• Experience a sleek and intuitive design that enhances user interaction and efficiency when giving permissions, managing roles & inviting new members to collaborate.

• Streamlined process to manage roles and their associated permissions.
• Directly link permissions to your specific environment, architectures, and workflows for a tailored experience.

• Dive deeper into permission settings with the ability to narrow down permissions at various levels: 
  • Organization Level: Control and delegate access across your entire organization.
  • Architecture Level: Define permissions specific to different architectures within your setup.
  • Project Level: Ensure the right people have the right access for individual projects.

Before:

Now: 

➡ This update aims to improve your navigation and provide a more intuitive interface for all Brainboard users.

🔥 Releases: 

• Two new CI/CD Plugins enabling efficient collaboration and streamlined code reviews.
  • Pull Request: create directly inside your workflow/pipeline the Pull Request once all other validations and test pass.
  • Microsoft Teams: get a notification in your Teams once a pipeline succeed
• Unlimited Terraform code generation for free: You can enjoy the benefits of streamlining your design to code generation without any cost, making it an ideal choice for small-scale projects and personal use.
• Use markdown text in the design area: The enrichment text feature enhances the quality and context of written content and notes on top of your diagram, providing valuable insights and improving overall readability and comprehension of your infrastructure. 

🐞 Fixes: 

• Git configuration 
  • Git configuration now offers improved validation mechanisms to ensure the correctness of settings, reducing the occurrence of configuration errors.
  • The changes made in Git configuration are now saved automatically, eliminating the need for manual saving and preventing accidental data loss.
  • Instead of encountering scope conflict errors, Git configuration now notifies users of already existing errors, allowing for easier resolution and smoother configuration management.
• The new loading provides a seamless and responsive user experience, enhancing the overall efficiency of your Terraform configuration process.
• The cloud providers credentials forms and validation have been enhanced, making it easier to manage and validate credentials for cloud services.
• In the CI/CD output, auto-scrolling is disabled when users scroll up, allowing them to review and analyze the output without interruption.
• When removing all characters in the ID card field, the focus no longer disappears, providing a smoother user interaction and improving data entry experience.

We're excited to announce that the CI/CD Engine has been improved with new features to improve infrastructure management for our users.

One of the most exciting new features is the drift detection capability, which allows engineers to stay on top of their infrastructure by notifying responsible parties in case of drift, scheduling workflows for better optimized timing, and maintaining order while another workflow is active.

Other new features include:

• Multiple workflows: With Brainboard's CI/CD Engine redesign, you can now create multiple workflows, providing greater flexibility and customization options for designing and implementing projects.

• CI/CD workflow templates: With Brainboard's CI/CD Engine, you can create workflow templates that you and your team can reuse to streamline your workflow and optimize your infrastructure management.
• Scheduled workflows: Brainboard's CI/CD Engine allows you to schedule workflows to be launched at any desired time. This ensures that workflows are being executed at the best optimized timing for your infrastructure management needs.

• Notifying on pipeline failure: Notifying someone when drift is detected on cloud infrastructure can help prevent issues such as security vulnerabilities, compliance violations, and performance problems. By detecting drift early and addressing it promptly, IT teams can investigate and remediate any issues before they cause substantial damage, ensuring that the infrastructure remains secure, reliable, and operating as expected.

Resources on Drift Detection: 

• Disaster Recovery for cloud infrastructures with Brainboard
• Terraform Drift Detection: How to monitor and remediate cloud infrastructure drift
• How the Cloud Can Bring Hope in Times of Crisis
• Improve Terraform Code Quality and Security of Delivery of Cloud Infrastructure Keeping the Same Engineering Velocity
• Why Drift Detection is Crucial for Successful Continuous Delivery Pipelines

We've made some performance enhancements to the:

• Multi-Workflow Capability: You can now create and manage multiple workflows for your CI/CD pipeline, making it easier to organize and streamline your development process.
• Drift Detection: Our new drift detection feature helps you identify and resolve configuration differences between your development, staging, and production environments.
• Notification Sending: You can configure notifications to be sent to relevant stakeholders, keeping everyone informed about the status of builds, deployments, and releases — including when pipelines fail.
• Approval Tasks: We’ve introduced approval tasks to enable more granular control over the deployment process. This feature lets you define a set of approvers who need to sign off on each deployment before it can proceed.
• Scheduled Deployment: You can now schedule deployments for a specific time and date, allowing you to plan ahead and ensure that new releases are rolled out at a time that suits your team and your customers.

