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Draft: Project Topics: let's give a boost

🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖 requested to merge ogolowinski/workspace_340920 into master

Team members for review and approval: Engineer(s): @wwwjon | Product Marketing: @cblake | Tech Writer: @fneill | Product Designer(s): @ProductDesigners

Engineering Manager to merge when the feature is deployed and enabled: @dennis @mksionek

Important note on tier labels: Until further notice, due to change management reasons, please leverage label core to indicate 'free' tier in all code and templates.

Please review the guidelines for content block creation at https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/release-posts/#content-blocks. They are frequently updated, and everyone should make sure they are aware of the current standards (PM, PMM, EM, and TW). There are separate (and slightly different) templates for primary and secondary features, bugs, removals, and upgrade notes. Please make sure to use the right template!

Please be aware deprecations follow a different process in a different project and you should not be using this MR template unless you are making edits to a release post prior to 14.4.

Links

  • Feature Issue (required): gitlab-org/gitlab#340920 (closed)
  • Pricing theme MR (required for primary features only)
  • Feature MR (optional):
  • Feature Flag Issue (optional):

Key dates

  • By the 10th: PMs should draft/submit for review ALL release post item content, whether they are feature or recurring blocks, earlier and no later than the 10th of the month.
  • By the 16th: All required TW reviews as well as any optional PMM and PM Director/Group Manager reviews and resulting revisions should get done no later than the 16th of the month.
  • By the 17th: Release post items need to be marked with the Ready label in order to be merged for the current release post.
  • By end of day 17th: EMs will merge RP items with the Ready label by the end of day 11:59PM PT on the 17th. Any MRs merged into master after 11:59PM PDT will not make the release post and need to follow this process:

If you need to make a change or addition to a release post item after 11:59PM PT on the 17th, open a new MR targeting the release-X-Y branch and assign to the Release Post Manager, with @mention of the lead Tech Writer and PMM. Please do not re-target the existing MR. It is important you follow the instructions on how to create a new MR to the release X-Y branch in adding/removing content blocks after the 18th. It's highly recommended the PM connect with the release post manager to make sure content can still be added prior to creating the new MR.

Notes: Drafting release post content well in advance of the 10th is highly recommended, so reviews/revisions can happen in a rolling fashion and not bottleneck against the 17th merge due date.

Getting ready for merge

Reminder: Make sure any feature flags have been enabled or removed!

Once all content is reviewed and complete, add the Ready label and set the Engineering Manager (EM) as the Assignee. The EM is responsible for merging as soon as the implementing feature is deployed to GitLab.com, after which this content will appear on the GitLab.com Release page and can be included in the next release post. All release post items must be merged on or before the 17th of the month. If a feature is not ready by the 17th due date, the EM should push the release post item to the next milestone.

PM release post item checklist

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Please only mark a section as completed once you performed all individual checks!

