Introducing Service Accounts for Turbot Pipes

Turbot Pipes now supports Service Accounts, providing a secure and manageable way to enable programmatic access for your automation workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and integrations.

Service Accounts address a critical need for organizations that want to automate their Pipes operations without tying credentials to individual user accounts. This new feature ensures your automations continue running smoothly regardless of team changes, while maintaining proper access controls and audit trails.

What are Service Accounts?

Service Accounts are specialized, non-human identities designed exclusively for programmatic access to Turbot Pipes. Unlike regular user accounts, Service Accounts:

• Cannot log into the Pipes web UI
• Are managed at the billing entity level (tenant or organization)
• Have no personal workspaces or resources
• Cannot modify themselves or other service accounts
• Provide dedicated access tokens for automation

Each Service Account counts as a user in your billing plan, ensuring transparent and predictable costs as you scale your automation capabilities.

Beyond the technical capabilities, Service Accounts strengthen security by eliminating credential reuse and making automation independent of individual team members. Each Service Account has its own audit trail and can be granted only the specific permissions it needs. This means your pipelines won't break when people leave, and you'll always know exactly which automated process performed which action.

Key use cases

Service Accounts unlock several powerful automation scenarios that were previously challenging to implement securely.

Infrastructure as Code deployments

Manage your Pipes resources through Terraform in your CI/CD pipelines without relying on individual user credentials. Service Accounts provide stable, dedicated authentication that won't break when team members change roles or leave the organization.

provider "pipes" {
  token = var.pipes_service_account_token
}

resource "pipes_workspace" "production" {
  organization = "acme-corp"
  identifier   = "prod-compliance"
  name         = "Production Compliance"
}

Automated user provisioning

When onboarding new team members through your identity management system, Service Accounts can automatically provision them into the appropriate Pipes workspaces and organizations, streamlining the onboarding process.

Pipeline automation

Execute compliance checks, security scans, and cost analysis reports automatically as part of your deployment pipelines, using Service Account credentials that are purpose-built for these automated workflows.

Creating and managing Service Accounts

Service Accounts are created at your billing entity level (either at the tenant level for Enterprise plans or the organization level for Team plans).

Step 1: Create a Service Account

Navigate to your tenant or organization settings, select the Members tab, and choose "Create Service Account" instead of inviting a new user. Provide a descriptive name and optional description to help identify the account's purpose.

Step 2: Generate access tokens

Once created, you can generate up to two access tokens for each Service Account. These tokens work identically to user tokens—you'll see them once at creation, after which they cannot be retrieved again. Store them securely in your secrets management system.

Step 3: Assign permissions

Service Accounts are granted permissions the same way as regular users. Add them to organizations and workspaces with appropriate roles to define their access scope. The audit log tracks all activities involving the Service Account, whether as an actor or subject of an action.

See it in action

Start automating with Service Accounts today

Service Accounts represent a significant step forward in making Turbot Pipes more automation-friendly and enterprise-ready. Whether you're managing infrastructure as code, automating compliance checks, or integrating with your CI/CD pipelines, Service Accounts provide the secure, stable foundation you need.

Ready to enhance your Pipes automation? Sign in to your workspace to create your first Service Account and streamline your CI/CD pipelines or sign up for an always free Developer account to get started. And let us know how Service Accounts improve your automation workflows!