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 a objects and connections are synced across all diagrams in the same landscape.
- • We recommended to keep 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
- By default, you'll have 1 organization created.
- Click on the top-left menu from the landscape page.
- Hover over 'Switch organization', then click on the 'New organization' button.
Creating a Landscape
- Click on the top-left menu from the landscape page.
- Hover on 'Switch landscape'.
- Click on the 'New landscape' button.
Landscapes are typically created when you begin documenting a new product, system, or architectural scope.
Creating a Domain
- From the landscape page, click on the domain drop-down on the top-left.
- Click on the 'New domain' button.
Summary
| Concept | What it represents | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Organization | Top-level workspace | Users, billing, all landscapes |
| Landscape | Shared architecture model and diagrams | A system or product scope |
| Domain | Logical grouping within a landscape | Sub-areas of the architecture |
