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Spotify Portal for Backstage Release Notes

Portal is continuously evolving with new features, improvements, and fixes. This changelog provides a comprehensive history of all updates to help you stay informed about the latest enhancements and changes to your Portal experience.

1.43.3-portal.2​

Soundcheck Updates​

Improved performance by updating the default schedules for the applicableEntitiesRefresh and groupHierarchyRefresh cache jobs.

Data Experience Updates​

Data Experience cards for dataset details and schema are moved to the Dataset Entity Overview tab. The Data Experience tab is now removed.

1.43.2-portal.2​

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

✨ Features​

  • Added Tech Insights page that provides analytics for tracking software quality metrics across your organization. [docs]
    • Added total track/campaign count to distinguish from applicable ones on the tech insights page.
  • Fixed owners filter to support name, title, description on the Check & Track creation pages
  • Updated track entities api to support a certification status filter and return level information.
  • Added manual option to recertify a track [docs]
  • Added a new canned soundcheck checks for data experience
  • Added a filter by status for the entities table on the Campaign insights page.
  • Added support for personal access token (bearer token) authentication in Jira integration. [docs]
  • Added support for issues-count Jira fact that returns a number of issues matching JQL. [docs]

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Fixed Check Insights Page History when Status Filters are applied.
  • Fixed issue where conditional permissions were incorrectly hiding or showing the edit button.
  • Fixed issue where fetching checks would return all checks even if check ids were passed in to filter.
  • Fixed issue when using the default issues-search name for the Jira fact name, the Jira fact collection fails to execute.

🔄 Changes​

  • Breaking Change: The config option soundcheck.remote_file_updates has been deprecated in favor of soundcheck.remoteFileUpdates. You can continue to use the old option for now, but it will be removed in a future release.
  • Breaking Change: The config option soundcheck.programs has been deprecated in favor of soundcheck.tracks. You can continue to use the old option for now, but it will be removed in a future release.
  • Breaking Change: Jira's Search for issues using JQL API was deprecated and removed for Jira Cloud instances. Soundcheck will now fetch issue-search fact data from Jira's Search for issues using JQL enhanced search API for Jira Cloud instances.
  • Updating track filters or levels through the UI will automatically regenerate track certification history for up to 365 days

1.42.4-portal.0​

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Soundcheck now includes a new Tech Insights page that provides analytics for tracking software quality metrics across your organization. [docs]
    • Added total track/campaign count to distinguish from applicable ones on the tech insights page.

1.41.1-portal.1​

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Landing Page - The Soundcheck link on the left-hand navigation bar in Backstage links to a placeholder landing page instead of the overview page. This placeholder page will be replaced in the future with a more fully realized landing page.

1.40.2-portal.2​

✨ Highlights​

  • Entity Overlays is now GA! If using a non-default RBAC policy, you must adjust your policy to incorporate entity overlays permissions.

1.40.2-portal.0​

✨ Highlights​

  • Upgraded Backstage version to 1.40.2

1.40.1-portal.1​

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue preventing a Portal customer from using certain Soundcheck fact-collectors/integrations. All impacted collectors have been patched and are now fully configurable and available for use within Portal.

1.40.1-portal.0​

✨ Highlights​

  • “Create new component” sidebar item moved at the top to improve the UI experience and findability

🔄 General Updates​

  • Added AzureDevops Module for Soundcheck

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Catalog now renders without errors for ArgoCD plugin
  • Scaffolder progress bar is now being updated in real time as steps are being executed
  • UI/UX fixes when a license key errors out
  • Minor UI improvements and responsiveness fixes for the onboarding wizard

1.39.0-portal.6​

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • 🛠️ No-Code UI Extensions for Integrations: You can now extend the Soundcheck Integrations UI with custom no-code interfaces (supported with the new frontend system only).
  • 🔗 See which checks depend on a collector—more transparency in your dependencies.
  • 🧾 Integration cards now show whether they’re UI-configured.
  • 🧘‍♀️ Exemptions Tab: A brand-new Exemptions tab lets you view exempt entities and their justifications directly in Check Insights.
  • 🧮 Exempt, But Make It a Filter: You can now filter by exempt entities on the overview page.

1.39.0-portal.3​

✨ Highlights​

  • Improved Catalog page design

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Enabled Gitlab Soundcheck integration

1.39.0-portal.0​

✨ Highlights​

  • Enhanced Portal Navigation
    • Streamlined access to subpages and admin pages
    • Collapsible sidebar and quick user settings access
  • Introducing a new default landing page with direct access to Search and quick links to your most recent and frequently visited pages.

