Software developers have been putting badges on their repositories for a long time. Since they’re easily recognizable and have high information density, badges make it simple for developers to signal (or understand) things like code quality, test status and coverage, version, framework, or adherence to various standards.
Quality? Repositories? Standards? That’s all right up OpsLevel’s alley. So we’ve introduced our own dynamic shields.io badges.
With these new service level badges, service owners can easily signal–in their git repos–how their services are performing against their organization’s Service Maturity standards.
Why badges?
Making service metadata and operational context more discoverable is one of OpsLevel’s core capabilities.
When teams use our service ownership platform to catalog and level up their services, they’re also creating a record of their progress and current status.
So Badges are another way to expose and showcase this information within an engineering org. Plus, we think teams that are actively sharing information and using data well are more effective!
And if a team isn’t aware of or using their org’s service maturity levels, this extra visibility can serve as their introduction to the concept.
How our badges work
Shields.io badges require unauthenticated JSON endpoints. For that reason, a service owner must enable the badge endpoint for services individually (naturally, only maturity level information is available from this endpoint). Once enabled, OpsLevel provides markdown that can be pasted into your repository’s README.md file.
Service owners can choose to display only a service’s overall maturity level, or badges corresponding to their scorecard levels per rubric category, as shown below.
By default, badges are hyperlinked to a service’s maturity report in OpsLevel. Read more about the details behind enabling and using service level badges in our docs.
Extensible, obviously
The most common way to use service level badges is to add them to your Git repository’s README.md. But you’re not limited to that option.
Paste the snippets anywhere markdown is supported and you’ll have your dynamic OpsLevel service level badges. Similarly, use the JSON endpoint to query and display or use your service maturity level information anywhere else you need to (though we would recommend our authenticated, full-featured GraphqQL API for most use cases).
Come up with a creative use case for your service level badges? Having a friendly competition as teams go for the gold? We’d love to hear about it!
Not yet an OpsLevel customer, but ready to make your service metadata and operational context much more discoverable via our badges (and so much more)? Then request your custom OpsLevel demo today.