5 Backstage plugins that are worth checking out

Backstage is an open source developer portal that engineering teams can leverage to establish their own internal developer portals. Created by the team at Spotify, Backstage offers a centralized hub for service catalogs, templates, documentation, and internal tools that facilitate developer self service. 

As an open source platform, engineering teams have to do quite a bit of customization work to implement. Part of this work often includes adding plugins that help them better integrate with their existing tools and systems. While Spotify does have its own set of plugins, including Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Insights, there is also a trove of third-party plugins that have been developed over the last few years.

What are Backstage plugins? 

Backstage plugins typically bring in existing functionalities from other applications and platforms (e.g., OpsLevel or AWS Lambda) and place them within the context of Backstage. While this adds capabilities to the internal developer platform, it also centralizes important developer functions so that devs don’t have to context switch.

The plugins exist in Backstage in a plugin marketplace where teams can review them, compare them against other similar apps, and follow their implementation instructions. More often than not, teams will choose plugins of applications and platforms they already have in their tech stack, but they will also adopt separate ones that enhance the function of the internal developer portal. 

Our top 5 Backstage plugins

There are hundreds of third-party Backstage plugins to choose from. From ChatGPT and Jenkins to GitLab and Jira, there’s a Backstage plugin for most of the tools your developers use day to day. To help you pick the right ones for your team, here’s a list of our favorites. 

1. DORA Metrics by Okay

Okay is an engineering analytics tool that was recently acquired by Stripe. To extend the reach of their functionalities, the team at Okay created a plugin that connects Backstage to the user’s Okay account to visualize their analytics. As such, teams can create dashboards from any of their dev tools (including Github, Gitlab, Jira, CircleCI, Argo, Buildkite, Pagerduty, Rollbar, Sentry and dozens of others) and embed these dashboards alongside team or service pages. 

Okay dashboards include data such as DORA metrics, incidents, and developer experience metrics, providing a holistic view of how an engineering team is performing. With the plugin, users can access all saved dashboards from Backstage.

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2. Opsgenie Backstage plugin

Opsgenie, an Atlassian product, is an on-call and alert management system that is used for incident response. Beyond identifying the incident, Opsgenie also facilitates collaboration and automated communication between teams to ensure the incident is managed as quickly as possible. 

The Opsgenie plugin for Backstage is a frontend plugin that connects to the user’s Opsgenie system and displays alerts, incidents, and on-call information. In Backstage, the user has access to a standalone page that shows which individuals are currently on call, a list of active alerts that can be closed or acknowledged directly from Backstage, a list of incidents, and incident-related analytics. 

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3. GitHub Actions plugin

GitHub Actions is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform that introduces automation into the process of building, testing, and running a deployment pipeline. It leverages pre-built actions from the community so developers can set up their essential CI/CD in a matter of minutes. Plus, they can also create workflows that build and test every pull request in the repository, or deploy merged pull requests to production. 

The GitHub Actions plugin extends these workflow functionalities to Backstage, making requests to the GitHub API directly from your browser. It authenticates users via OAuth and surfaces all the relevant systems in Backstage. 

4. ChatGPT plugin

The ChatGPT plugin in Backstage gives developers a blank canvas to play in and ideate. Using textual descriptions, users can ask ChatGPT to create build files, which they can then iterate on and refine—all from Backstage. The prompt window also has a temperature gauge, which determines how creative and unorthodox a response can be. This sits with a “Max tokens” slider that establishes the length of the input and output.

5. OpsLevel Maturity plugin

The OpsLevel Service Maturity features were designed to measure service maturity and drive progress. Going beyond a simple checklist for production readiness, this tool takes a true service maturity approach, continuously monitoring your services and automatically measuring them against established maturity rubrics. This way, you can have a close-up or holistic view of your software health across categories and determine your overall production readiness. 

The OpsLevel plugin for Backstage makes it easy to measure and improve service maturity within your existing service catalog. It provides a comprehensive dashboard of service metrics and a set of tools to help teams identify and fix service issues.

With the OpsLevel Checks function, teams can verify that their services:

• Are using a particular version of a library or framework
• Aren’t lagging in the adoption of a new third-party tool 
• Meet baseline operational requirements
• Are compliant with new and existing standards
• And so much more

From a visibility standpoint, the Service Maturity plugin enables teams to view maturity progress in context with the rest of their service information in Backstage, giving them a central source of information that prompts activities and decision making.  

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Frequently asked questions about Backstage plugins

What are Backstage plugins?

Backstage plugins are software components that provide additional functionality and features for Backstage, an open source platform developed by Spotify that’s used by other teams to create and manage their developer portals. While Backstage has its own set of plugins, most plugins have been developed by third-party developers and can be used to introduce additional capabilities to Backstage, such as custom integration, authentication, and data management.

What are some alternatives to Backstage plugins?

Alternatives to Backstage plugins include custom development, open source projects, and other third-party solutions. Custom development can be used to create a bespoke solution tailored to your specific needs, while open source projects can provide a more cost-effective and accessible solution. Other third-party internal developer platform solutions, such as OpsLevel, can provide additional features and capabilities that are not available in the Backstage platform.

How do I choose the right plugins for my team?

Choosing the right plugins for your team will depend on your needs. Consider the features and capabilities that your team needs, such as authentication, service maturity dashboards, or custom integrations. Additionally, consider the cost of the plugin, the level of support provided, and the ease of use and maintenance.

Are there any plugins that are easy to use and maintain?

Yes, there are plugins that are designed to be easy to use and maintain. For example, the OpsLevel plugin for Backstage is designed to make it easy for teams to measure and improve service maturity. 

What is the OpsLevel plugin for Backstage?

The OpsLevel plugin for Backstage is a plugin that provides an easy-to-use interface for measuring and improving service maturity. It allows users to track service performance over time and provides insights into how services are performing. It also provides tools for managing service maturity, such as service templates, service dashboards, and service metrics.

Operating in Backstage and beyond

As an open source project, Backstage puts a lot of the onus on teams to define what their internal developer portal looks like and how it operates. Plugins play an important role in that as they can introduce additional features, depending on the needs of a given team. Whether you’re looking for service maturity tracking or want to give your developers AI-enabled spaces to play in, there’s likely a Backstage plugin for that.

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Curious to learn more about how OpsLevel helps teams build service maturity beyond our Backstage plugin?

Book a call with our team to get a live demo and learn more.