Set up Application Design Center

This document guides administrators through the one-time setup for Application Design Center. Completing this setup lets your organization design and manage applications using App Design Center.

In the setup process, you as an administrator will do the following:

Choose your setup model

Before you set up App Design Center, choose an application management boundary where you'll create templates, applications, and other App Design Center resources.

The application management boundary acts as a centralized place for all application management tasks, including APIs, access control, billing, and quotas. The application management boundary you choose impacts your Application Design Center setup in the following ways:

  • Single-project boundary : The system quickly configures your project for application management, enables required APIs, and creates a default space and storage bucket.

  • Folder-level boundary: You enable application management on a folder. In the folder, the system creates a management project where you enable billing. You can then complete the App Design Center setup, which creates a storage bucket, enables required APIs, and lets you do the following:

    • Specify a name for your space.
    • Select whether to disable Google-provided templates.
    • Use Gemini Cloud Assist and Cloud Hub to create and manage your applications.

Before you begin

Single-project

You must have the following roles on the project:

  • If you have the Project Owner (roles/owner) role, the system will automatically assign the remaining permissions to your user to complete the setup.

  • If you don't have the Project Owner (roles/owner) role, ask your administrator to assign your user the following:

    • Application Design Center Admin (roles/designcenter.admin).
    • Service Usage Admin (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin).

Folder-level

You must have an organization resource, from which you do one of the following:

You must have the following roles:

  • To enable application management on a folder and create an underlying management project, you must have the Folder Admin (resourcemanager.folderAdmin) role on the parent resource.

  • To enable billing on the management project, you must have the required billing permissions on the billing account and management project.

  • To complete the App Design Center setup, you must have the following roles on the management project:

    • Application Design Center Admin (roles/designcenter.admin).
    • Application Admin (roles/designcenter.applicationAdmin).

Enable application management

Single-project

You can use App Design Center in an app-enabled project, which lets you define, group, and manage applications. You use the app-enabled project to manage quotas and billing. You can create other projects to store the Google Cloud resources that you create with App Design Center.

To enable application management in a single project, see Create a space and enable APIs

Folder-level

You can use App Design Center in a folder configured for application management, which lets you define, group, and manage applications. In your folder, you can create a resource hierarchy and control access based on your organizational structure and team responsibilities.

When you enable application management, the system creates a new management project in the folder. You use the management project to manage quotas and billing for descendant projects associated with the folder. You can create additional projects in the folder to store the Google Cloud resources that you create with App Design Center.

For steps to configure app management, see the following:

Create a space and enable APIs

Before you and your development team start using App Design Center, you must complete an automated initial setup to create a space and enable required APIs.

Single-project

To enable application management on a single project and set up App Design Center, do the following:

  1. Go to the Application Design Center Overview page.

Go to Overview

  1. From the project picker, select the project where you want to configure application management.

  2. Click Go to Setup.

  3. In the Setup your project for application management pane, review the list of APIs that will be enabled.

  4. Click Enable. The system enables the APIs, and creates the storage bucket and default-space space.

Folder-level

To set up App Design Center, do the following:

  1. Go to the Application Design Center Overview page.

Go to Overview

  1. Click Select folder and select your app-enabled folder.

  2. Click Set up ADC.

  3. In the My space name field, enter a name for your space. You can't edit this name later.

  4. By default, the space contains components and application templates that are created by Google. To remove Google components and application templates from the space, clear the Enable Google opinionated templates checkbox.

If you remove Google opinionated templates, space users can only use the components that you import and the application templates that you create.

  1. Click Complete setup. The system enables the APIs, and creates the storage bucket and space.

Use your own storage bucket

The setup process creates a Cloud Storage bucket to store application details and generated Terraform. Alternatively, you can use your own bucket to store application information. For example, you might use an existing bucket if your organization policies prevent you from creating new storage buckets.

To set up App Design Center and use your own Cloud Storage bucket, you must use the App Design Center API. Do the following:

  1. Make sure that you have access to use APIs. For more information, see Set up API access.

  2. Make sure that your bucket is in the same management project where you plan to create your space.

  3. Make sure that you have the following permissions on the bucket:

    • storage.buckets.get
    • storage.objects.create

    For more information, see IAM permissions for Cloud Storage.

  4. Identify the bucket name.

  5. Create your API call using the projects.locations.spaces resource:

    1. Specify your bucket name in the gcs_bucket field. For example, if the bucket URI is gs://my-bucket, the bucket name is my-bucket.

    2. Use the projects.locations.spaces.create method to create the space.

    Your space is created, your bucket is used as the storage location for application information, the required APIs are enabled, and the App Design Center setup process is completed.

What's next