Onboarding Guide
Harness SEI analyzes data from over 40 DevOps tools to compute DORA metrics and over 100 other insightful metrics that provide the missing insights to help you deliver software faster with better quality.
This guide explains what you need to know to get started using Harness SEI
Complete SEI Platform onboarding
If you're new to SEI, review the SEI Platform key concepts before onboarding to SEI.
Onboarding Path
Phase 1: Setup your SEI account
Step | Details | Documentation |
Learn about the basic concepts of SEI | ||
Create projects and invite users |
Phase 2: Single Sign-On (Automate onboarding of users from external sources)
Step | Details | Documentation |
Automate the onboarding of users from external sources | ||
Learn about how you can create any resource on SEI using Rest APIs |
Phase 3: Integration Mapping
Step | Details | Documentation |
Learn how to create cloud integrations for third-party tools | ||
Use the Ingestion Satellite to connect SEI with on-premise tools | ||
Learn how to create custom CI/CD integrations | ||
Map integrations to your project | ||
Monitor the health status of the integrations | ||
Create and configure the integration for GitHub Cloud or GitHub Enterprise | ||
Create and configure the integration for Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center | ||
Create and configure the integration for Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos and Azure Boards |
Phase 4: Collection Setup
Step | Details | Documentation |
Learn how to use collection-level hierarchies to keep data in SEI organized | ||
View, add, edit, enable/disable collection categories | ||
View, add, edit and remove collections | ||
View, add, edit and remove contributors |
Phase 5: Profiles Setup
Step | Details | Documentation |
Learn how to create/edit an investment profile | ||
Learn how to create/edit a workflow profile for measuring DORA metrics | ||
Learn how to create/edit a workflow profile to measure Lead Time metrics | ||
Learn how to create/edit a Trellis profile |
Phase 6: Insights Creation
Step | Details | Documentation |
Learn how to create a new Insight on SEI | ||
Configure widgets on the Insight | ||
Associate or Disassociate Insights with collections | ||
View existing Insights | ||
Derive value out of the widget data on the Insights | ||
Learn how to create a DORA Insight using various DORA widgets | ||
Learn how to create a Trellis Insight using various Trellis widgets | ||
Learn how to create a Sprints Insight using various sprint metric widgets | ||
Learn how to create a Developer Insight using SCM metric widgets |
Phase 7: Role-Based Access Control
Step | Details | Documentation |
A brief overview of RBAC support for SEI |
Phase 1: Setup your SEI account
SEI Platform is purpose-built to help developers and DevOps teams deliver software with the highest velocity, quality, security, reliability, and resilience as well as the lowest cost possible while remaining inside the governance guardrails necessary for meeting organizational goals.
SEI SaaS is a fully managed cloud version of SEI Platform that is accessible via multiple plans.
Team & Enterprise Plans: You must have received an invitation email from your Account Administrator. Reach out to support@harness.io if you need more information or if you do not know who your Account Administrator is.
After your account has been created, you can sign in to your SEI account.
Step 1 - Review key concepts
If you're new to Harness, review the Harness Platform onboarding guide and Harness Platform key concepts before onboarding to SEI.
Review the following resources to learn about the features, components, and key concepts of Harness SEI.
SEI overview: Learn about Harness SEI module and key features.
SEI key concepts: Get definitions of common components and integrations you'll encounter in Harness SEI, such as Ingestion Satellite, Integrations, Insights, Collections, and more.
Step 2 - Create a sample project and invite collaborators
Projects, in addition to the roles they serve elsewhere in the Harness Platform, provide an umbrella for you to organize the Collection hierarchy and access Insights associated with specific Collections.
Collection categories and Collections exist under their associated project; they don't span across projects. While multiple projects can have Collection categories and Collections with the same name, these are distinct groups under their designated project.
Prerequisites
Make sure you have the Create permissions for Project to create a Project.
Create a project
In SEI, go to Settings and click on the Projects dropdown at the top right corner
Click +Project.
Name the project.
Add a description and tags, and then click Save and Continue.
Click Save and Continue to create the project.
