Please note: This is an initial guide. We’ll build on this over time as we identify more areas where standardized language will benefit our team and users.
Features
- Audit log: A complete record of every user action and system event, showing what changed, when, and who made the change.
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Deployment Freezes: The ability to block deployments temporarily or on a recurring schedule to protect critical windows, maintenance periods, or business operations.
Scope variants: - Global Deployment Freezes: The ability to temporarily or on a recurring schedule block deployments for multiple projects or tenants to protect critical windows, maintenance periods, or business operations.
- Project-level Deployment Freezes: The ability to temporarily or on a recurring schedule block deployments for a single project to protect critical windows, maintenance periods, or business operations.
How to use these terms:
Documentation and website: Refer to core feature as Deployment Freezes, prefixed with scope when applicable (for example, global Deployment Freezes, project-level Deployment Freezes).
Product:
- Navigation: Use the label Freezes, regardless of scope.
- Page titles: Use Deployment Freezes, regardless of scope.
- Help sidebar, empty onboarding states, upsell workflows, and anywhere else: Refer to as (global/project-level) Deployment Freezes.
Documentation and website: Refer to core feature as Deployment Freezes, prefixed with scope when applicable (for example, global Deployment Freezes, project-level Deployment Freezes).
Product:
- Navigation: Use the label Freezes, regardless of scope.
- Page titles: Use Deployment Freezes, regardless of scope.
- Help sidebar, empty onboarding states, upsell workflows, and anywhere else: Refer to as (global/project-level) Deployment Freezes.
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DevOps Insights: Deployment reporting that tracks DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time for changes, failure rates, and recovery times) to help teams identify bottlenecks and improve their software delivery processes.
Scope variants: - Space-level DevOps Insights: Deployment reporting that unifies DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, failure rates, recovery times) across multiple projects.
- Project-level DevOps Insights: Deployment reporting that shows DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, failure rates, recovery times) for a single project.
How to use these terms:
Documentation and website: Refer to core feature as DevOps Insights, prefixed with scope when applicable (for example, space-level DevOps Insights, project-level DevOps Insights).
Product:
- Navigation and page titles: Use Insights, regardless of scope.
- Help sidebar, empty onboarding states, upsell workflows, and anywhere else: Refer to as (space/project)-level DevOps Insights.
Documentation and website: Refer to core feature as DevOps Insights, prefixed with scope when applicable (for example, space-level DevOps Insights, project-level DevOps Insights).
Product:
- Navigation and page titles: Use Insights, regardless of scope.
- Help sidebar, empty onboarding states, upsell workflows, and anywhere else: Refer to as (space/project)-level DevOps Insights.
- ITSM integration: Connects Octopus to IT Service Management tools like ServiceNow and Jira Service Management to automatically create and track change requests, enforce approvals, and log deployment and runbook outcomes for compliance and audits.
- Priority deployments: The ability to fast-track specific individual deployments or all deployments to a chosen environment so they run before others in the task queue.
- Process Editor: A visual tool to define your deployment process.
- Role-based access control (RBAC): A granular system that controls what users can see and do across projects, environments, spaces, and resources.
- Runbooks: A workflow that manages day-1 and day-2 operations, automating routine and emergency tasks like website failover, restoration, incident response, and infrastructure or database management.
- SIEM audit log streaming: Continuous export of audit logs to Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems for centralized monitoring and compliance.
- Single sign-on (SSO): An authentication method that lets users sign in with their existing identity provider credentials (Google, Microsoft Azure, or GitHub).
Core concepts
- Audit events: Individual recorded activities that capture significant system actions such as deployments, configuration changes, user logins, and more.
- Deployment targets: The specific machines, services, or infrastructure where deployments are executed (for example, web servers, databases, Kubernetes clusters, etc.).
- Environment promotion: Controls how a release moves through your environments (like development > testing > production) in a defined order, with the right configuration and required approvals at each stage
- Machines: A Windows, Linux, or macOS application host registered as a deployment target.
- Project: A container for a single deployable component like an application, microservice, API, or database that holds your deployment process, variables, releases, and configurations.
- Spaces: The highest-level container within Octopus that provides complete isolation of projects, environments, and resources for different teams, departments, or business units.
- Steps: Individual tasks or actions executed during a deployment (for example, run a script, deploy a package, notify on Slack, etc.)
- Task: A unit of work, like a deployment, runbook, health check, or other operation, that is executed in order and tracked with progress and logs.
- Tenant: An entity that represents a customer, a physical location, a customer’s physical location, or something else that has its own variables and deployment settings, allowing the same project to be deployed multiple times without duplicating configuration.
- Variables: Sensitive and/or scoped configuration values (for example, connection strings, URLs, etc.) used by the deployment process to apply the correct values during deployments.