Announcing Manual Approval for Developer Self-service

Introduction

‍

We’re true believers in driving all developer self-service actions through the internal developer portal interface. No-one wants TicketOps, multi-step requests from DevOps and more. Yet one of the more persistent questions we get asked is about manual approval. Here’s how to do it in Port.

‍

‍

Manual approval use cases

Any time a developer makes a self-service action, the form created through the developer self-service action imposes boundaries and a limited set of fields/outcomes.

Let’s take a request for an ephemeral environment, limited by TTL. The TTL can be three or five days, but what happens if a developer needs ten days? Instead of not offering an option for manual approval and re-igniting the TicketOps cycle, the form can allow requesting ten days, but subject that to manual approval. Once the manual approval request is granted or declines, the developer gets an in-app notification, or messages in slack, microsoft teams or email.

‍

Manual approval is also recommended when a self-service action might present risks, create excessive costs or require an extra pair of eyes according to the organization’s policy.

‍

How it’s done in Port

When creating self-service actions for a specific blueprint in Port, you can also configure a manual approval step. When a user clicks on the execute button of an action that requires approval, the self-service action will be created with a “waiting for approval” status, and a manual approval notification will be sent to the approving user. The request with the WAITING_FOR_APPROVAL status will be visible in the Runs tab of the action.