Originally published at: Introducing Cohorts: A Major Upgrade to Golioth's OTA System - Golioth
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Cohorts, a significant enhancement to Golioth’s Over-the-Air (OTA) update system. This new feature takes device management to the next level, offering more control, better organization, and a safer experience when deploying updates to fleets of IoT devices at scale. When we first introduced our OTA system, it allowed developers to release firmware updates to devices in the field using tags and blueprints. While this system offered flexibility and worked well for many, we’ve heard from users that, at scale, managing implicit groupings and targeting could become complex. This sometimes required extra attention to ensure updates were applied to the correct devices with the right version. Cohorts addresses these issues by introducing explicit groupings, allowing you to organize devices into defined cohorts for predictable, traceable OTA updates. What’s New with Cohorts? Explicit Device Grouping: Devices are added to cohorts based on tags or blueprints, which were previously used for targeting updates. Now, these tags and blueprints are used to form static cohorts, giving you clear, organized control over your OTA deployments. Safer User Experience: The new console UX reduces human error by showing exactly how many devices are being updated, what actions will occur, and what has happened. This added context ensures users know what will be affected, making updates more intuitive and less error-prone. For full details on how Cohorts work, visit our documentation. A New Way to Organize Artifacts: Packages Alongside Cohorts, we’re introducing Packages to manage the files that make up your OTA updates. A package represents a single upgradeable component on your device, such as firmware, AI models, or other assets. Each package has multiple versions, with each version…