TANGO Work Package Leaders Interview Series – WP6 User Interfaces and Platform Integration

TANGO Work Package Leaders Interview Series – WP6 User Interfaces and Platform Integration

In the fourth part of our TANGO WP Leaders Interview Series, we spoke with Panagiotis Matzakos from Netcompany-Intrasoft SA, who leads Work Package 6. We discussed how the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) system of the TANGO platform operates in a multi-partner, multi-pilot environment, as well as the key strategies used to ensure the smooth integration of TANGO components.

1. How would you describe the purpose of WP6 in one sentence?

The purpose of WP6 is to integrate the developed TANGO components (WP3-WP6) into a unified platform, as well as to develop the TANGO platform’s central User Interface and Data Visualisation and Reporting components.

2. What are the key components and tools you have chosen for TANGO’s CI/CD setup? Why were these selected?

The key components used to build the CI/CD system are the following: 

• GitHub code hosting, version control and collaboration web-based platform: It provides a reliable, developer-friendly and highly integrated environment for managing source code and team collaboration. Its native Git support and integration make it a solid foundation for CI/CD pipelines.  In the context of TANGO, a dedicated GitHub organization has been created to host the code repositories of different TANGO components.
• Jenkins automation server for CI/CD: Jenkins was chosen for its mature, plugin-rich ecosystem and powerful pipeline-as-code capabilities. It allows us to build custom CI/CD workflows tailored to TANGO development and deployment needs.
• Harbor private container image registry: It provides a secure, self-hosted container registry offering RBAC (Role Based Access Control), and policy enforcement capabilities. Harbor aligns with TANGO’s goal of maintaining a secure and compliant software supply chain.
• Kubernetes container orchestration and deployment platform: It offers robust orchestration and automated deployment capabilities, making it ideal for running scalable, resilient CI/CD workloads. It also aligns with industry best practices in cloud-native development. Moreover, Kubernetes is the main deployment environment in TANGO, helping to ensure a smooth and consistent transition across multiple execution environments (e.g., dev/testing vs pilot/operational environments).

3. What challenges did you face while setting up the CI/CD environment, especially in a multi-partner context?

The main challenges arose not so much in setting up the CI/CD environment itself where our company has significant experience, but rather in training the various partners to use the CI/CD system and create their own CI/CD workflows (of course with our assistance where required). To this end, two carefully designed hands-on workshops and associated material (e.g., User Guide) were provided when the CI/CD environment was ready, to guide the partners through the process of creating their own build, testing and deployment workflows. After that, when the partners started using the CI/CD system, our company provided support wherever needed to help them further familiarise themselves with the environment and resolve any issues. 

I should highlight that we were very happy to see that TANGO’s technical partners have widely adopted the CI/CD system and associated DevOps best practices, which have helped them – and the project as a whole – accelerate their software development and testing efforts and decrease the software delivery cycle.   

4. What integration strategies or workflows are used to ensure smooth merging of WP3-5 components?

Since the beginning of the integration tasks, we have followed a well-defined plan, structured around specific steps and timelines to guide the integration activities. I will now go through the most important steps of this process: 

• Initially, we requested all partners to provide the hardware and software requirements of their components to ensure they could be accommodated in the development/testing environment provided by INTRA through dedicated Linux VMs provisioned by the Hetzner Cloud provider.
• Through a collaborative process among the technical partners and using the TANGO architecture as input, we identified the TANGO integration points which refer to the set of bilateral TANGO components that interact with each other.
• After identifying the integration points, the corresponding partners worked together to provide the detailed specification for each integration point. In practice, this boiled down to providing detailed sequence diagrams that describe the interactions among different components, and information like the type of protocol or means of interaction that they use. Following these initial specifications the technical partners then provided a detailed view of their planned functional and bilateral integration tests, which aimed to validate the intended functionality of a given component and integration point respectively. We should highlight at this point the added challenge of integrating TANGO components with the Open Source FIWARE Data Space Connector (FDSC) group of interoperable services selected among other third-party  Data Space connectors to meet the requirements of TANGO mainly with respect to trusted, controlled, and sovereign data exchange. In this context FDSC was integrated with TANGO’s authentication and authorization procedures and components.
• In terms of actual implementations, the partners first worked on their functional tests in parallel with their development activities, of course. Then they started working on the implementation and refinements of the actual integration flows and associated tests. As a result, the first release of the TANGO integrated platform captured all these ongoing activities.
• One of the practical challenges of the integration process was monitoring all these ongoing activities, making sure that everything was going according to plan, identifying early enough any delays and associated dependencies and proceeding with mitigation actions. To this end, bi-weekly WP6 calls were held initially, and later replaced by weekly calls,to help monitor progress, report on any technical/blocking issues and arrange dedicated bilateral meetings to resolve them. This was supported by the use of centralized technical management tools based on the TANGO GitHub organization.
• Following the integration activities described above, the final step was the implementation and verification of representative end-to-end testing scenarios, inspired by the use cases of TANGO pilots, which aimed to validate the readiness of the platform as a whole before its delivery to specific pilots. In this context, feedback received from initial pilot executions was taken into account to improve the functionality and ease of use of TANGO components. The final successful outcome of these tests marked the release of the final version of the integrated TANGO platform.

5. What steps are involved in delivering components to WP7, and how do you ensure they are “ready for deployment”?

The “ready for deployment” part is covered in practice through the CI/CD best practices that we use. In principle, this means that each component or integration is first verified in the TANGO testing environment, which is a dedicated Kubernetes cluster connected to the CI/CD framework. If the intended functionalities/interoperability are verified there through the tests, the component is considered ready for deployment in the pilot environment(s). Also, to facilitate deployments to the pilot environments (dedicated Kubernetes clusters), the CI/CD system has been connected to these environments where feasible (i.e., where the networking/security policies of each pilot permit it) offering a central point for triggering deployments across the different pilot execution environments via the Jenkins CI/CD server. 

6. What data sources feed into the reports and visualisations?

The Visualisation and Reporting Techniques component of TANGO is designed to develop and implement data visualisation interfaces that enable the analysis of large volumes of information collected from diverse sources and devices. By transforming complex data into intuitive visuals, this component supports TANGO’s end-users in making informed, data-driven decisions.

Key Data Visualisations include:

• Advanced Data Visualisations: Displays a range of data types, including unstructured device data, structured datasets, processed information and analytical model outputs.
• Interactive Device Map: Offers a real-time overview of user devices, highlighting their status along with any alerts, notifications, or actionable recommendations.

7. Who are the primary target users for the UI (e.g., citizens, domain experts), and how was their input incorporated into the design?

The primary users of the UI are customers and employees of a given organization, both at a technical level with some domain expertise and at a managerial level. For example, in the Smart Hospitality pilot, customers (tourists) access specific TANGO services through the UI to check-in to the hotel and receive tourist information. In other cases (e.g., Retail Pilot), the employees have various roles in the system that authorize them to access specific data/reports according to their role and based on the integration with TANGO authorization components. An evaluation of the UI design, – particularly its usability – was conducted through questionnaires answered by pilot users in each use case.