Unchain - Feature Flag Management

Unchain is a feature flag management platform that allows you to manage your feature flags in a centralized and secure way. It provides a web UI and an API to manage your feature flags. It comes with a client sdk for java and a sample app to show how to use the API.

Documentation

See the admin-api and client-sdk for more information how to adapt to your needs. There are screenshots screenshots and documentation on the underlying concepts used by unchain in the documentation folder.

API

OpenAPI specification: openapi.yaml

Sample

There is a sample app in the sample-app folder that shows how to use the API.

UI

Welcome to Unchain, a powerful and flexible feature flag management platform. This documentation provides an overview of the key functionalities available in the Unchain UI.

1. Dashboard

The Dashboard serves as the central hub for monitoring your feature flag ecosystem.

• Summary Statistics: View high-level metrics such as the total number of projects, feature flags, active flags, and stale flags.
• Project Overview: Get a quick glimpse of your projects and their health status.
• Recent Activity: specific audit logs or recent changes are displayed here to help you stay updated on the latest modifications.

2. Features

The Features section is where you manage the lifecycle of your feature flags (toggles).

• Create Flags: Create new feature flags with specific types (e.g., Release, Experiment, Operational).
• Toggle Status: Enable or disable flags across different environments.
• Strategy Configuration: Assign rollout strategies to your flags (see 'Strategies' section for more details).
• Search & Filter: Quickly find flags by name, project, or status.
• Archiving: Archive flags that are no longer in use.

3. Metrics

The Metrics page provides insights into how your feature flags are being evaluated.

• Usage Data: Visualize evaluation counts over time to understand feature adoption and usage patterns.
• Client Versions: See which SDK versions your applications are using.
• Stale Flags: Identify flags that haven't been evaluated recently, helping you keep your codebase clean.

4. Change Requests

Change Requests add a governance layer to your feature flag management, especially for protected environments.

• Approval Workflow: Changes to flags in protected environments (like Production) require a Change Request.
• Draft & Review: Create drafts of your changes and submit them for review.
• Approvals: Authorized users can review and approve change requests. Note: You cannot approve your own change requests unless in a specific demo mode.
• Scheduling: Schedule approved changes to be applied at a specific future time.
• Application: Once approved (and fast-forwarded if scheduled), changes can be applied to the target environment.

5. Projects

Organize your feature flags into Projects.

• Isolation: Projects provide a way to group related flags (e.g., by team or application).
• Management: Create, update, and delete projects.
• Project-Specific Settings: Configure project-level defaults and permissions.

6. Strategies

Strategies define how a feature flag is released to your users.

• Standard Strategies:
  • Standard: The feature is enabled for everyone.
  • UserIDs: Enable for specific user IDs.
  • Gradual Rollout: Roll out to a percentage of users (randomly or sticky by session/user ID).
  • IP Addresses: Enable for specific IP ranges.
• Custom Strategies: Define custom strategies with specific parameters to fit your unique rollout requirements.

7. Environments

Manage the different stages of your deployment pipeline in the Environments section.

• Setup: Define environments like Development, Staging, and Production.
• Protection: Mark environments as "Protected" to enforce Change Request workflows and prevent accidental changes.

8. Contexts

Context Fields allow you to define the variables available for your targeting strategies.

• Standard Fields: Common fields like userId, appName, and environment.
• Custom Fields: Define custom context fields (e.g., tenantId, region, planType) that you can use in your feature flag constraints.
• Legal Values: Restrict context fields to a specific set of allowed values.

9. History

The History log provides a distinct audit trail of changes in the system.

• Audit Logs: View a chronological record of who changed what and when.
• Filtering: Filter logs by project, feature, or user to investigate specific events.

10. Settings

Configure global settings for your Unchain instance.

• User Profile: Manage your user account details.
• System Configuration: Configure global system preferences and integrations.
  • Webhooks: Set up webhook URLs to receive real-time events for feature changes and change requests. This allows integration with external tools like MS Teams for notifications or other automation pipelines.
  • Retention Policies: Configure housekeeping rules for audit logs and stale feature flags.