  • Set yourself as the Assignee.
  • Why? – The benefit of this feature to the user is clearly explained
    • What is the problem we are solving for the user, and how is the situation improved?
    • Be specific about the problem, using examples so that the reader can recall the last time they had that problem.
    • Be specific about the solution, using examples so that the reader can quickly understand the improvement.
    • Describe the benefits in terms of outcomes like productivity, efficiency, velocity, communication.
    • Avoid feature language, like removing a limitation, that focusses on the product and not our users.
    • Avoid assumed knowledge, assume a customer or prospect will be linked this description without context.
  • Title:
    • Length limit: 7 words (not including articles or prepositions). Exceptions may be allowed by the Release Post Manager or the Messaging Lead.
    • Don't use Markdown `code` formatting in the title, as it doesn't render correctly.
  • Content:
    • Make it clear if it is a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature.
    • If your item is a deprecation, upgrade or removal reference the appropriate section in the release-posts handbook page for guidance.
    • Make sure your content is reasonably aligned with guidance in Writing about features
    • Check title is in sentence case, and feature and product names are in capital case.
    • Run the content through an automated spelling and grammar check.
    • Validate all links are functional and have meaningful text for SEO (e.g., "click here" is bad link text).
  • Images and Video:
    • Screenshot or video is included (required for all changes with a visible UI component). Consider preferring a speed run video since this will showcase your feature better, and also serve as a functional test to validate that it actually works as expected.
    • Check that the image follows the image guidelines. It should be less than 150kb, and minimizes empty space. You may need to make your browser window smaller before taking the screenshot to bring UI elements closer together, or crop the image afterwards.
    • Check if the image shadow is applied correctly. Add image_noshadow: true when an image already has a shadow.
    • Ensure the videos added to the frontmatter use /embed, not /watch, URLs (e.g. https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/eH-GuoqlweM) more info here.
    • Ensure that the YouTube link points to the https://www.youtube-nocookie.com domain as this will allow the video to render in the review app correctly.
    • Ensure videos and iframes added within the feature description are wrapped in <figure class="video_container"> tags (for responsiveness).
    • Clean up video captions; auto-generated captions often mangle technical terms.
    • Remove any remaining instructions (comments).
  • Frontmatter:
    • Check feature availability frontmatter (available_in:) is correct: (Core, Premium, Ultimate). Make sure to set gitlab_com: false when the feature isn't available for GitLab.com users. Settings are also available for features only available for GitLab.com users.
    • Check documentation link points to the latest docs (documentation_link:), and includes the anchor to the relevant section on the page if possible. If documentation is not yet available/merged for the feature in question, you may use a placeholder or use the link where the documentation will be added (often the engineer and tech writer know this ahead of time). Be sure to update this placeholder prior to publication if you do not use the final link.
    • Check that documentation is updated, very clearly talks about the feature (mentions it by the same name consistently in all resources).
    • Check that all links to about.gitlab.com content are relative URLs.
  • For any top or primary features:
    • Be sure to include or revise the features.yml file as needed, as described in the Handbook
    • Be sure to label your MR release post itemprimary to help the Messaging Lead find and review it for the release post. (Note that if your MR was auto-generated through your feature issue, you can skip this step)
  • Add Reviewers: Once the above are complete, add the Tech Writer, PMM, and Group Manager or Director as Reviewers.

Pricing theme updates for primary features

Initiating a pricing theme for new primary features is required as part of the release post workflow. However, since review/alignment on this may take longer than the release post allows, please follow these steps to de-couple timeline dependencies:

  • Reference Pricing Themes and choose the relevant pricing theme
  • Raise an MR to update the pricing theme field in features.yml
    • Set the subject to Add feature name of feature to name of pricing theme
    • Add labels: Pricing Theme and Product Operations
  • Add the following stakeholders as Reviewers and ask them for explicit Approval
    • your PMM counterpart
    • the Marketing team DRI @supadhyaya
    • your direct manager
    • After the Marketing team DRI has approved, you can merge the MR

Review

When the above is complete and the content is ready for review, it should be reviewed by Tech Writing and can be reviewed by Product Marketing, Product Design, and the Product Leader for this area. Please use the [Reviewers for Merge Requests(https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/merge_requests/getting_started#reviewer)] feature in GitLab when adding PM Director/Group Manager, PMM, TW and Product Design team members for content reviews.** Reviewers will then approve the MR and remove themselves from Reviewers when their review is complete.

Tech writer review

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Once added as a Reviewer to this merge request, the technical writer designated to the corresponding DevOps stage/group will perform their review according to the criteria described below.

Please only mark a section as completed once you performed all individual checks! When your review is complete, please approve this MR and remove yourself from Reviewers.

