Building Your Service Catalog with OpsLevel: Embracing Automation with Catalog Engine

Now that you know the basics of what goes into a catalog, it's time to create your own using OpsLevel's powerful Catalog Engine. This guide will walk you through how to efficiently build and maintain your service catalog, ensuring your team can trust the data when they need it most.

Introducing the Catalog Engine: The Fastest Way to Create and Maintain Your Catalog

OpsLevel's Catalog Engine is a suite of features designed to automate and streamline the process of building and maintaining your service catalog. It's the fastest, most efficient way to get started and keep your catalog up-to-date. The Catalog Engine includes:

How the Catalog Engine Works

1. Integrate Your Systems: Connect OpsLevel to your git provider, alert sources, deploy systems, or custom event checks.
2. Automatic Service Detection: The Catalog Engine scans your repositories and other integrated sources, flagging potential services.
3. Review and Confirm: Accept or ignore the detected services on the Detected Services page.
4. Continuous Updates: As new code is pushed or events occur, the Catalog Engine keeps detecting and suggesting updates.

By leveraging the Catalog Engine, you can catalog services, components, and infrastructure objects in minutes, creating a comprehensive and accurate catalog from day one.

Using the Catalog Engine

Service Detection from Integrations

When you add a new Git, Alert Source, Deploy, or Custom Event Check integration, OpsLevel will automatically recommend services:

• Git repositories will be scanned, and services will be inferred from the contents.
• Datadog monitors and services from Pagerduty, New Relic, and OpsGenie will generate recommendations.
• Deploy and Custom Event Check integrations will recommend services based on the aliases found.

Ownership Suggestions

OpsLevel helps by providing ownership suggestions based on repository activity. It analyzes recent commit history to identify contributors and suggest teams that might own the service. You can easily accept these suggestions or make changes as needed.

Detected Services Page

Navigate to Catalog > Detected Services to see a list of Pending Services that OpsLevel has detected. From this page, you can:

• View the Service alias identified during detection
• See where the Service was detected from and when
• Use the expand button to see all repositories, alert sources, and events supporting the Detected Service
• Review suggestions and make changes to the action or service name
• Register new services or merge sources with existing services
• Ignore services you don't want to add to your catalog

Benefits of Using the Catalog Engine

• See everything in your software ecosystem: Get a comprehensive view of all your services, components, and infrastructure objects.
• Know who owns it and what it does: Easily identify ownership and understand the purpose of each service.
• Understand dependencies: Gain insights into how your services are interconnected.
• Eliminate manual updates: Automate the process of keeping your catalog up-to-date.

Alternative Methods for Catalog Building

While the Catalog Engine is the recommended approach, OpsLevel offers several alternative methods to accommodate different team structures and workflows:

1. Kubernetes Syncing Tool: For organizations using Kubernetes, this tool can push data into OpsLevel or map services based on your deployments.
2. Config-as-Code Approach: Use opslevel.yml files stored in your repositories for a git-based workflow.
3. Terraform Provider: For teams using infrastructure-as-code, provision and catalog services via Terraform.
4. GraphQL API or CLI Tool: Integrate OpsLevel with your other operations tools or use the command-line interface for custom workflows.

Maintaining Your Catalog

Regardless of your chosen method, OpsLevel helps keep your catalog current:

• Automatic Detection: New services are flagged for review and mapping.
• AI-Assisted Descriptions: The AI Assistant generates service descriptions based on repository content.
• Continuous Updates: The Catalog Engine keeps your catalog in sync with your actual infrastructure and codebase.

Next Steps

Now that you understand how to build your catalog efficiently using the Catalog Engine and other methods, you're ready to get started. Begin by integrating your systems with OpsLevel and let the Catalog Engine do the heavy lifting in populating your service catalog.

Remember, a well-maintained service catalog is key to harnessing OpsLevel's full potential. Start with the Catalog Engine for the most automated, efficient approach to building and maintaining your catalog today!

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