Flags and environments

Projects and environments

A project groups the flags for one product or app, such as web or mobile. Each project has environments, Development, Staging and Production by default, and you can add your own.

Every flag exists in every environment of its project, but its settings are separate in each. A flag can be fully on in Staging while it’s at 5% in Production.

Flags

A flag has:

• a key, the name your code uses, such as new-checkout. Lowercase letters, numbers, ., _ and -. It can’t change after the flag is created, because your code refers to it.
• a name and description for people reading the dashboard.
• a kind: boolean, string, number or json.
• two or more variations, the values it can serve.

Kind	Example variations
boolean	true, false (always these two)
string	"blue", "green", "orange"
number	6, 12, 24
json	null, { "text": "Free shipping today" }

On and off

Each flag has a switch per environment.

• Off: everyone gets the off variation, usually false, and nothing else is checked. This is your kill switch when a feature misbehaves.
• On: Signal works through targeting to decide each user’s value.

Turning a flag off keeps its targets, rules and rollout. Turn it back on and it picks up exactly where it was.

A new flag starts off in every environment.

Client-side access

Each flag has a Client-side access setting, off by default. Only flags with it on can be read by the Browser SDK. Leave it off for flags only your servers use, and they never reach a web page.

Removing a flag

Once a flag has served the same value to everyone for a while, delete the check from your code first, then delete the flag. Apps that still check a deleted flag get the default value they pass.