1.38.1-portal.4​

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Soundcheck Security Hotfix Integration
  • The "[Soundcheck] Update deps to patch security issues (#2989)" PR updates the Soundcheck dependency in Portal to include critical security enhancements:
    • Redacted sensitive collector secrets in GraphQL queries to prevent exposure.
    • Addressed overexposure of GitHub facts on the frontend by redacting sensitive fact types, including:
      • Code Scanning Alerts
      • Dependabot Alerts
      • Secret Scanning Alerts
  • These changes were prompted by a client-reported issue highlighting the presence of sensitive information in GitHub-related facts. As a result, these fact types are now redacted and no longer exposed on the frontend.

1.38.1-portal.2​

✨ Highlights​

  • Upgraded to Backstage v1.38.1
  • No more waiting—enable real-time catalog updates via GitHub webhooks. Learn how.

🔄 General Updates​

  • Data Experience is now pre-installed on all Portal instances. Follow documentation here to configure and enable the plugins.

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Installed a new Fact Collector for the Data Registry. Read more in the documentation

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Fixed template editor and logs in Scaffolder not showing

1.37.1-portal.2​

✨ Highlights​

  • GitLab support via config manager

🔄 General Updates​

  • RBAC and Insights nav items moved to main navigation
  • Config manager logs can now be filtered by log level

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Fix preview discard bug in extension manager

1.37.1-portal.0​

✨ Highlights​

  • Setup Wizard now support the use Github App for authentication

1.37.0-portal.2​

✨ Highlights​

  • It is now possible for Portal admins to edit the layout of the Entity overview tab for all users. Entity cards can be resized and re-ordered. The layout editor can be accessed via the entity context menu.

1.37.0-portal.0​

🔍 Soundcheck updates​

  • Added the below additional fact types to Github Integration docs
    • Code Scanning Alerts
    • Dependabot Alerts
    • Secret Scanning Alerts
    • Security Advisories

1.36.1-portal.5​

✨ Highlights​

  • Onboarding UI adjustments to support both Github Apps and Github personal access-token

🔄 General Updates​

  • Add N/A option to reset the select value in config manager

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Fix started plugin not showing as started
  • Make org selection required for GitHub App users
  • Jira Dashboard plugin doesn't get removed from the Promoted section when installed

1.36.1-portal.3​

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Additional configuration for skill exchange enabled

1.36.1-portal.2​

✨ Highlights​

  • Portal now offers Entra ID authentication and organizational data ingestion.
  • Portal now offers Okta authentication and organizational data ingestion.
  • Portal automatically cleans up entities that belong to entity providers that are no longer configured, the next time the catalog is started.
  • Backend plugins added to Portal are now allowed to fail on startup without impacting core Portal features.
  • Soundcheck is now visible on the Catalog entity page for more kinds.

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Added support for specifying a group filter in the configuration. This filters groups down to those relevant to Soundcheck, addressing an internally identified use case where configurations included up to 12K groups.
  • Enhanced the date operator for creating checks, allowing users to input values like -P1Y.
  • Added support for exclusion filters in Soundcheck. Users can now exclude specific entities from a check. Excluded Entities will show up as not reported on the overview page.
  • Soundcheck now supports HTTP Third-Party Integration, configurable via YAML and the UI.
  • Azure DevOps collector are now configurable within the UI.
  • The Catalog collector can be configured through YAML and UI.
  • Added support for label and annotation filters in the UI.
  • Soundcheck now records resolved values and rule evaluation details, making this information accessible on the frontend for improved transparency.

For further details on the latest Soundcheck updates, see the Spotify Plugins for Backstage release notes.

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Fixes bug when using dots as keys in the config manager.
  • Fixes pagination in config manager history.

1.36.1-portal.0​

✨ Highlights​

  • You can now view and manage permissions in Portal using RBAC.

🔄 General Updates​

  • Improved error messages when faulty config is submitted.

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • Added BigQuery, New Relic, and HTTP Soundcheck integrations.

1.35.1-portal.2​

✨ Highlights​

  • Simplifying Config Manager UX by hiding unnecessary configurations
  • Portal troubleshooting logs view were added to the config manager

🔄 General Updates​

  • Improving Config History performance with pagination

🔍 Soundcheck Updates​

  • "Check Insights" now supports filtering by system, type, owner, and lifecycle

🛠️ Fixes​

  • Fixed jenkins plugin and sonarqube plugin issues on startup
  • Improved UI of docs links

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