  • Feature:
    • If the feature is listed as top or primary (not secondary), as described in the Handbook, review changes (as needed) to features.yml. Make sure it's associated with the appropriate stage and group.
  • Image:
    • All top and primary features require an image (png, jpg, or gif format).
    • Make sure the image (png, jpg, or gif) is smaller than 150 KB, if included.
  • Video:
    • Use the /embed/ YouTube URL path and not ?watch= parameter.
    • Ensure the PM has reviewed the captions for clarity.
  • Title:
    • Length limit: 7 words (not including articles or prepositions).
    • Capitalization: ensure the title is sentence cased.
    • No Markdown `code` formatting in the title, as it doesn't render correctly.
  • Consistency:
    • Ensure that all resources (docs, release post, features.yml when applicable, etc.) refer to the feature with the same term / feature name.
    • Review feature availability frontmatter (available_in:) for consistency with the documentation: (Core, Premium, Ultimate), and features.yml if applicable.
  • Documentation and Content:
    • Review the post and documentation for consistency. If the post says "we've added feature X", the documentation should describe something about feature X.
    • Review the content. Make sure it accurately describes the feature based on your understanding. Look for typos or grammar mistakes. Work with PM and PMM to ensure a consistent GitLab style and tone for messaging, based on other features and release posts.
    • Review use of whitespace and bullet lists. Will the release post item be easily scannable when published? Consider adding line breaks or breaking content into bullets if you have more than a few sentences.
    • Make sure there aren't acronyms readers may not understand per https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#writing-style-guidelines
      • Note: if you are unsure whether the docs were updated, check the file history looking for a recent update. If you don't find any, check with the PM. If the docs are missing (or unclear, confusing), ask the PM to request the dev who shipped the feature for an MR updating it asap and make sure to review it. If required docs changes are minor, you can choose to do it yourself to speed things up.
  • Links:
    • Make sure the linked issue_url is correct.
    • Ensure the documentation_link links to the correct document and anchor, and is wrapped in single quotes.
    • Verify that all links and anchors work as intended. Do not link to the H1 (top) anchor on a docs page. Links should not redirect. Links to pages within about.gitlab.com are given by the relative path, not absolute.
    • documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/#amazing' is wrapped in single quotes and name: "Lorem ipsum" wrapped in double quotes.
  • Code. Make sure any included code is wrapped in code blocks.
  • Capitalization. Make sure to capitalize feature names. Stay consistent with the Documentation Style Guidance on Capitalization.
  • Blank spaces. Remove unnecessary spaces (end of line spaces, double spaces, extra blank lines, and lines with only spaces).
  • Notes:
    • The documentation is part of GitLab's DoD. A feature is not consider done while there's no documentation for it.
    • If there's something missing from the checklist above, you can request further action for PMs or other team members before approving this MR. You can remove yourself from Reviewers while there's nothing immediate for you to do, but request to be added as a Reviewer once the missing tasks are done so you can double-check and approve the MR.
    • Once all your review items have been checked, approve the merge request, check your checkbox in the review checklist above, and remove yourself from Reviewers. Your job is done!

PMM review

PMM Review is Optional

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Please only mark this section as completed once you performed all individual checks! When your review is complete, please approve this MR and remove yourself from Reviewers.

  • PMM review
    • problem/solution: Does this describe the user pain points (problem) as well as how the new feature removes the paint points (solves the problem)?
    • short/pithy: Is this communicated clearly with the fewest words possible?
    • tone clarify: Is the language and sentence structure clear and grammatically correct?
    • technical clarity: Does the description of the feature make sense for various audiences, including folks who are not deeply familiar with GitLab?
    • Check/copyedit all your content blocks (including links/images)
    • If you think any features should change from primary to secondary, add a suggestion to the release post item and ping the PM owner to review.
    • Check/copyedit features.yml

EM release post item checklist

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  • Set at least one code MR as a blocker for this MR by going to Edit > Merge request dependencies. Setting a code blocker improves clarity, and prevents premature merge. If no feature MR exists, go to the most relevant issue and click "Create merge request" to create an empty merge request. Use the [feature flag rollout issue(https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/new?issuable_template=Feature%20Flag%20Roll%20Out) if one exists.
  • When this MR is labeled as Ready and assigned to you:
    • Confirm the feature is in the release. Be aware that merging code to master "does not guarantee that the feature will be in the m release" (source). If in doubt, you should confirm the feature commits are in the x-y-stable-ee branch (for example, 13-12-stable-ee). If the code is not in the release or the deadline has passed, update this merge request's milestone accordingly and leave this unchecked.
    • If the feature has a feature flag, verify it is enabled by default.
    • If before 11:59PM PT on the 17th, merge this merge request to the master branch. If after that time, but you believe this should be merged late, follow the process for late additions and be sure to inform the release post manager.
Edited by Orit Golowinski

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