New out-of-scope item: Basic data analyses

What is the problem?

Sometimes, customers ask for analysis/summary of data/logs that is not related to investigating a problem, but rather . We are able to do that if the customer provides the required data from their instance. However, since this approach:

1. borders on custom scripting, and
2. would be more efficient to do on the customer's side, and
3. would additionally be an SQL/Rails/Bash/API lesson,

should we continue to complete such requests?

Examples

• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/452506 (number of repo clones)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/448799 (Why are certain runner jobs slow?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/459382 (Which pipelines fail due to Sidekiq error …?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/465613 (Why is CQ slow?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/466489 (What are those CPU spikes?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/481912 (What are those workhorse 500 errors?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/483158 (What is that unexpectedly high Sidekiq queue backlog spike?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/491761 (on specific branches: number of "fix" commits & duration of certain jobs)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/505998 & https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/505143 (Which commits were pushed directly to main?)
• https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/521140 (Review GPT outputs)
• TBC

Why is this a problem?

Our docs-first approach should pay off. For example, no more tickets of a certain type of request, which is explained in the docs.

Also, the risk of cultivating customer laziness seems high for purely procedural, reporting-like tasks (as opposed to analyzing logs to understand a problem).

Proposal

Add an out-of-scope item called "Basic data analysis" and link to the various tools and guides we offer:

• /administration/logs/log_parsing
• scripts@toolbox/dotfiles
• list-slowest-job-sections
• TBC

DRI

@katrinleinweber-gtlb will act as the DRI for this issue.

Required Resources

Potential Roadblocks/Things to consider

Desired Outcome

A SoS section like the draft in support-pages!5 (merged).

What does success look like?

No more tickets requesting basic data analysis. Remaining tickets show more customer initiative.

How do we measure success?

More MRs to relevant docs pages, such as /administration/logs.

Where would future feedback go?

Here or into support-pages!5 (merged).

Related Issues/MRs/Epics/Tickets

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gitlab-OKRs/-/work_items/7306+

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