Project FAQs
Phase 2: Single Sign-On (Automate onboarding of users from external sources)
You can automate the onboarding of users from external sources along with their user group memberships & role assignments.
API
Use the API quickstart to get started.
Phase 3: Integration Mapping
After you have created your project, you can begin setting up and mapping integrations as an Admin.
To learn more, go to Integration Mapping.
Integration Overview
To calculate metrics, you must integrate your SDLC tools with SEI. SEI integrations are handled through SEI integrations. SEI integrations contain the information necessary for the Platform to integrate and work with SDLC tools, such as Git providers, issue management systems, communication tools, and more.
SEI supports integrations with both Cloud and On-Prem third-party tools. To learn more about the supported integrations on Harness SEI, go to What's Supported.
Cloud Integrations & On-Prem Integrations
SEI integrates with several third-party providers to provide centralized visibility on engineering work.
If you want to integrate SEI with your on-premise tools, you can use the Ingestion Satellite to configure the integration. Ingestion Satellite is used to integrate your on-premise tools and custom integrations into your SEI project.
It enables data ingestion and integration with various third-party applications and services. Satellites are configured while installing the SEI integrations in the integration configuration, within the Data Settings. Now we can configure the satellite for a supported, application-specific integration or a Custom CI/CD integration. SEI does not store satellite credentials.
To learn more about how to use the satellite to configure an integration, go to Ingestion Satellite.
You can also create custom CI/CD integration. Find the instructions to create a Custom CI/CD integration on SEI here.
The required credentials and method of authentication vary with the integration type and the third-party tool. To learn more about how to configure the integration on SEI, refer to the integration-specific documentation.
Phase 4: Collection Setup
Collections are groupings representing subdivisions of a Collection category. By default, each Collection category has one root, or All, Collection. For example, the Teams category automatically has an All Teams Collection. Under the root Collection, you can create any number of Collections and Collection levels.
Review the following resources to learn more about Collection Categories and Collections hierarchy.
Project and Collection Hierarchy: Learn about how the collection hierarchy is defined on Harness SEI
Manage Collection Categories: Learn how you can add, view, edit, and enable/disable Collection Categories
Manage Collections: Learn how you can add, view, edit, and manage Insight associations with a Collection
Manage Contributors: Learn how to add Contributors and configure the Contributor attributes
Phase 5: Profiles Setup
A Profile in SEI represents an entity where users define a different set of metrics, criteria, or parameters. It is used to define their software development process that helps in measuring different aspects of software engineering performance, and productivity.
SEI provides 3 different types of profiles:
Investment Profile / Business Alignment Profile: Investment profiles help you understand where engineers are allocating their time through effort investment metrics. It is one of the most critical components of engineering metrics by connecting engineering to business value.
Trellis Profile: The Trellis Scores feature on SEI provides a proprietary scoring mechanism to evaluate and understand your engineering team's productivity. The Trellis Profile is the entity that lets you customize the standards and thresholds for calculating the Trellis Score.
Workflow Profile: Workflow profile is an entity in SEI where users define the stages, events, and measurement criteria to assess the entire development process lifecycle using Lead Time and DORA metrics. You can use these profiles to derive insights on the time taken to ship changes or the time taken for bug fixes to reach production etc.
Phase 6: Insights Creation
Insights are dashboards that make it easy to visualize and interpret metrics that are captured by SEI. With a variety of out-of-the-box widgets, you can create Insights that show the data you care about most and help you understand your engineering team's effectiveness and efficiency.
Create and Manage Insights
Review the following resources to learn more about creating and managing Insights.
Tutorials
Phase 7: Role-Based Access Control
Review the following resources to learn more about defining and managing access control on SEI module resources using SEI RBAC.
Training & Knowledge
Find the list of demos for the latest Harness SEI features.
Topic | Video | Documentation |
Insights on Harness SEI | ||
Role-Based Access Control on SEI | ||
Business Alignment 2.0 - BETA | ||
Trellis Scores - Reimagined - BETA | ||
DORA Metrics Explained | ||
Dev Insight Explained | ||
Sprints Insight Explained | ||
Collections Walkthrough |
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