[Plugin] LeanIX - Application Portfolio Management

[setchy]

Summary

LeanIX is a SaaS-based architecture tool that allows you to model your organizations landscape (people, process, technology) as fact-sheets (ie: applications, it components, business capabilities, user groups etc).

Each fact-sheet type has a series of metadata attributes you can capture, such as lifecycle milestones (phase in, phase out, retire), successors, predecessors and relationship between fact-sheets (ie: which applications depend on which it components)

The platform has a really rich set of APIs available (GraphQL or REST) to interface with.

Project website (if applicable)

• https://www.leanix.net/en/
• https://docs.leanix.net/docs/api-guide

Context

It would be really powerful to be able to link a backstage component to its corresponding LeanIX fact-sheet, so that different viewpoints (especially any relationships to other fact sheet types, or lifecycle statuses) could be displayed within Backstage automatically

[vincentbriglia]

@setchy have you progressed on this journey? we have some pipelines that do this for us, but we haven't mapped this process to Backstage - trying to find out how we can do post-process and post-stitch ingestion into LeanIX but finding the "right way" to do this is a bit mysterious for me :)

[setchy]

@vincentbriglia - It's still on my todo list, but very much front of mind.

[vincentbriglia]

@setchy we created a catalog processor for LeanIX - right now it only deals with ingesting products and creates them as the groups. we haven't really spent any effort in augmenting existing backstage components or linking them through annotations since it's tricky to know what the "single source of truth" is in either case.

what is your usecase, we're thinking ofcourse to open this plugin up to the public, but we can add some functionality.

[swestner-loyalty]

@vincentbriglia I can not speak for the OP, but being able to find dependencies between services would be the top usecase from my perspective. So something like :

As a developer, When modifying a service I want to see all dependent service that are impacted So that we can plan the upgrade dependent services

[vincentbriglia]

@swestner-loyalty are you using sub-types in LeanIX only the de-facto Fact Sheets ?

[swestner-loyalty]

@vincentbriglia The only subtypes we have are the IT Components sub-types that come out of the box. That said, we do have items categorized under those.

[vincentbriglia]

Sub-types is an extra field on the Fact Sheet Types and IT components is a top-level fact sheet type so perhaps we're not talking about the same thing here

[swestner-loyalty]

I see now. No we are not using subtypes, it is actually a disabled field in our setup.

I was using the definition of subtype from here : https://academy.leanix.net/working-with-factsheets-course-1/464432, which actually falls under the category fields. Confusing they call them subtypes when subtypes is actually a separate field.

Hope that helps

[vincentbriglia]

It's fine, subtypes are the equivalent of Backstage's Entity types like website or service on Component entities, so mapping them becomes cumbersome

[swestner-loyalty]

@vincentbriglia is there any timeline on releasing to the public?

[vincentbriglia]

@vincentbriglia is there any timeline on releasing to the public?

we have a task in our backlog to open source it, no ETA

[angelbarrera92]

@vincentbriglia is there any timeline on releasing to the public?

we have a task in our backlog to open source it, no ETA

Any chance to get it public?

[karstenmueller]

@vincentbriglia is there any timeline on releasing to the public?

we have a task in our backlog to open source it, no ETA

@vincentbriglia Would love to see this opensourced. Maybe it is possible test this integration? Maybe helpful to you as well 😉

[milesgillham]

Interesting. Any progress on this? :-)

[salerak]

Looking to also leverage this. Any progress on creating the integration for the top level items of LeanIx ex. a list of Applications which would map to the Systems in Backstage?

[regicsolutions]

@vincentbriglia I know this is a old issue but wondering if your team was ever able to open source the plugin you built?

[anophis]

also interested