End-user onboarding
This page is intended for end-users of Port - stakeholders within the organization who will be using Port in their daily work (e.g. developers, SREs, r&d managers, etc.).
Platform engineers can share this page with their end-users to help them get started with Port.
Port is your internal developer portal - it integrates with your 3rd-party platforms and centralizes everything developers and other stakeholders in your organization need to do and know about your software.
This short guide will help you understand what Port is for, how to use it day-to-day, and how to get value from it right away.
Why use Port?
As a stakeholder in the organization, you may be juggling with too many touchpoints across different systems. With Port you can:
- Unify applications, tooling, services, APIs, etc. into a single pane of glass.
- Reduce context switching and manual/duplicate data entry.
- Onboard new services in minutes, instead of hours or days.
- Gain visibility into who owns what in production.
Port enables you to onboard services faster, resolve issues quicker, and focus more of your time on building instead of navigating scattered systems.
How to use Port
Discover
Your software catalog is the main entry point to your portal. It centralizes everything you need to know about your services, resources, and environments.
The catalog answers 5 core questions:
-
What resources do we have?
All services, resources, environments, and related components. -
Who owns them?
Clear ownership and responsibility. -
Where are they running?
Deployment environments and infrastructure. -
How healthy/compliant are they?
Scorecards, status, reliability, and quality metrics. -
How do they connect?
Relationships and dependency maps.
Self-Service
Self-service actions allow users (and AI agents) to perform operational, development, or administrative tasks on their own, without needing to wait for DevOps, Platform, or IT teams.
They transform manual requests into guided, automated workflows.
Actions are created by platform engineers and can execute any logic you would like to automate.
For example, as a user, you can:
- Create new services, environments, and resources.
- Deploy applications or trigger pipelines.
- Operate systems safely (restart, rotate, refresh, etc.).
- Request access or approval.
- Generate templates and documentation.
- Automate complex multi-step workflows.
- Update catalog data cleanly and consistently.
Governance
Scorecards give users a quick, visual way to understand the health, quality, compliance, and readiness of their services or assets.
They turn technical checks into easy-to-read indicators that help teams prioritize work and stay aligned with standards.
Using a scorecard in one of your dashboards, you can:
- Monitor quality, health, and compliance.
- Identify failing or at-risk checks.
- Understand what needs fixing and why.
- Improve a service over time.
- Prepare for releases with pre-flight validation.
- Collaborate with owners and teams.
- Maintain accurate metadata and catalog hygiene.
Best practices for success
| Best practice | Impact on you | Impact on the organization |
|---|---|---|
| Use search, filters, and views to find what you need | Saves time, reduces confusion, keeps you focused | Higher productivity and fewer blockers across teams |
| Keep catalog data accurate (ownership, metadata, tags) | Your services stay healthy and easier to manage | Reliable reporting, stronger governance, and accurate automation |
| Check scorecards regularly | Catch issues early before they cause problems | Higher service quality, reliability, and compliance |
| Use Self-Service Actions within your dashboards | No waiting for DevOps/IT — get work done instantly | Faster delivery, fewer bottlenecks, more empowered teams |
| Use dependency graphs before making changes | Avoid breaking changes and deploy safely | Fewer incidents and less firefighting across engineering |
| Rely on documentation & runbooks linked in the portal | Faster troubleshooting and easier onboarding | Centralized knowledge, fewer repeated questions, consistent ops |
Resources
Documentation – Use the sidebar to navigate to the documentation, or click on the Ask AI button in the top-right corner and ask a question.
Videos
Need help? – Reach out to your Port champion, send a support request, or join Port's Slack community.
Checklist before you start
✅ You've accepted your Port invite or logged in via SSO
✅ You can see your and your team's dashboards under the Catalog tab
✅ You've reviewed the quick-start guide or video
✅ You know who to contact if you get stuck
Ready to go?
- Start by exploring your dashboard, click into a few services and observe the different properties they have.
- Check out the demo site to get inspired and see other use cases that may be relevant to your organization.
- Pass feedback to your Port champion to help us improve the product and see how else Port can help you.