Organizations, Landscapes, and Domains

IcePanel helps teams model and communicate software architecture in a structured, collaborative way. At the core of how IcePanel is organized are three key concepts: Organizations, Landscapes, and Domains. These concepts define where your work lives, how it's grouped, and how teams collaborate around shared models and diagrams.

What Are Organizations?

An Organization is the top-level workspace in IcePanel and contains everything you create, such as landscapes, domains, and diagrams.

• An organization owns all landscapes, domains, diagrams, and model objects.
• User access, roles, billing, and integrations are managed at the organization level.
• A user can belong to more than one organization. You can switch between them from the top-left menu.
• Most teams only need a single organization unless they require separate billing or fully isolated workspaces.

What Are Landscapes?

A Landscape is the main modeling workspace inside an organization. It contains a shared architecture model and the diagrams.

• A landscape includes: a shared model of systems, actors, applications, stores, components, and relationships; all diagrams created from that model, and shared metadata like tags and flows.
• Changes made to an object and connections are synced across all diagrams in the same landscape.
• We recommend keeping closely related systems in a single landscape so diagrams stay in sync.
• Multiple landscapes can be used when systems are truly independent or need strong separation, but objects and connections are not shared across landscapes.

What Are Domains?

A Domain is an optional way to organize content inside a landscape. Domains help you group related systems (and the objects inside of them) into categories.

• Domains act as logical groupings for systems, actors, and their child components.
• Objects in one domain can still appear in diagrams from other domains within the same landscape.
• Domains help represent things like business or product areas.
• They preserve model reuse and consistency since everything remains in the same landscape.

How to create these in IcePanel

Creating an Organization

1. By default, you'll have 1 organization created.
2. Click on the top-left menu from the landscape page.
3. Hover over 'Switch organization', then click on the 'New organization' button.

Creating a Landscape

1. Click on the top-left menu from the landscape page.
2. Hover on 'Switch landscape'.
3. Click on the 'New landscape' button.

Landscapes are typically created when you begin documenting a new product, system, or architectural scope.

Creating a Domain

1. From the landscape page, click on the domain drop-down on the top-left.
2. Click on the 'New domain' button.

Summary

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