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GitLab Canary should be clearly distinguishable from GitLab Production for all users

Problem to solve

The GitLab Canary environment is a very important step in our release process.

However, it’s also very important that, as users, we know whether we’re using Canary or the main Production environment (since both using https://gitlab.com now). Currently, this is done with a change to the favicon for the page. This is however not accessible to for example colorblind users.

We rely too heavily on just color for meaning/distinction here.

Intended users

Release Managers & Production Engineers (internal customer)

Further details

Proposal

For comparison, Gitter uses a little green tag pinned to the top of the page to notify users of whether they're using Canary (known as Next) or Production:

image

Solution

  • Officially name this as GitLab next which does not confuse it with canary deployment features within GitLab.
  • A simple badge is introduced next to the logo which is also visible on mobile.
  • For switching between normal and canary functionality
    • An additional link towards next.GitLab.com is introduced in the help menu
    • This link will only be visible when viewing projects on which GitLab next applies
    • If next is turned off, the badge will simply not show
header header
Desktop image
Mobile image
Help menu option image

Permissions and Security

Documentation

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

Links / references

Edited by Dave Smith