Environments
Environments represent the deployment targets for your policy versions. They model the stages of your delivery pipeline — for example, Development, Staging, and Production.
Each environment has a promotion order that defines the path versions follow as they progress from testing to production.
Accessing Environments
Section titled “Accessing Environments”Navigate to Settings → Environments to manage your environments. The list is sorted by promotion order, showing the deployment pipeline from left to right.
Creating an Environment
Section titled “Creating an Environment”- Click New Environment
- Fill in the following fields:
| Field | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Display name | Staging |
| Description | Purpose of this environment | Pre-production validation |
| Promotion Order | Numeric position in the pipeline (lower = earlier) | 20 |
| Production | Whether this is a production environment | ☑ / ☐ |
- Click Create
A slug is automatically generated from the name at creation time (e.g., staging, pre-production). The slug is used internally and in API responses.
Promotion Order
Section titled “Promotion Order”The promotion order defines the hierarchy of your environments. Versions are deployed progressively from lower-order to higher-order environments.
Example Pipeline
Section titled “Example Pipeline”Development (10) → Staging (20) → Pre-production (30) → Production (40)When you promote a deployment, Big ACL only offers target environments with a higher promotion order than the source. This enforces the progression through your pipeline.
Production Flag
Section titled “Production Flag”Marking an environment as Production enables additional safeguards:
- A warning is displayed when deploying a version directly to a production environment (i.e., without promoting through earlier stages)
- Production environments are visually highlighted in the Deployment Matrix
The production flag is informational — it does not block direct deployments, but makes them explicit.
Editing an Environment
Section titled “Editing an Environment”You can update an environment’s name, description, promotion order, and production flag at any time. Changes take effect immediately in the Deployment Matrix and promotion dialogs.
Deleting an Environment
Section titled “Deleting an Environment”An environment can only be deleted if it has no active deployments. If deployments exist, you must remove them first (see Deployments).
This prevents accidentally removing an environment that is serving policy decisions in production.
Permissions
Section titled “Permissions”| Role | Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Owner / Admin / Standard | Create, edit, delete environments |
| Read-only | View the environment list |
Recommended Setup
Section titled “Recommended Setup”A typical setup includes at least two environments:
| Environment | Order | Production | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development | 10 | ☐ | Testing new versions during development |
| Staging | 20 | ☐ | Validation before production release |
| Production | 30 | ☑ | Live enforcement of authorization policies |
Larger organizations may add environments for QA, pre-production, canary deployments, or regional stages.