Available link types

A component has several resources, such as repositories, documentation, project, and more. When you add links to these resources in a component’s catalog listing in Compass, that information stays in a centralized location where users can easily find it.

Compass provides several link types to categorize different types of resources.

Repository

The source code repository, where you store the component’s code.

Documentation

Documentation that is relevant to the component, such as runbooks, internal process documentation, specifications, and more.

Projects

The relevant projects for the component, for example, Jira projects.

Dashboards

Dashboards that display metrics and information about a component, for example, observability, usage, or finances.

Other links

Links to any other relevant resources that provide valuable information about the component.

Chat channels

Chat channels, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams channels, where users can reach the owner team for information about the component.

On-call schedules

On-call schedules, such as Opsgenie or PagerDuty schedules, where users can identify the people who handle incidents related to it.

Valid and invalid URL formats

Compass supports all schemes that have a valid URL format.

Some examples of valid URL formats are:

• http://example.com
• https://www.example.com
• ftp://10.10.10.10
• git://example.com/user/project-name.git

Some examples of invalid URL formats are:

• atlassian.com (the http:// URL scheme is missing)
• javascript://test (due to security reasons)
• git@bitbucket.org:workspace/repository.git (the URI is valid, however, the URL scheme is missing and bitbucket.org:workspace is an invalid authority)