PostBox¶
This page gives an overview of PostBox, describing its current status, where and how it's developed and deployed, and who is responsible for maintaining it.
Danger
PostBox uses technology, coding standards, and deployment methodologies which are not endorsed by the TDA and not standard practice for the DevOps team.
Service Description¶
PostBox provides an API to allow users to subscribe and unsubscribe from weekly job notifications based on configurable job criteria. It is only invoked by the Job Opportunities application which implements the UI to allow users to create and manage subscriptions.
Service Status¶
PostBox is currently live.
Contact¶
Technical queries and support should be directed to hr-systems-development@uis.cam.ac.uk and will be picked up by a member of the team working on the service. To ensure that you receive a response, always direct requests to hr-systems-development@uis.cam.ac.uk rather than reaching out to team members directly.
Issues discovered in the service or new feature requests should be reported to servicedesk@uis.cam.ac.uk
Environments¶
PostBox is currently deployed to the following environments:
| Name | URL |
|---|---|
| Production | https://webapp.prod.postbox.gcp.uis.cam.ac.uk/ |
| Staging | https://webapp.test.postbox.gcp.uis.cam.ac.uk/ |
| Development | https://webapp.devel.postbox.gcp.uis.cam.ac.uk/ |
Source Code¶
The source code for PostBox is spread over the following repositories:
| Repository | Description |
|---|---|
| Application Server | The source code for the main application server |
| Infrastructure Deployment | The Terraform infrastructure code for deploying the application server to GCP |
The source code for PostBox has not been fully audited and does not follow existing DevOps practices, therefore it is only available to DevOps team members actively working on the project.
Technologies Used¶
The following gives an overview of the technologies PostBox is built on.
| Category | Language | Framework(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Server | Java | Spring / Jersey |
| DB | MySQL | Hibernate |
How and where Postbox is deployed¶
Deployment is via our standard terraform deployment CI pipeline.
Deploying a new release¶
Making a new release of the application is done via release automation. In short: each commit to the web app's main branch builds and pushes a Docker image to GCR. An MR can then be raised within the infrastructure repository to deploy a given image by SHA. Once merged, the main GitLab pipeline will allow deployment to production via the "play" buttons in the CI pipeline. An automated deployment to staging will be completed as part of this pipeline.
Monitoring¶
Monitoring is configured as per our standard Google Cloud Run application module.
Access Management¶
Access management is managed internally within the application, with the application holding a list of clients who are able to access the API alongside their credentials.
Service Management¶
The service owner for PostBox is Nick Stocks
The service manager for PostBox is Andrew Crook
The tech lead for PostBox is vacant until redevelopment can be completed.
The following engineers have operational experience with PostBox and are able to respond to support requests or incidents: