GitHub integration

This guide will walk you through setting up the GitHub integration.

The Orbit GitHub integration will automatically ingest contributors and activities from the repos you provide access to. We'll create a profile for every contributor, a global and personal timeline for all activities, and generate an automatic report.

Installing the Orbit app in your GitHub organization

With your workspace created, the next step is to install the Orbit for GitHub app, which will sync your repos with your workspace.

You can find GitHub in the list of Plug & Play Integrations on the Integrations page in your workspace's Settings

The Orbit app will ask for Read-only permissions, and you can select which repos it will have access to.

🚧 If you aren’t the admin of the GitHub organization, you won’t be able to install the app yourself, you’ll need to request it. Requesting it will send a message to the admins of the GitHub organization. Once they approve it, you’ll have the ability to attach it to your new workspace.

If you choose "All", Orbit will only connect to public repositories. If you choose a specific set of repositories, public or private, Orbit will connect to those and those only. If you wish to have a hybrid of public and private repositories connected to Orbit, you'll need to choose "Only select repositories" and select all of the ones you're interested in.

Adding your GitHub organization to your workspace

Finally, add your organization to your workspace.

📘Tip: you can attach multiple GitHub orgs to an Orbit workspace

Orbit will now import activities and contributors from your organization's repos. It may take a few minutes to fully sync.

Configuring your installation post-setup

If you need to update which repos are included in your workspace, navigate to Settings and view the Integrations section. Your GitHub settings can be modified by choosing Settings from under Actions in the Connected Integrations list.

Locate the Repository permissions section on the settings page. You will be directed to GitHub to manage which repositories Orbit has access to.

Understanding GitHub data in Orbit post-setup

You may notice a small discrepancy between the count of GitHub stars and the count of GitHub issues showing in GitHub vs Orbit.

GitHub Stars
A small discrepancy between the count of GitHub stars shown in GitHub vs count of GitHub stars shown in Orbit is expected. One reason is that Orbit does not track removed stars or "un-stars". Therefore, you can expect Orbit to reflect a slightly higher star count than you see in GitHub.

GitHub Issues
GitHub issues are typically represented 1:1 between GitHub and Orbit. If it's not 1:1, there can be a few situations that explain why the discrepancy exists:

• Issues created by bots - Orbit ignores most bot activity
• Deleted members - issues opened by them are also deleted
• Initial import or GitHub outages - In some cases, GitHub issues are missing from Orbit because of errors in the initial import or GitHub outages. If you see missing data, please contact support.

Note that this information also applies to pull requests.

Orbit regularly checks our metrics against GitHub to make sure that any discrepancies are small and for known reasons. Please let us know if you see data that is missing or numbers that seem incorrect. Thank you!