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Ensure projects are created within a group MVC

Problem

Currently, if a SaaS user navigates to the horizontal nav and selects Menu > Projects > Create new project the project has defaults to their personal namespace in the Group/Namespace selection dropdown, rather than the group they were in when they clicked the menu item. The dropdown to change this selection is also quite subtle and most people will accept the default selection. This means the user does not get access to group features, existing users within the group cannot access it by default, and the user cannot easily upgrade the project to a paid tier as only groups can upgrade.

Related data insights can be found here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-data/product-analytics/-/issues/138#note_736747294

Solution

We should adjust the group selection dropdown that's required when creating a new project. If the user is only a member of one non-personal namespace group, then we should pre-select that non-personal group. If the user is a member of multiple groups then we should require them to select a value. The dropdown should continue to show the group options first and only show the personal namespace at the bottom of the listing indicating it as their personal namespace.

Note this will not be run as an experiment; it will be a baseline improvement we simply ship directly to the product.

Design

Current MVC MVC with error msg
Current MVC MVC-error

Required changes:

  • stop defaulting the Group/namespace dropdown to the user's namespace
  • if a user only has one group (non-personal namespace), default to that group
  • otherwise, default to the instructions in the dropdown: Pick a group or namespace
  • fix the width of the group/namespace dropdown to fill approx. 1/2 of the total width
    • we should also increase the width of the dropdown to match the width of its parent input
  • add the / between the group/namespace dropdown and the project slug input (this used to be in the UI but seems to have disappeared)
  • add form validation to the group/namespace dropdown after the user clicks the form submit button but before we actually submit the form fields to the server
    • error message: Pick a group or namespace where you want to create this project.

Potential experiences to consider

Design File

Design specs in Figma

Edited by Dallas Reedy