Introducing Access Controls: Manage Team Permissions Like a Pro

Security and team coordination go hand in hand. Access Controls integrate with your GitHub repository permissions to give you control over who can manage your merge freezes.

Team Security at Scale

As teams scale, you need more than just the ability to freeze and unfreeze repositories. You need to ensure that:

• Only authorized team members can implement merge freezes
• API credentials are protected from unauthorized access
• Emergency procedures can be executed by the right people
• Audit trails show who made what changes and when

What’s New

Fine-Grained Permissions

Control exactly who can perform critical actions in your organization:

Repository-Based Permissions

Access controls work with your existing GitHub repository permissions:

• Repository Administrators: Full access to freeze/unfreeze and manage settings
• Users with Write Access: Can freeze/unfreeze repositories (configurable)
• All Repository Users: Can freeze/unfreeze (default setting, can be restricted)

GitHub Permission Integration

Access controls integrate seamlessly with your GitHub repository permissions:

Real-World Benefits

Security Enhancement

🔒 Default: Anyone with repository access can freeze/unfreeze
✅ Configurable: Restrict to only admins or users with write access

Best Practices

1. Principle of Least Privilege

Grant the minimum permissions needed for each role:

✅ Good: Release managers can freeze during planned releases
❌ Avoid: Everyone has full administrative access

2. Emergency Access Planning

Ensure multiple people have emergency access:

✅ Good: 2-3 people can perform emergency unfreezes
❌ Risky: Only one person has unfreeze permissions

Implementation Guide

Enhance your team’s deployment security:

1. Review current team structure and identify who needs what access
2. Visit your organization settings to configure access controls
3. Test with a non-critical repository before rolling out widely
4. Update team documentation with new procedures

For detailed setup instructions, check out our Access Controls Documentation.

Note: By default, anyone with access to a repository can implement merge freezes. Access controls allow you to restrict this to smaller groups when needed for security or operational reasons.

🔐 Better security. Better control. Better deployments.