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Deprecate internal vanity namesquatting process

GitLab Support: Process Change Rollout Plan

Deprecate internal vanity namesquatting process

The Story

As a courtesy, Support had used the namesquatting process for for GitLab team members who wanted to see if a preferred namespace was available and free it for use if it was. These requests, however, are complex and time consuming to process correctly.

In parallel, the offboarding process changed several years ago so that team members may no longer retain access to company provisioned GitLab.com accounts (unless their start date was before 2020-03-23, when the policy changed).

In other words: for most team members, vanity namespaces will not be able to be retained and the process to free them is complex. As a result, I've made the decision to deprecate this process for GitLab team members only effective immediately. Any existing requests will be completed, but no new requests will be accepted.

This does not affect the namesquatting process for customers: only GitLab team members.

What were the alternatives?

  • Continue as is: we receive several of these requests per month, but they have a low success rate.
  • Move to a different team: IT seems like a natural home, however the complexity of the process and low business value for time spent would always mean these would be lowest priority. It seemed better to close this process off than give false hope.

I have feedback!

The issue templates and handbook will point to this issue, and you're free to leave feedback. This is a two-way door decision, but I think it'll be challenging to prioritize a reversal without a business case behind it.

The Roles

Role Description
Champions @lyle
Users GitLab Support
Impacted Non-Users All GitLab Team Members

Schedule

  • Rollout to begin on 2023-05-19

Training

What do the users need to learn and how will they learn it? Do managers need to deliver training? Are there videos or tutorials or handbook pages or other materials?

No training required.

Action Plan

  1. Announce the change and include The Story in the SWIR on 2023-04-09: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/readiness/support-week-in-review/-/issues/521
  2. Post a message in the #whats-happening-at-gitlab slack channel (or other support channel as appropriate) announcing the change.
  3. Report back on change adoption, concerns, etc.

Related MRs:

Edited by Lyle Kozloff