Building Jenkins Admin Portal: Creating an Open-Source Backstage Plugin for Jenkins Operators

This workshop explores the idea of building the plugin for Managing Jenkins Platform using Internal Developer Portal i.e. Backstage. Backstage already has a Jenkins plugin that helps developers view build information for catalog entities. However, platform engineers and Jenkins administrators need a different perspective: controller health, agent availability, plugin inventory and operational visibility across multiple controllers.

Participants will work together to build an initial working version of the plugin. We will explore the Backstage plugin architecture, set up the development workspace, integrate with the Jenkins Remote Access API and develop a dashboard that displays controller information such as Jenkins version, executor availability, build queue and agent status.

Participants should have basic familiarity with TypeScript, React and REST APIs. Prior Backstage experience is helpful but not mandatory.

1. Understand the architecture and development workflow of Backstage community plugins.

2. Identify the difference between developer-facing CI/CD visibility and Jenkins administration needs.

3. Build a Backstage frontend and backend plugin that integrates with Jenkins.