• 

🧼 IMPROVED

We've made some performance enhancements to the:

• We are happy to announce that Brainboard is available for both: AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace
• Inheritance now supports multiple resources - While designing your cloud architecture, you can now move 2+ resources at the same time into a container.
• The Brainboard migration tool supports multi-lines strings.
• Export architecture as JSON - We added the export feature to allow all our users to either backup their architecture, to migrate them from one account to another one, to share them with the support when needed. You are now able to export and import any Brainboard architecture easily.
• Hide the default value for sensitive variables.
• Add the support of Terraform Cloud remote backend.
• All Terraform versions are now available in Brainboard CI/CD Engine.

🐞 FIXED

• You can now download / search the CI/CD output.
• We now list all your GitLab projects in Git configuration, before limited to 20.
• We fixed an error during pull request / merge request when the target branch already exists.
• Visual indicator when cloud resources are in Icon Only mode (Terraform code not generated)
• When using synced architectures, variables creation and updates are now synced to both / more architectures.
• We removed the issues linked to the scrolling and wrong colors on selection, in README.
• We removed quotes around ignore_changes (Terraform lifecycle options)
• Our new system will always choose the best Terraform file to show based on your architecture diagram.

⏮️ Rewind

• 📌 Brainboard CI/CD designed specifically for the infrastructure
• 🔐Azure Sentinel+Terraform: 3 Key Benefits of Azure Sentinel for Protecting Your Azure Infrastructure
• 📌 AWS Landing Zone with Terraform - Save time with automated checks of your Terraform scripts
• 😍 Standardized Self Service infrastructure provisioning with Terraform - Easy Azure automation
• 👨‍💻 Boost your career as a cloud architect & DevOps with these top 9 Terraform Courses & Workshops
• 🗺️ Azure Multi Subscription Landing Zone - 6 Tips and Solutions for Cloud Architects and DevOps
• 🗺️ 🚀 3 reasons why AWS Elastic Beanstalk can help in overcoming deployment challenges
• ♻️ 5 Best Practices for Maintaining Consistency Across Cloud Environments

🧼 IMPROVED

1. 

   Clearer output for clearer decisions: When deploying your cloud architecture, we improved the output of your Terraform code, CI/CD workflow and Terraform actions. That will enable you to make clearer decisions, apart from all distractions, having all your cloud environment in one solution.
2. New year, new design system: We've been shipping a lot lately. Our image you perceive of Brainboard count for us. So we heard your feedback and designed internally our new logo, images, and experience across the website, the onboarding, and the application with new colors and visual improvements. 
3. Documentation: A new documentation was just released, improving product clarification and explanation. This improved documentation will help users better understand our product and how to best use it. Get excited about next week's website launch, featuring brand-new features and a more modern design! You can visit the documentation here.

We are excited to announce the brand lifting of Brainboard's website! 

After 2 months of hard work and dedication, the new website is now live 🎉
Thanks to the whole Brainboard team, we were able to review all the content on time and deliver the best experience possible, maintaining the high quality we value for our customers, users and FFFs.

Let us know what you think, as we always look for feedback and 99.9% perfection 🙃

NB. We are also happy to inform you that further improvements are coming soon across the web application experience, so stay tuned!

Check out our new logo 👀

🐞 FIXED

We've resolved reported issues that were causing occasional crashes when, for example:

