Applications

An application in the CloudBees platform represents an entire software application, tying in multiple components, if desired. Use the application feature to create relationships in the platform that closely align with how your software is structured.

By definition, an application is a higher-level model for maintaining components in an organization. Because multiple components often work together to compose a complete piece of software, applications can be used to organize projects by the full software product being developed.

Application features

Applications have the ability to:

Enable you to create a deployment process to orchestrate component deployment.
Visualize both direct and indirect dependencies (shared services).
Organize dependencies by execution, deployment, or semantic version.
Reference dependencies, but not actually deploy them, as part of the deployment.
Have approved flows, or "release templates".
Have release versioning, where each version is a collection of specific artifact version and release process values.

Application details

View the applications in your organization by selecting Applications. Refer to Manage applications to learn more about how to access and manage applications in your organization. Select the Application name link next to the status icon to review detailed information for that application.

In the application details screen, use the tabbed navigation to access all the activities linked to an application.

Runs: Review workflow executions and implicit scans.
Workflows: Review and edit workflow YAML files.
Releases: Review application releases and their statuses.
Inventory: Review the environment inventory for the application.

Figure 1. An example application with tabs highlighted.

Runs

Review details of every workflow execution in an application on Runs. This view includes trigger information, links to the workflow composer, the run completion date, and the run duration.

Figure 2. An example application run list.

As in the above example, perform any of the following:

Select the applications list using the breadcrumbs.
View Run details for a workflow run:
- Select the commit message for runs triggered through a pull request or a commit.
- Select the workflow name for manually triggered runs or scheduled runs.
Select the workflow name to view and edit the workflow YAML file.
Select the component name to view the component summary.
Select the release, if present, to view release details.

To learn more, refer to Runs.

If you have implemented implicit security scanning, the analysis runs are available in this list, as shown in the example above. To learn more about configuring implicit security scans, refer to Manage security tools.

Alternatively, view your application runs by:

Select Runs on the left pane.
Select Filters.
Select your application from the options under Component.

The run summary for your application is displayed. Implicit security analyses are not included in this run list.

Workflows

Automate software development tasks with CloudBees platform workflows, composed in YAML format. Within a workflow, each task is considered to be a step in a job. Workflow jobs can run in parallel within a workflow or depend on the completion of other jobs, and workflows can contain In Workflows, create and manage workflows within an application.

Figure 3. An example application workflow list.

As in the above example, perform any of the following:

Select the applications list using the breadcrumbs.
Create a workflow: Select to then select a Create staged workflow or Create standard workflow option.
Select the workflow name to view the workflow YAML file.
Select to update the workflow YAML file.

For more information, refer to:

Manage workflows.
CloudBees DSL syntax for workflow YAML files.

Releases

Manage the release of software to a live environment with a CloudBees platform application. Each release includes a workflow that orchestrates the release, the release manifest, and the metadata. Within application Releases, you can create releases, monitor release status, run releases, and close releases that are no longer needed.

Figure 4. An example application release list.

As in the above example, perform any of the following:

Select the Applications list using the breadcrumbs.
Select Create release to create a release.
Select the release name to view the release definition and runs summary.
Select the release workflow name to view and edit the workflow YAML file.
Select to trigger a release workflow.

For more information, refer to Releases.

Inventory

If you have executed workflows to deploy artifact versions to infrastructure, track these deployments as environment inventory items. When deployments are part of an application release, these environment inventory items are associated with the application in its Inventory. The inventory displays where artifact versions of the application are currently deployed across all environments. Customize the view of the inventory by ordering, showing, and/or hiding any environments.

Artifacts are displayed only if they have been generated by running a workflow that has been configured to collect artifact data.

For more information, refer to:

View and manage the application environment inventory.

Figure 5. An example application environment inventory.

As in the above example, perform any of the following:

Select the Applications list using the breadcrumbs.
Select the component name to view the summary of the associated component.
Select the artifact name to view the current artifact version information.
Select to move an environment to a different column.
Select an environment to view all artifacts associated with that environment.
Hover over the Component header, the Artifact header, and the environment headers to manage column display: Select , and then select a Hide column or Manage columns option.
Select the associated artifact version to view more details.