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Publishing Boards

Publishing gives stakeholders a read-only view of a board that they open without an account. A publication is a snapshot at provenmap.com/boards/{org}/{slug}, not a live view, and shows only what you include. Workspaces, unpublished boards, source bindings, and conversations stay private.

The wizard

Open the wizard from the board menu (⋯) → Publish to web…. Inside a layer, the item reads Publish this board… and publishes that layer on its own. The wizard runs in this order:

Cover → Access → [Layers] → Contents → Review

Layers appears only when it applies.

Cover

Set the title, address, and thumbnail. The address can't be changed after publishing.

Access

Set who can open it and whether it is discoverable. List on the ProvenMap boards directory is off until you turn it on.

Your organization reaches everyone who signs in through your SSO.

Include GitHub source links is off by default too. When it's off, elements mapped from a repository keep their source references but lose the link to their file. When it's on, anyone who can open the board can follow those links. If the repository is public, that means the code itself. If it is private, they reach GitHub's not-found page, but each link still shows your organization, the repository name, file paths and the branch.

Layers

This step appears when you publish a hub with layers. Choose which layer boards readers can navigate into.

The step shows the first two levels of the tree. A layer with deeper layers says how many sit inside it, and its arrow opens them. Ticking a layer ticks everything inside it. A layer only ships if the one above it does. Top level only keeps the layers directly under the hub and drops the rest.

Each layer shows how much it adds. A publication can be up to 8 MB: the bar at the bottom of the dialog shows how close you are, and Publish stays off until it fits. To make room, untick the heaviest layers, or turn off Include GitHub source links in Access.

When you publish a plain layer board, this step doesn't appear, and its contents narrow to the diagram and its insights. An app board publishes like a hub, with its own hub, aspects, pages and skills, wherever you publish it from.

Contents

Choose what a reader receives:

  • Insights — the insights on this board and its layers, listed by name, each tagged with the skill that produced it
  • Aspects — the typed detail on its nodes, and its boundary rules
  • Skills — the app's capability profile

You can never publish work items or source bindings.

Under Aspects, tables, endpoints and event channels are grouped by their domain, so one tick publishes a whole domain. Those without a domain sit under No domain, and every other kind of aspect keeps a group of its own.

A long list gets a search box. It finds rows by name, by skill or by domain, and Selected shows only what you ticked. A group's checkbox ticks only the rows the search shows; anything you ticked before stays ticked while it's hidden.

Selecting pages under Aspects also publishes the Pages screen. Each selected page ships with its latest desktop and mobile capture: the screenshot and its element map. Before you publish, check what was on screen when /inspect ran.

Review

Check the card readers get, what travels with the board, and, on a republish, what changes for people who already have the link. A Public board also gets Who can find it. It lists everyone the board reaches: anyone with the link, your profile page, the boards directory if you turned it on, and search engines and AI search tools. Nothing you left out reaches any of them.

Rules you select under Boundaries publish with their status and each crossing with its count. The file paths, projects and commits that prove a crossing stay private.

A publication includes only the insights you select; it never adds the latest batch on its own. Insights you wrote by hand stay on the live board.

Who can see it

Visibility has four modes.

Anyone with the URL can open it without signing in.

  • Listed on your profile at provenmap.com/boards/{org}, and eligible for the boards directory
  • Search engines and AI search tools can find it and show it in their results. ProvenMap lets them know when you publish, update or unpublish it; each search engine decides when its results change
  • Each published insight gets its own page, so a search can land on a single answer
  • No tokens or passwords needed

Public and Unlisted are on every plan. The boards sitemap lists Public boards and their insight pages, so a search engine can find them without a link from anywhere else. Moving a board off Public makes it unfindable straight away, but search results catch up on each search engine's own schedule.

The viewer sees only your organization's name until they sign in.

If your organization turns on Require SSO for shared boards, Unlisted and Protected boards ask for the same sign-in, on top of their share link and password. That includes boards that were already live. While it's on, you can publish only as Public or to your organization. See Enterprise SSO.

Tip

Start with Unlisted while you are iterating. Move to Public when you are confident in the content, or Protected when the architecture is sensitive.

Password protection

Set visibility to Protected and enter a password of 4–128 characters. We hash it server-side and never store the plaintext. You can remove the password later and keep the share token.

Warning

Rotating a share token invalidates every existing link at once; the password stays as it was. After rotating, update bookmarks and embedded references with the new URL.

What a stakeholder gets

A reader opens the publication hub: the diagram first, then the included layers, insights, boundary rules, and a card for each aspect kind you included. Insights open on the diagram, as on the live board, and nothing you left out is reachable. A reader can search the board's insights and narrow them to one skill.

The hub's cards open to read in full: What's on this map, What's on each layer and Read all. A reader gets the board's components and every insight's explanation and trail without opening the diagram.

Each insight also has its own page at provenmap.com/boards/{org}/{slug}/insights/{insight}, with its explanation, its advice and its trail. Each stop on the trail opens the diagram at that stop, and Open on the map walks the trail from the start. The page's address comes from the insight's name: running the analysis again keeps it, and renaming the insight gives it a new one. Once a republish drops an insight or changes its name, its old address says the insight is no longer on the board and links to the board's current insights.

Living with a publication

Once the board is live, the publish screen shows Board published, Live on the web, and three actions:

  • Update settings — reopen the wizard and change anything but the address: the visibility, which layers are included, which contents are included.
  • Get embed code — embed the board in a wiki or an internal page. A Public board also has Embed in its published page's header, so anyone reading it can copy the same code without signing in.
  • Unpublish — remove the publication. The URL stops resolving.

To announce a board in Slack, open the board menu (⋯) → Share to Slack… and pick a public channel. A Public board's card links to its published page, so people without an account can open it. Any other visibility links to the board in the portal. A channel with the Board published automation gets a post on every publish and republish. Share to Slack needs Slack connected to your organization; automations need Pro or above.

What's next

Permissions & Access

The three independent layers: org role, per-board access, and published visibility.

Insight Skills

Run an analysis over a board before you decide what to publish.

App Boards & Hubs

The hub a publication mirrors, and the facets it can carry.