Add regional responsibilities hours to Support Handbook

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title: Regional and Cross-Regional Workflows

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title: Cross-Region Coordination and Collaboration

category: Support Team

description: Workflows and information describing how the regions within Support coordinate and collaborate with each other

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 **************** This page is effective as of 2024-Aug-01 ****************

## Overview

Although each region within GitLab Support has its own specific responsibilities

each day, and has the freedom to manage those responsibilities in whatever ways

work best for them, the regions must also provide a consistent experience to

customers. To do that, the regions must coordinate and collaborate with each

other.

The purpose of this page is to present clearly the workflows used by the regions

in working together and all the information about regional structures that

support those workflows.

## Regional queue-related responsibilities

### Regional queue hours

During regional queue hours, Support Engineers are expected to be actively

monitoring and taking new tickets from the queue. These are hours when the

region is responsible for the queue. When two regions' hours overlap, they share

that responsibility.

### Clean queue

Each region is responsible for leaving a `clean queue` for the next region

**by the end of their regional queue hours**. A clean queue for `Region X` has

no unassigned tickets in it with a preferred region of `Region X`. Note that if

a region has a [cleanup hour](#cleanup-hour) at the end of its day, that hour

will come **after** their regional queue hours end.

### Cleanup hour

A cleanup hour is a time during which the region is **not** responsible for

taking tickets from the queue, and is instead responsible for making sure that

their end-of-day activities, such as initiating rehomes, are done.

The purpose of the cleanup hour is to make it reasonable for an SE to take a new

ticket from the queue **before cleanup hour** by having the knowledge that their

normal workday includes an hour **after their FRT responsibilities end**.

They would be able to take a new ticket even at the very last minute of

regional queue hours, and still have time to construct and send a good first

response during the "free" hour that is "cleanup time."

Cleanup hour will occur for different people in a region at different times

during the day, based on each individual's working hours. We only represent

cleanup hour in the table at the end of a region's day, with the understanding

that for all other hours, the ✅ represents both "regional queue hours" (FRT

time) and "individual cleanup hour".

### Extra capacity hour

An extra capacity hour is a time during which some Support Engineers in a

region might be working on tickets even though the region is not

officially responsible for taking new tickets from the queue. We display these

hours to help people to know when they might be able to find people working

outside of [regional queue hours](#regional-queue-hours) in other regions.

### Queue-related responsibilities schedule

This table defines the queue-related responsibilities of Support Engineers in

each region for each hour of the day. The hours are given in UTC. Each hour for

each region is marked with exactly one of the symbols defined here.

**Legend**

| Symbol | Meaning |

|--------|---------|

| ✅ | Regional queue hour |

| ✨ | Extra capacity hour - some Support Engineers might still be working on tickets |

| 🔨 | Cleanup hour |

| -- | No coverage during that hour |

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| Region | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |

|--------------|----|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|

| APAC | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | ✨ | ✨ | ✅ |

| EMEA | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅  | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| AMER | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | 🔨 |

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layout: default

title: Regional and Cross-Regional Workflows

description: Workflows specific to each region and workflows for cross-regional coordination and collaboration

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