1. Specify a different brand when doing a pull request:
   • We now allow you to specify a different branch in the base branch field in the pull request modal, when creating a pull request. This means that you are able to select which branch they want to merge their changes into, rather than being restricted to a specific branch such as “main”. This feature can be useful for organizations that use multiple branches for development and testing, as it allows developers to easily collaborate on code changes and merge them into the appropriate branch for deployment. Additionally, it can help to maintain the versioning and history of the Terraform codebase.
2. Variable type not saved:
   • Problem: This bug fix addresses an issue where a new variable is not correctly saving the type information during the creation or modification process. This can cause problems with the functionality of the application, as the type of variable is important for determining how the application should handle and interact with the variable's value.
   • Solution: The fix involves updating the Terraform code that is responsible for handling the creation and modification of variables to properly save the type information. This could involve checking for missing or incorrect type information, and adding code to handle this properly. Additionally, it also involves testing the updated Terraform code to ensure that the bug is resolved and that the new variables are being created and modified correctly with the correct type information. 
3. Custom group TF file broken:
   • Problem: The bug fix addresses an issue with the functionality that retrieves custom group files in Terraform. The bug is related to the fact that when a group starts with 'f' or 't' the retrieval of the custom group file is broken. The issue with the Terraform configuration for the “test” group, as the test.tf file should contain the necessary information for provisioning and managing the infrastructure for that group, but it is empty. 
   • Solution: Create an architecture or a blueprint of the infrastructure using Terraform. Add 3–4 nodes on the design canvas, which are servers or machines that make up the cloud infrastructure. Change the group of 2 of the nodes to “test” group. Now, retrieve the test.tf file, which should contain the Terraform configuration for the “test” group.
4. Scroll through a big output:
   • Problem: The bug fix addresses an issue with the performance of scrolling through the output of the “plan” in Terraform. The bug is causing the scrolling to be slow and unresponsive, with a delay of 2–3 seconds before the update or the next lines are displayed.
   • Solution: We optimized the code that handles the output display and scrolling by reducing the number of updates and unnecessary calculations. We always make sure the data is being loaded and processed efficiently.
5. Import Multiple strings:
   • Problem: The bug fix addresses an issue with the way Brainboard import Terraform code that contains "<<EOF" and "EOF" for a field. The bug causes these characters to be changed into strings which causes issues in the interpretation of the code.
   • Solution: Update the import code to properly handle these characters. We make sure the code that reads and interpret the imported Terraform code is able to handle these characters correctly.
6. Feedback survey:
   • Problem: We noticed that the feedback form brought aggressive prompts to you, builders and cloud architects. 
   • Solution: We've disabled it for now. Please continue to contribute to the Slack community and contact us if any improvements need to be fixed. We generally respond within 6h. 
7. Editing node title:

• Problem: The bug fixes you addresses an issue with the way the editing of the title of a node behaves in Brainboard's canvas. The bug causes the title of the selected node to change when editing the title of a different node that is not selected.
• Solution: We added a check to verify that the correct node is being edited, or by making sure the system is keeping track of the correct selected node.

🧼 IMPROVED

We've made some performance enhancements to the:

1. CI/CD Engine: We've just introduced a feature for approval tasks, which allows users to request and receive approval before deploying code changes to a production environment. This can be useful for ensuring that code changes have been reviewed and tested properly before they are deployed to a live environment, and can help to prevent errors or issues that could negatively impact the performance or functionality of the system.
2. Import: We continue to improve the import feature. This week, we've focused on database use case. Now, you can import schema and documentation. A schema is the structure of the database and the rules on how the data should be organized, while a document is a single unit of data stored within the database.
3. Deleting cloud architectures: When soft-deleting cloud architectures, we now soft delete all related objects including workflow(s), pipelines, jobs, deployments, git integrations, and terraform settings.

📆 Replay: Understand CI/CD strategies & Best Practices 

• 0:02:20 CI/CD Day
• 0:04:40 CI/CD in Application world 
• 0:07:00 CI/CD for the app  
• 0:13:47 IaC Best practices 
• 0:20:00 Application vs. Infrastructure 
• 0:28:00 IaC languages 
• 0:34:40 Existing solutions 
• 0:38:40 Commonalities & Challenges
• 0:42:10 What is expected from a CI/CD solution 
• 0:48:10 Some of useful open-source tools 
• 0:52:00 CI/CD Best practices 
• 0:57:40 Successful Implementation 
• 1:05:20 Brainboard CI/CD Engine—demo tour 
• 1:05:50 Design your first CI/CD workflow visually 
• 1:09:00 CI/CD outputs 
• 1:10:40 Create a CI/CD pipeline template

🐞 FIXED

We've resolved reported issues that were causing occasional crashes when, for example:

