Drive feature usage through the Pipeline page
Problem
GitLab has many awesome features accessible from the Pipeline page, some of them are paid tier, but there’s no way to learn about those features from the Pipeline page UI.
Here's a recent Twitter thread with developer who uses GitLab that inspired me to explore the problem of discoverability of new features.
How do new CI/CD users learn about the features available?
Unfortunately most of the features that can be set up using CI/CD are not discoverable this way.
I can't discover Licenses, Code quality or Security features from the Pipeline page UI, they only become visible once you set them up/ upgrade. |
🌻 Proposal
We could surface the available features in the Pipeline Page, in the context of where they'd appear once set up.
Given the Pipeline page is already very heavy with information, we don't want to have visible tabs for features that may be of no interest to that particular developer or team. But there are still ways to surface the possibilities without adding too much noise.
For example, this is just a quick and dirty concept I explored. I wonder if anyone on our UX team (perhaps the Growth UX) have explored similar ideas. Given GitLab CI is the gateway for feature adoption, I think there's an opportunity here to be explored.
Quick idea for surfacing paid tier features in Pipeline page UI | |
The modal explains the value of the features and offers a free trial |
☝ Further considerations
- Pipeline page may not be the best place to place this trigger, we should explore other places as well (Pipeline Editor, Pipelines list page etc, places where SREs and DevOps engineers will go to).
- This would need to be coordinated with other efforts to drive feature usage via CI/CD as to avoid too many triggers.
❓ Questions
- Have we explored ways to surface features in the context of the Pipeline page in the past? Or perhaps there were other similar patterns that we could borrow from?
- Are there other pages in GitLab that could benefit from a similar pattern?
- What are ways to discover the Code Quality, Licenses and Security features that are not documentation?
- What are the steps to set up Code Quality, Licenses and Security features for someone who has a basic pipeline already? And for someone with an entirely new project?