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Customers

Customers represent the companies or individuals who purchase licenses for your products. Each customer can have multiple licenses and auth tokens.

What is a Customer?

A customer in Breakwater is an account that:

  • Receives licenses to access your products
  • Has auth tokens for pulling images from the registry
  • Tracks pull history and usage

Customers are specific to your vendor account. If the same company purchases from multiple vendors, they would have separate customer records with each vendor.

Creating a Customer

  1. Navigate to Customers in the vendor portal
  2. Click New Customer
  3. Enter the customer name
  4. Click Create Customer

Customer Details

Name

The customer name should be recognizable to you and your team. Common choices:

  • Company name: "Acme Corporation"
  • Team or department: "Acme Corp - Engineering"
  • Individual name for single-user licenses: "John Smith"

Customer Page

The customer detail page shows:

  • Licenses: All licenses issued to this customer
  • Auth Tokens: Registry credentials for this customer
  • Recent Pulls: Latest image pulls by this customer

Managing Customers

Viewing Customers

The Customers page lists all your customers with:

  • Customer name
  • Number of licenses (active and total)

Click on a customer to see their complete profile.

Editing Customers

  1. Click on the customer to view details
  2. Click Edit
  3. Update the customer name
  4. Click Update Customer

Deleting Customers

  1. Click on the customer to view details
  2. Click Delete
  3. Confirm the deletion

Deleting a customer will also delete:

  • All licenses issued to that customer
  • All auth tokens for that customer

This action cannot be undone.

Customer Workflow

A typical customer setup involves:

  1. Create the customer account
  2. Issue licenses for the products they've purchased
  3. Generate auth tokens for registry access
  4. Share credentials with the customer

Issuing Licenses

From the customer detail page:

  1. Click New License
  2. Select the product
  3. Set license dates and any tag restrictions
  4. Save the license

See Licenses for detailed information.

Creating Auth Tokens

From the customer detail page or Auth Tokens section:

  1. Click New Token
  2. Select "Customer" as the token type
  3. Select the customer
  4. Give it a descriptive name
  5. Save and copy the secret

See Auth Tokens for detailed information.

Sharing Credentials

After creating a customer token, you need to share the credentials with your customer. Provide them with:

  1. Username: The token username (e.g., ctok_abc123def)
  2. Password: The token secret (only shown once when created)
  3. Registry URL: registry.breakwaterapp.com

Example instructions for your customer:

# Log in to the registry
docker login registry.breakwaterapp.com -u ctok_abc123def

# Pull an image
docker pull registry.breakwaterapp.com/your-vendor/product:v1.0

Best Practices

Customer Organization

  • One customer per company: Unless you need separate tracking for different teams
  • Clear naming: Use official company names for easy identification
  • Document contacts: Keep track of who to contact at each customer (outside of Breakwater)

Token Management

  • Create descriptive token names that indicate purpose (e.g., "Production Server", "CI Pipeline")
  • Set expiration dates aligned with license periods
  • Create separate tokens for different environments or use cases
  • Revoke tokens promptly when no longer needed

License Planning

  • Issue licenses that match your sales agreements
  • Use tag patterns to control version access
  • Set realistic expiration dates and plan for renewals