1. Storage Container already exists issue:
   • Problem: When creating a new Storage Container in Brainboard, if the container already exists in AWS or Azure, the application would fail.
   • Solution: We have implemented a check that verifies if the container already exists in the specified cloud provider before attempting to create it. If the container already exists, Brainboard will no longer fail and will instead display a message indicating that the container already exists.
2. Git Personal Token Editing Error:
   • Problem: When editing only one field in the Git Personal Token, an error occurred and the changes were not saved.
   • Solution: We have identified the problem and fixed the issue with the Git Personal Token editing process. Users should now be able to edit any field in the token without encountering errors.
3. Terraform Block Removal:
   • Problem: When importing Terraform files, such as backend.tf that contains a Terraform block and many providers block, the Terraform block was automatically removed.
   • Solution: We have identified the problem and fixed the issue with the Terraform block removal during import. The Terraform block should now be retained and not removed during the import process.
4. Map variable syntax issue:
   • Problem: When importing a Terraform file that contains a map as the type of variable and the values are defined in terraform.tfvars, the values were changed and replaced with an invalid Terraform syntax, causing the plan to fail,
   • Solution: We have identified the problem and fixed the issue with the map variable syntax. The values should now be imported correctly and retain their original syntax.
5. Validation Block Import:
   • Problem: When importing from Git or files, for example, a Terraform code that contains a validation block, the variables validation block was not imported in Brainboard.
   • Solution: We have identified the problem and fixed the issue with the validation block import. The variables validation block should now be imported correctly and be visible in Brainboard.
6. Terraform Variables Modal:
   • Problem: The Terraform variable modal was changing every time it was opened or when doing a pull request. This caused confusion and made it difficult to track changes.
   • Solution: We have made changes to the Terraform variable modal, so it will no longer change every time it is opened or when doing a pull request. This will make it easier to track changes and manage variables.
7. Default Terraform Code File:
   • Problem: The default Terraform code file was main.tf, but it was causing confusion when working on a different resource file.
   • Solution: We have changed the default Terraform code file to be the resource file that the user is currently working on. This will make it easier to manage multiple resource files and keep track of changes.

Before

Now

About

1. Collaborate effectively with team members: PR/MR provide a way for team members to propose changes to the infrastructure codebase and review and discuss them with other team members before merging them into the main branch. This allows for better collaboration and communication within the team.
2. Implement code review and testing processes: PR/MR provides a way to implement a code review process, where other team members review changes to the infrastructure codebase before being merged. This can help identify and fix bugs and issues before they are deployed to production.
3. Track changes to the infrastructure codebase: PR/MR provides a way to track changes to the codebase, including who made the change and why making it easier to understand how the infrastructure has evolved.
4. Rollback changes: PR/MR provides a way to roll back changes to the infrastructure codebase if something goes wrong. This can be done by reverting the merge commit or using version control tools like Git to revert specific changes.
5. Isolate changes: PR/MR provides a way to isolate changes, meaning that changes are committed and tested in a separate branch before merging into the main branch. This allows for keeping the main branch stable and ready to deploy at all times.
6. Implement automated testing and integration: PR/MR provides a way to implement an automated testing and integration process. This can be done by integrating the VCS with a continuous integration and deployment tool, which can run automated tests and deploy changes to different environments.

• One of the improvements is that it eliminates missing fields when configuring specific cloud resources. You no longer have to worry about missing important information when setting up your cloud infrastructure. 
• The ID card allows for multi-block everywhere, allowing for better customization options. This can be achieved by using hardcode, a powerful tool for making changes to the infrastructure. 

Latest Terraform Providers' versions:  

In Brainboard, this applied for all cloud providers supported (Azure, OCI, GCP, Scaleway)

1. Use variables to define the regions you want to deploy your infrastructure in: By using Terraform variables; you can specify which regions you want to deploy your infrastructure in and make it easy to change or add regions in the future.
2. Use variables to define the specific resources in each region: By using Terraform variables, you can specify the specific resources you want to deploy in each region. This allows you to create different resource configurations for different regions easily.
3. Use variables to define the AMI ID: By using Terraform variables, you can specify the AMI ID (Amazon Machine Image) you want to use in each region. This allows you to use different AMIs for different regions.
4. Use variables to define the subnets and availability zones: By using Terraform variables, you can specify the subnets and availability zones that you want to use in each region. This allows you to use different subnets and availability zones for different regions.
5. Use variables to define the security group: Terraform variables can specify the security group you want to use in each region. This allows you to use different security groups for different regions.

variable "region" {
  default = "us-west-2"
}

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
  ami           = var.ami
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  region        = var.region
}

Improve the error handling in the CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) engine of Brainboard. Specifically, the improvement is related to the handling of errors that occur during the use of web sockets.

*Web sockets are a technology that allows for real-time, two-way communication between a client and a server over a single, long-lived connection. In the context of CI/CD, web sockets may facilitate communication between Brainboard's CI/CD engine and other system components, such as the version control repository or the deployment pipeline.

*Single tenant refers to a software as a service (SaaS) solution where each customer or client has their dedicated instance of the software running on a separate infrastructure. This contrasts with a multi-tenant SaaS solution, where multiple customers or clients share the same software instance, running on a shared infrastructure.


In a single-tenant SaaS solution, the customer's data and configuration are isolated from other customers and not shared with any other organization. This provides a higher level of security, compliance, and customization. Customers have more control over their data, and the software can be tailored to the customer's specific needs.


