FAQs
Frequently asked questions
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Pricing & Plans
Do I have to pay to use CodeScene?
CodeScene is free for open-source projects. We also have a set of paid plans so that you can tailor CodeScene to your needs or analyze private repositories. This allows larger organizations to benefit from advanced analyses like CodeScene's cost metrics and delivery performance measures. We have a free trial so you can evaluate CodeScene before starting a plan.
What is included in the Free Trial?
During the Free Trial period, you get access to all the features in the plan of your choice. When you start your trial you choose if you want to try the Standard or the Pro plan.
Is there a limited number of active authors per plan?
There’s no limit on the number of active authors. The total cost of using CodeScene is based on how many active authors you have. The number of users that can login and use any of the CodeScene features, such as the automatic pull request reviews, are unlimited.
What is the main difference between On-Prem and Cloud?
In all major aspects they are the same product but it makes it possible for you to integrate and use CodeScene on matter if your current tooling and handling of your source code is cloud based or running on private servers.
How is the total cost calculated?
CodeScene’s license is based on the number of active authors. An active author is anyone who has committed code over the past three months to the codebases you want to analyse. This time period is a sliding window that always starts at the date of the most recent commit in your repositories. Each author is only counted once. That is, if you analyse multiple codebases, the same persons only count once no matter how many projects they contribute to. Historic authors are free. People who haven’t committed code within the last three months are included for free and don’t add to the license fee.
What payment methods are accepted?
We accept all major credit cards and invoicing.
Is it possible to cancel or change my plan anytime?
Cancellations can be done according to our terms which is 30 days before the end of the yearly subscription period. Monthly subscriptions can be cancelled at any time and will take effect the day after the last day of the current subscription period.
How do I buy CodeScene? How do I upgrade in the future?
It’s easy. You purchase CodeScene at our website, see pricing. Choose between our On-Prem or cloud solution, add the amount of active authors you have, press purchase and follow payment instructions. Three clicks later you are done.
Do you want to scale up with more active authors?
For On-Prem just go to your personal site in our customer portal and upgrade the subscription. If you are running our Cloud version, just login to your CodeScene cloud, find your price plan, change to the new subscription. Scale up or down. Your choice.
Features & Integrations
What can CodeScene do for me?
CodeScene is a quality visualization tool for software. Prioritize technical debt, detect delivery risks, and measure organizational aspects. It's fully automated.
CodeScene's paid plans also integrates with Pull Requests to provide real-time feedback on hotspots that decline in code health. Use this feature as a soft quality gate and as code review input.
CodeScene takes a behavioral view of of your codebase by adding insights into the people side of your code. This means you can detect coordination bottlenecks, simulate upcoming knowledge loss used for off-boarding, and measure how well your organization aligns with Conway's Law. All in one tool.
Can I analyze repositories owned by an organization?
Yes, all plans let you analyze repositories owned by organizations that you are a member of. However, with the Community Edition plan you can only analyze public organizational repositories.
I've heard about CodeScene's X-Ray analysis, how does it work?
CodeScene's X-Ray is an analysis that investigates the evolution of each function or method within a Hotspot. X-Ray is a great tool to prioritize technical debt and lets you refactor large files iteratively guided by data as described here and here.
CodeScene supports X-Ray for Hotspots. Just click on a Hotspot in your Hotspot Map and launch an X-Ray.
Which git management providers does CodeScene support?
a. On-Prem supports any git provider on a basic level (you can specify any git remote URL).
b. Cloud supports GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, and Azure DevOps.
Does CodeScene integrate with any Software Life Cycle Tools or Issue Trackers?
Yes, CodeScene integrates with Jira, Trello, Azure DevOps, GitHub Issues, GitLab PM and YouTrack. This integration lets you visualize and detect defect-dense modules, as well as putting a cost dimension on top of the findings. CodeScene’s cost analyses let you reason about the technical and organizational findings from a financial perspective. For example, how much time do you spend on defects in your top hotspots? What amount of work is unplanned? And what happens over time?
What project management/software lifecycle tools does CodeScene integrate with?
CodeScene integrates with Jira, Trello, Azure DevOps, GitHub Issues, GitLab PM and YouTrack.
What is the benefit of integrating software lifecycle tools with CodeScene?
This integration lets you visualize and detect defect-dense modules, as well as putting a cost dimension on top of the findings. CodeScene’s cost analyses let you reason about the technical and organizational findings from a financial perspective. For example, how much time do you spend on defects in your top hotspots? What amount of work is unplanned? And what happens over time?
How does CodeScene compare to traditional code analysis tools?
The main difference between CodeScene’s behavioral code analysis and traditional code scanning techniques is that traditional static analysis tools work on a snapshot of the codebase. CodeScene considers the temporal dimension and can analyze the evolution of the whole system. This makes it possible for CodeScene to prioritize based on how the organization actually works with the code. Hence, we can limit the results to information that is relevant, actionable, and translates directly into business value. CodeScene also goes beyond code as we consider the organization and people side of the system. This gives you information that is invisible in the source code itself.
What types of CodeScene notifications can I get in Slack?
The list is in the configuration. See: https://docs.enterprise.codescene.io/latest/integrations/slack/notifications.html?highlight=slack#notifications-settings
Can I get different types of notifications for different projects?
Yes, you can. See Per-Project Configuration section in our docs.
Are REST API supported on both On-Prem and Cloud versions?
Currently REST API is only available for the On-Prem version but support will be added to our Cloud version soon.
How can my organization use the REST API?
For using the REST API you need an user with role RestApi which can be created by CodeScene admin. See: the-rest-api-user in our docs.
Do you support private repositories?
