Connecting multiple GitHub organizations to Swarmia

How to see data from multiple GitHub organizations in Swarmia

You might have multiple GitHub organizations that your developers work in and would like to see the data from all of them. This article explains the different options that Swarmia has for connecting your company's multiple GitHub organizations.

Option 1: Multiple Swarmia organizations

It is possible to sign up each of the GitHub organizations as completely separate Swarmia organizations and invite specific people to each of them.

If a user with access to multiple organizations logs in to Swarmia, they can choose to which of the organizations they want to log in. To switch organizations, the user needs to log out and back in.

This approach is a good choice when:

• There is a need to limit access control (all users don’t belong to all GitHub organizations and shouldn’t see data from orgs that they don’t belong to).
• People mostly don’t work across multiple GitHub organizations. If they do, this approach is not ideal, as it will be difficult to get a full picture of a person's work due to being only able view it by one organization at a time.

To use this approach, simply install the Swarmia app on each of your GitHub organizations. Then, when you log in to Swarmia, you can choose which organization to log into. To invite team members to the organizations, send them the invite link that you can find on the Contributors page under Settings.

Option 2: Syncing data from multiple GitHub organizations to a single Swarmia organization

Alternatively, it is possible to sync data from multiple GitHub organizations to a single Swarmia organization, so that you can see all the data at once.

This approach is a good choice when:

• There are no internal access control concerns. Everyone from your company will see all data from all of your connected GitHub organizations.
• People are working across GitHub organizations. With this approach, you can easily see a person’s work across all the organizations.

To use this approach, as the first step, install the Swarmia app on each of your GitHub organizations. The next step of merging these multiple Swarmia organizations into one requires a manual step by our engineering team. Please reach out to us at hello@swarmia.com, tell us which one of the multiple connected GitHub organizations you want to be the primary one, and then we'll be happy to set things up for you. The primary organization selection affects which Swarmia organization settings will be used for the merged organization. Please note that merging multiple GitHub organizations to a single Swarmia organization is only available in our paid plans.

Access control with multiple GitHub organizations

When syncing data from multiple GitHub organizations to a single Swarmia organization, everyone who can access Swarmia will be able to see data from all connected GitHub organizations.

In this scenario, you can choose between several options for access control:

1. User must have access to all connected GitHub organizations on GitHub to be allowed logging into the Swarmia organization. This ensures Swarmia users will never have more access than they would already have on GitHub. This is the default.
2. User must have access to at least one connected GitHub organization on GitHub to be allowed logging into the Swarmia organization. This is more convenient, as you don't need to add all users to all organizations GitHub-side. You may opt into this access control setup during organization merge, or later, by reaching out to our support.
3. User must have access to your external SSO provider (such as Okta or Google SSO). In this case, users logging into your Swarmia organization will see all data from all connected GitHub organizations, regardless of the access control configuration GitHub-side. This is the default when using an external SSO provider.