A short glossary of terms used consistently across these docs and inside the dashboard. Where the dashboard's own labels differ slightly from the underlying data model, both are given so nothing feels like a mismatch when you go looking for a setting.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Organization | The tenant boundary in VCloud. Owns the apps that are installed, the members who can sign in, the plan, and the bill. Created automatically the first time you sign in. See Organizations. |
| User | Your account - an identity that can belong to more than one organization. Separate from your membership in any particular organization. |
| Member (dashboard: "User", data model: "Employee") | The link between a user and one organization: it carries the role that user holds in that organization. The dashboard's Users page is where you manage members. |
| Role | What a member can do in an organization. In practice: the person who created the organization holds ownership of it, and everyone else you invite is either an Admin or a Contributor. See Members and roles. |
| Invitation | A pending offer to join an organization with a given role, sent by email. Expires after 24 hours if not accepted. |
| App Store | The in-dashboard catalog of applications available to install. What appears there is served live from VCloud's backend, so it reflects exactly what your plan can install right now. |
| App | An application in the catalog - GitLab, Nextcloud, and so on. See The App Store. |
| Instance (also: "install", "release") | A specific running copy of an app, installed into your organization. One app can have more than one instance - see install scope below. |
| Install scope | Whether an instance belongs to the whole organization (everyone with access can use it) or to a single member (a personal instance, most relevant for developer tools like VS Code Server). |
| Deployment | An in-progress install, uninstall, start, stop, or upgrade action on an instance. Deployments run asynchronously and are tracked by a task you can poll for progress. See Deployments. |
| Instance state | Where an instance currently is in its lifecycle: installing, running, stopped, upgrading, in error, and so on. See App lifecycle and states. |
| Quota | The resource allowance (compute, memory, storage) your plan grants your organization, and how much of it is currently in use. |
| Plan | Your organization's subscription tier - Starter, Business, or Scale - which determines how much compute you have, how many apps you can install, your uptime commitment, backup retention, and support level. See Plans. |
| Entitlement | The record of what your current plan and subscription status actually unlock. This is what gates access day to day, not the plan name by itself - a plan that has lapsed on payment stops entitling new installs even though its name hasn't changed. |
| Identity provider (IdP) | The external account you sign in with - Google or GitLab. VCloud does not offer password-based sign-in. See Single sign-on. |
| Audit log | The organization's record of who did what and when - membership changes, app lifecycle events, and similar activity. |