Yes, we do. Check out our plans for details on private repositories.
Can I analyze codebases that are split across multiple Git repositories?
Yes, CodeScene supports multi-repository analyses.
How does CodeScene help me measure organizational aspects like Conway's Law?
CodeScene lets you build knowledge maps over your code and measure the potential knowledge loss in your codebase (aka the Bus factor). You can also analyze the development efforts across teams. That team-level measurement lets you inspect how well-aligned your organization and architecture are with respect to Conway's Law. All you have to do is to visit your project's configuration page and define the teams in your organization.
What is the benefit of pull request integration?
CodeScene integrates with Pull Requests and triggers analyses automatically. This integration uses the Git provider API, which provides a (soft) quality gate for your hotspots. CodeScene also provides detailed information on possible degradations. This lets you act early on any issues before the code is merged. You'll never miss a hotspot again.
Can I use CodeScene even though we host our own Git repositories?
Sure, check out our On-Prem version of CodeScene. CodeScene On-Prem comes packaged as a Docker container and can be hosted in a private cloud.
My organization is using another code analysis tool. How does CodeScene fit?
That's good! In fact, many of our users are already using other code analysis tools. Often, these tools complement the information that CodeScene provides. A traditional static analysis tool serves well to catch common coding mistakes or style violations. It's genuinely useful. However, a static analysis will never be able to tell you if some excess code complexity actually matters –- this is where CodeScene’s behavioral code analysis fills an important gap.
We also find that CodeScene's higher-level information, clear priorities, and intuitive visualizations attract a wide range of stakeholders. As such, CodeScene's sweet spot is that we serve the whole engineering organization, not just developers or managers, but both. This enables you to have a conversation around a deeply technical topic like code with your non-technical stakeholders. It's all about communication and shared situational awareness.
I already use a static code analysis tool. Why do I need CodeScene?
A traditional static analysis tool serves well to catch common coding mistakes or style violations. It's genuinely useful. However, a static analysis will never be able to tell you if some excess code complexity actually matters –- this is where CodeScene’s behavioral code analysis fills an important gap.
We also find that CodeScene's higher-level information, clear priorities, and intuitive visualizations attract a wide range of stakeholders. As such, CodeScene serves the entire engineering org organization, not just developers or managers, but both. This enables you to have a conversation around a deeply technical topic like code with your non-technical stakeholders. It's all about communication and shared situational awareness.
How do I set up the Slack integration? Do I need help from developers?
You need to create a Slack app and configure CodeScene to use the correct API token.
All the details are described in our docs: https://docs.enterprise.codescene.io/latest/integrations/slack/notifications.html?highlight=slack
Can notifications be sent to a specific user?
You can use @username style to notify a user. See the help text for the Notification recipient config field and our docs.
What is the benefit of Slack integration?
Early warnings and staying in the loop especially for people and teams that “live in Slack”.
Is custom code required for the REST API integration?
REST API can be used directly from a shell script, we provide some use cases and scripts: See: examples-use-cases-and-scripts in our docs.
REST API imply using http protocol and every modern programming language already have a library for that so another option is to implement a client using your favorite library.
How can my organization automate our workflow with the REST API?
You can automatically create a CodeScene project for example when the project is created in your favorite code repository platform.
You can manage CodeScene users, teams and project developers.
You can fetch analysis data from CodeScene for a particular list of projects or architectural components and integrate them into your reporting system.
Who is the REST API for?
The REST API is for people with knowledge in scripting and/or coding.
Security & Access
Why do you request write access to GitHub repositories?
Because of how the Git provider API works, we are forced to request read and write access for CodeScene in order to read your code (see repo and public_repo scopes). CodeScene will of course never write any data to the Git repository itself.
We have sensitive data. What is your privacy policy?
CodeScene is ISO/IEC 27001 certified. Information Security Management ISO/IEC 27001 is an international standard on how to manage information safely and helps us to continuously improve. We have taken the necessary measures to protect sensitive information from unauthorized persons. Read our full privacy policy:
https://codescene.com/docs/CodeScene_Privacy_Policy.pdf
On-prem
With the On-prem version, your code and analysis results stay on your server. For environments with high security requirements, there is even an offline mode that allows On-prem to run without an external network connection.
Cloud
The Cloud security model is based on your Git provider's model. Only users with access to the code on GitHub, Bitbucket or Gitlab can have access to the analysis results on CodeScene. In CodeScene cloud we never share data in private repositories. CodeScene cloud does fetch your repository to do an analysis but deletes the local copy immediately afterwards. The analysis results are only available to you and the people you chose to invite. You can also delete an analysis project at any time and we make sure all your data is removed.
How can I share my account with my colleagues?
We have two ways to share projects with other CodeScene users.
Organizational Accounts
Organizational accounts are the primary way to share multiple projects with other members of your GitHub organization or Bitbucket workspace. When you create a new organizational account you can add/remove organization members in Configuration.
Project Collaborators
Organization members have access to all projects inside your organization. You can also give a collaborator access to a single project in the "Access Management" section in project configuration using the corresponding email addresses of those accounts. To find the email address, check the "My Account" page of the collaborator.
As a collaborator, you get read access to a project and its analysis results, as well as the ability to run new analyses, and to X-Ray files.
See the docs:
What data do you collect about On-Prem CodeScene usage?
1. License and utilization data
Used to determine if each CodeScene installation has a valid license and the number of active authors is inline with the current subscription
2. Anonymized usage data
Used to improve the CodeScene product and to ensure that users have a successful experience. For example, but not limited to, we gather data whether an analysis was successful or failed, which features in the product are configured and when they are used.
We never gather personal identifiers such as name, email of users and we never gather any parts of the your code.
