Fifth Third fundamentals

Three concepts underpin every Fifth Third Edition workspace: the shelf, the batch and the release key. Understand them and you understand the whole marketplace.

The shelf

A Fifth Third shelf is a category. Four shelves exist today: Fifth Third Utilities, Fifth Third Media, Fifth Third Productivity and Fifth Third Photography. Each shelf is owned by one editor on the rotating jury. A module cannot live on two shelves at once — the editor of the receiving shelf claims ownership.

The batch

A Fifth Third batch is a week of releases. Every Wednesday morning a new batch lands with a version number: Fifth Third v1, v2, v3, v4 for the current quarter. A batch can contain new modules, updates and — occasionally — a module pulled from the shelf. The batch is the unit of change control.

The release key

The Fifth Third release key is a per-quarter code-signing key. Every module in a given quarter is signed with the same key. The workspace app pins the current release key and verifies every install against it. When the quarter rolls the release key rotates — a documented handover captured on the blog.

Putting them together

When a Fifth Third module lands on your device it is stamped with a shelf, a batch and a release-key fingerprint. All three appear on the module data sheet inside the workspace app. All three appear in the audit log. All three appear on the invoice line for the corresponding month.

If a workspace administrator can explain shelf/batch/key to a new team member in under ninety seconds, the rollout of the Fifth Third Edition to a small team goes smoothly.