New Globalping feature: GitHub organization tags & pages

We recently added a new Globalping Dashboard feature for teams and companies that makes managing probes way easier: you can now connect your GitHub organization and use it for probe tags and public pages.

Before, users could only use their GitHub username.
However, it makes more sense for teams managing multiple probes to do so under their GitHub organization's name and brand.

To support this, we needed to add a new GitHub OAuth scope that allows us to read organization data for private members. Over the past few weeks, we've received questions about this feature and the new permission scope. Let's take a closer look at how it works and why it’s useful.

Why connect your GitHub organization?

Not every user needs to connect to an organization, but for teams, it can make probe management much easier and more consistent.

Let's look at an example:

Imagine the company you work for wants to start supporting the Globalping network and tasks you and your team to set up 50 probes.

By connecting your GitHub organization to the Globalping Dashboard, you and your colleagues can:

use the organization name as the tag prefix for all 50 probes
create a branded public page that lists all company-hosted probes

This setup helps maintain consistent tags across the team and gives your company a branded presence in the Globalping network.

What are probe tags and public pages?

To understand how this works in practice, let's briefly talk about probe tags and public pages.

Probe tags

You can add custom tags to the probes you manage. When you run a measurement with Globalping, you can then use these tags as a location for selecting your probes. Additionally, tags make it easy to group probes. For example, you can assign the same tag to multiple probes to target them together.

All your tags have a prefix, which is usually your GitHub username or an organization's name. The latter is especially handy if you work in a team: instead of remembering individual usernames, you can use your organization name as the tag prefix so everyone can use the same tags when running tests.

Public pages

All dashboard users can enable a public page that lists their probes and tags, such as this one here: https://globalping.io/users/jimaek. When you enable your public page, Globalping automatically uses your default tag prefix (your GitHub username or your organization name) for your probes. You can configure this in your account settings.

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Tip: You can enable or disable your public page under your account > Settings > Privacy.

Public pages are especially useful for companies that want a branded page with their organization's name, image, and URL. You can then share this page publicly, for example, to showcase your company's support for Globalping and open-source projects.

How to use organization tags and pages

Choose a default tag prefix

Each tag consists of a prefix (your username or organization name) and the tag itself.
You can select which prefix to use when editing probes:

You can also set a default tag prefix in your account settings, which will automatically apply to new probes (you can still edit the probe and pick a different prefix). Additionally, this prefix defines the URL for your public page (if enabled).

To set it:

go to your account > Settings > Account details
pick your Default tag prefix

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Note: Changing your default prefix doesn’t affect existing probes. You’ll need to update them manually if you want to use the new default prefix.

Once you understand how prefixes work, you can connect your GitHub organization to start using them.

Connect a GitHub organization

How you connect an organization depends on your membership visibility:

Public members: Globalping can read the needed organization data.
Private members: You’ll need to request access from your organization’s admin before Globalping can read organization data.

Connecting as a private member

If you're a private member in the organization you want to connect to, you first need to request that your organization's admin allow the Globalping app to read data. You can do this when you create a Globalping Dashboard account or on this GitHub page.

Under Organization access, click the "Request" button next to the organization you want to connect:

If the organization doesn't show up in the Globalping Dashboard

If you're a public member or the org admin has approved the request, but you don't see the organization in your dashboard, you may need to sync data from GitHub.

To do this:

go to your account > Settings > Account details
click Sync from GitHub next to the Organizations field

Understanding the new read:org permission

Finally, let’s talk about the read:org scope.

Globalping can already access organization data for public members, since this information is visible on GitHub profiles.

However, we received a request from teams and companies to also allow connecting organizations when users are private members. GitHub doesn't expose private membership information without permission, so we added the read:org scope.

This scope does not automatically grant Globalping read access to your organizations' data.

If you're a private member, you need to request access, and an organization admin must approve it before Globalping can read anything.

Conclusion

We introduced GitHub organization support to make Globalping more team-friendly, and we're happy to see that many users are already using it.

We understand that the new permission scope caused some confusion among users who don't need to connect organizations. Hopefully, this blog post was able to explain what the feature does, who benefits from it, and how the new read:org permission scope works.

If your team or company hosts multiple probes, we encourage you to connect your GitHub organization so you can benefit from consistent tagging and a branded public page that lists all your probes. Go to the dashboard to get started!