How to implement self-service workflows in Compass (with ArgoCD, Terraform, GitHub Actions, JSM)?

[Kumaresan Periyasamy]

Hi everyone,

We’re exploring Atlassian Compass as the foundation of an internal developer portal. Our goal is to give developers a single front door where they can discover components, see ownership/scorecards, and also trigger self-service workflows such as:

Provisioning cloud resources (e.g. storage buckets, databases, namespaces)

Performing operational tasks (e.g. release to staging/prod, rollback, secret rotation)

Surfacing the results of those actions back in Compass (deployment history, resource links, dashboards, etc.)

In Backstage this is usually solved by plugins and scaffolder templates, but in Compass the documentation I’ve found is focused mostly on catalogs and scorecards.

A few questions for the community:

Since Compass templates are being deprecated (Dec 2025), what is the recommended alternative for building self-service workflows? Is the expectation that we should use Jira Service Management request types + automation and then deep-link from Compass?

Has anyone integrated Compass with Terraform/Atlantis or ArgoCD for provisioning or deployments? How do you feed back execution status into Compass activity or scorecards?

Are there examples of Forge apps that add buttons/forms in Compass for developer actions (e.g. “Create resource”, “Release to environment”)?

Can we use the Compass Events API to post custom lifecycle events (like “bucket provisioned” or “deploy completed”) so developers see those outcomes directly in Compass?

We’d love to hear how others are approaching self-service + Compass, especially with cloud provisioning and release automation.

Thanks in advance!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

I'd love to hear more from real-life examples as well! 👂

As for a template alternative, I don't think there are official workarounds. As per official announcement, the Atlassian Support team might offer some additional insights on that topic.

Integrations with the mentioned deployment tools - I don't think there's out-of-the-box integration, but I guess you could use Compass's incoming webhooks to send events from these tools to Compass. 🤔 

Compass can be a platform for building custom apps and integrations, but for specific examples of Forge apps... you could maybe find some examples in Developer Community, as it is mostly focused on implementing custom solutions. I mean, there are some highlighted resources here, but nothing goes deep into the details.

Events API - you should be able to use these (via incoming webhooks) to post these custom lifecycle events. Never tried it, but in theory, it should be possible.

You might want to consider combining Compass with JSM for request handling and automation, but that might be the whole other story (e.g., this).

Cheers,
Tobi