Create, view, update, and delete components

Create a component

A component is an output artifact of your engineering team. It could be a service, a library, an application, or something else.

A component’s catalog listing in Compass is the unified view of all information about the component. The first step to build a component catalog is to create components.

Create a component manually

To create a new component manually:

1. In Compass, in the top navigation bar, select Create > Create component.
2. Select a component type.
   • Choose the type carefully. You cannot change it after creating the component.
3. Enter the component’s name.
4. Select an owner for your component.
   • Although adding a component owner is optional, we highly recommend that you add one. Learn more about why adding an owner is important
   • If the owner team doesn’t exist yet, that's okay. Select + Start a team to create and assign a team to the component right away. Or, you can create your component now, start a new team later, and then assign it to the component when you are ready.
5. Select Create.

We’ll add your component to the catalog and take you to the component’s details page, where you can add detailed information such as links to repositories and documentation, chat channels, dependencies, and more.

Create a component using the API

You can also create components using the Compass GraphQL API. Learn how to create components using the API

View a component's details

A component's details page is the single place in Compass where you’ll find everything you want to know about your component. In the details page, you’ll find what the component does, who owns it and how to contact them, its links and dependencies, scores, and more.

To view your component’s details, use any of the following methods:

• In the component catalog, locate your component and select its name. You’ll need to go to the page specific to the type of your component. For example, if your component is a library, from the left navigation bar, select Libraries.
• Search for the component and select its name in the search results.
• Search for the team that owns your component. On the team’s dashboard, from the Team components list, select the component’s name.

When you view a component, you'll first see the Overview page. This page groups the key details about the component.

1. Basic details: This section is the first place the users look when they view a component’s details. It shows the component’s basic details such as its name and description. For service-type component's the tier appears here.

2. Scorecards: This section shows the scorecards you apply to a component. Scorecards show a component’s health based on set criteria.

3. Owner team: This card shows the owner team’s information. An owner team has a defined responsibility towards managing a component. You can assign or change a component’s ownership from this section.

4. Component contacts: This card shows links to the owner team’s chat channel. Users can reach out to the component's owner team for information about the component.

5. On-call: This card shows links to a component's on-call roster. The on-call links are available only for service-type components. These links give you access to the people who can provide help with the component or support you during an incident.

6. Custom fields: This card shows all custom fields associated with the specific component type. With custom fields, you can add valuable information to a component that’s not available using Compass’s default fields.

7. Resource links, labels, and metrics: Links to a component’s resources, such as repositories, documentation, projects, and more, appear in their respective sections. More details, such as labels and metrics are also available in the own sections on the Overview page.

8. Component navigation: Pages providing more information about the component appear in the component navigation. Some of these pages are available by default, for example Activity or Dependencies. Whereas, some pages become available when you install different apps on Compass, for example, Swagger UI or Statuspage.

Component types

Every component has a type, so you can categorize components based on their capabilities. You set a component’s type when you create it, and can change its type at any time.

There are four types of components:

• Service — An independently-deployable software unit that is usually is operated by a person or a team. Services can be as large as monoliths or smaller microservices.

• Library — A reusable collection of objects, functions, and methods. A library is typically used by other components.

• Application — A fully-packaged application, like a mobile application, desktop application, or a CLI-type tool.

• Other — A component that doesn’t match the service, library, or application type.

Component type attributes

Change a component's type

1. Go to the component's Overview page.

2. Select More actions > Change component type.

3. Choose the component type you want to change to.

   • If you change from a service to a library, application, or other type, the current service tier and on-call schedules will no longer be visible. Custom fields and scorecards will be reapplied based on the component type you change to.

   • If you change from a library, application, or other type to a service, a service tier of 4 will be applied, as well as service-based custom fields and scorecards.

   • If you change between a library, application, or other type, custom fields and scorecards will be reapplied based on the component type you change to.

4. Select Change.

Delete a component

You can delete a component’s catalog listing from Compass. Deleting a component permanently deletes the component’s associated data from Compass. You can’t undo the deletion.

We don’t delete any component data from other systems outside Compass.

To delete a component from Compass:

1. Go to the component’s Overview page.
2. Select More actions > Delete from Compass.
3. On the confirmation dialog, select Delete to confirm the deletion.