Going Global: Improving Operand Visibility for Operators in OpenShift 4.8

Our latest enhancement made to the OpenShift Web Console’s operator UI focuses on improving the way the console displays operands, specifically for operators that manage “All namespaces.”

In OpenShift 4.8, you can now view operand instances in a selected namespace as well as all instances in any namespace, making operands easier to locate than ever before.

Let’s take a closer look at an example.

Operators Available in All Namespaces

From the Installed Operators page and with the project selector set to “All projects,” let’s select an operator available in all namespaces: Red Hat OpenShift Serverless.


Once we select this operator, we are  navigated to this operator’s Operator details page, and the project selector changes from “All projects” to “OpenShift-serverless,” the project where this operator was originally installed.

Navigating to the “All instances” tab introduces the new toggling capability in 4.8. Select “All namespaces” or “Current namespace only” to switch between different operand views. When you work within the “All namespaces” view, the table now features a Namespace column to identify each individual operand’s namespace in one place.


If we select “Current namespace only,” only operands in the selected namespace (project) are shown. In this example, no operands were found in “openshift-serverless,” so an empty state replaces the operand table.

Other operand tabs such as Knative Serving include the ability to toggle between “All namespaces” or “Current namespace only.”

These updated toggling capabilities impact operators that are installed and managed in multiple namespaces. Operators that are installed and managed in a single namespace maintain their existing behavior in the console.

What’s In Store for Operators?

Toggling between “All namespaces” and “Current namespace only” is one of the latest enhancements made to the OpenShift Web Console’s operator UI, but certainly not the last. We are working on more improvements, including streamlined forms for creating operands and the ability to delete operands when uninstalling an operator, to help keep clusters tidy.

If you would like to try out this new feature, or if you are just getting started with OpenShift, visit Try OpenShift to get instant access to a cluster.

And, as always, we want to connect with users like you. Learn more about what the OpenShift design team is up to on our OpenShift Design site, and be sure to catch us on the OpenShift Twitch channel.