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Version: Community Edition (1.0)

First steps

You will need a Semaphore account to follow this guided tour. Don't worry, the only thing you will need is an account on GitHub or BitBucket.

In this section we'll learn about:

  • What's the purpose of CI/CD?
  • Overview of the Semaphore homepage
  • How to invite users to your Semaphore instance

Prerequisites​

To use Semaphore Community Edition you need:

Login to Semaphore​

During the Semaphore installation you get the username and password for the root account. To log into your Semaphore instance, navigate to the domain where you installed Semaphore and use the root account username and password.

Semaphore homepage​

At this point, you should be seeing your homepage. Let's get our bearings.

Semaphore homepage

On the top left side you'll find:

  • Project search box
  • Project creation button

On the top right side, there is:

  • The account menu: here you can manage your account and log off Semaphore
  • The server menu: lets you invite people and configure your Semaphore server
info

On Semaphore Community Edition we use the terms organization, server, and instance interchangeably.

Invite users and manage permissions​

Since the root account is not tied to an specific person and has elevated privileges, we recommend creating individual accounts and managing their permissions with roles.

To create new accounts, follow these steps:

  1. Type the email of the person you wish to invite
  2. Optionally, set a username. If not provided, the username is inferred from the email
  3. Press Add member
  4. Press Reveal to show the temporary password assigned to the new member

Add user screen

By default, new accounts have the member role, which gives basic pemissions to the Semaphore instance. We recommend to create at least a new account with the admin or owner roles to manage the server without using the root account.

You can change the role of a new user by pressing the Change Role button and selecting a new role.

Changing user roles

See roles to learn more about roles.

Connect Semaphore to GitHub​

To connect Semaphore with GitHub, follow these steps:

  1. Open the server menu and select Settings

    Server menu

  2. Select Git Integration

  3. Press Connect

    Connect GitHub Integration

  4. Sign into your GitHub account

  5. Select what type of access to authorize

    • All repositories: grant access to Semaphore to all your current and future repositories
    • Only select repositories: select from the list which repositories can be accessed by Semaphore

  6. Press Install

note

You might not be able to install the GitHub App if you are not the GitHub organization owner. In this case, following these steps sends an installation request to the organization's owner. You cannot proceed until the owner authorizes the access.

What have you done so far?​

  • Logged in to your Semaphore instance
  • Learned the basics of Semaphore
  • Invited new users and

What's next?​

In the next section, we'll create our first project.