Single-tenant SaaS solutions are typically used by larger organizations with more stringent security and compliance requirements or organizations requiring a high level of customization. They may also be used by organizations with sensitive data that they do not want to share with other organizations.


It's important to note that Single tenant solutions are often more expensive than multi-tenant solutions because the hardware and infrastructure costs are spread across fewer customers. Additionally, because each customer requires its own infrastructure, there are more operational costs to manage and maintain the different instances.

Introducing Import Azure

*Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management solution. It is designed to provide a centralized location for managing user authentication and authorization. Keycloak provides features such as Single Sign-On (SSO), user management, and access control for applications and services.

• You have the ability to add blocks easily
• You have the ability to use multiple time the same block 
• You have the ability to upload files in the idcard
• ALL lifecycle are supported

• Split nodes into different files
• Import tfstate now is automatic and part of importing files
• Remove credentials in the module source URL -> security improvement
• Clone templates in the same architecture
• Fix graphical bugs to make the user experience enjoyable
• Allow emoji / any char in names (architecture, env, team, ...)

• Import module
• Import from GitHub/GitLab/…
• Everywhere else we support GitHub/AzureDevops

• import module
• import from GitHub/GitLab/…
• Everywhere else we support GitHub/AzureDevops

*Frontend reload system refers to a technology that allows for automatic updating of the front-end (client-side) of a web application. It is used to ensure that users always have the most recent version of the application, without the need for manual updates.

• The locals part is added at the end of the variables table 
• Only name, scope, value, and description are used and visible 
• The description should be a comment before the local in the generated Terraform file

• Ask a mandatory team to invite member
• The default team is Admin on the default project
• UX improved for project create/update 

• Azure: block settings + feature block page
• AWS: block settings
• Hashicorp/vault: block settings (as you can see the address is required and not optional)

This feature is mainly for users that won’t deploy within Brainboard but already have their git and some TF provider settings.

• AWS 4.8.0 (Upgrade to v4 guide)
• Azure 3.0.2 (Upgrade to 3.0 guide)
• Google 4.15.0
• Scaleway 2.2.0

Reverse Terraform is a feature of Brainboard that allows users to automatically generate Terraform diagrams and code from an existing Terraform file, a public or private repository, and connect to their cloud provider's credentials. This feature enables users to create visual representations of their infrastructure and quickly understand the relationships between resources, as well as generate Terraform code for those resources, making it easier to manage and maintain their infrastructure. Additionally, by connecting to cloud provider credentials, Brainboard can also pull in information about existing resources and use that to generate the Terraform code, allowing users to easily import their existing infrastructure into Terraform.

• Private Repositories (Only GitHub): This fix allows users to connect to their private GitHub repositories and import their Terraform code. This is useful for users who want to keep their infrastructure code private and only accessible to authorized users.
• Supports count, timeouts, depends_on (add connector with the dedicated connector.link.type): This fix enables the tool to support count, timeouts, and depends_on Terraform resources, which are used to create multiple instances of a resource, set timeouts for resources, and specify dependencies between resources. The tool also allows users to add connectors with the dedicated connector.link.type.
• Supports terraform functions (like format, substr, ...), string interpolation (like “aaa$[var.test]”): This fix enables the tool to support Terraform functions, such as format and substr, and string interpolation. Terraform functions are used to perform various operations on strings and variables, while string interpolation allows users to include variables within strings.
• Some resource attributes not parsed: This refers to an issue where some resource attributes were not being parsed correctly by the tool. This fix addresses this issue, ensuring that all resource attributes are parsed correctly.
• Create module idcard on the fly: This fix allows users to create module idcards on the fly. A module idcard is a summary of a module's inputs, outputs, and resources. This allows users to quickly understand the purpose and structure of a module without having to examine its code.
• Import code with module fails: bad source, no version: This refers to an issue where importing code with modules would fail if the source or version was not specified correctly. This fix addresses this issue, allowing users to import code with modules correctly.
• Git root/base repo URL doesn't work: This refers to an issue where the git root or base repo URL was not working correctly. This fix addresses this issue, ensuring that the git root/base repo URL works correctly.
• Support EOF in resource attribute: This fix enables the tool to support EOF in resource attribute. EOF, short for End-of-file, is a control code used to indicate the end of a file or stream. This fix allows the tool to correctly handle EOF in the resource attribute.

Migrate your cloud infrastructure on Brainboard for a better process standardization.