Allow Group Templates to use Groups outside of itself
Release notes
In previous Gitlab versions, you could configure Projects templates for a Group by specifying one of its own Sub-group. This works well when Groups are autonomous, but not when you want to share projects across multiple ones.
Now, when selecting a Sub-Group to use as Group's Projects Templates, you can also pick from generally available Groups or Subgroups outside of the current Group.
Problem to solve
As a DevOps engineer, I want to be able to provide common resources and templates to all the development teams. However, Instance wide templates may not be suited, since many teams could need to use templates for a similar project ("Python API" for example) but with some variations depending on the entity they belong to. Each team having its own group, I want to be able to maintain a hierarchy of files and projects that they could pick from.
Currently, Instance-wide templates do not support Sub-groups rendering, preventing me from setting up a dedicated group with sub-groups to represent these entities. Group Project Templates could then be considered, but only use a Sub-Group under the Group we want to configure them for can be used.
I would like to be able to select as Project Templates a Group from any generally available Group so that multiple Groups could reference the same projects.
Intended users
- Parker (Product Manager)
- Delaney (Development Team Lead)
- Sasha (Software Developer)
- Priyanka (Platform Engineer)
- Ingrid (Infrastructure Operator)
- Dakota (Application Development Director)
- Alex (Security Operations Engineer)
- Cameron (Compliance Manager)
User experience goal
The Software Developer should be able to start a new Project from Template with a view limited to what should be used. Maintainers of Templates should be able to update them in a central place, and organize them in a way that each Entity is represented clealry.
Proposal
Two ways that are not mutually exclusive:
- Make Public groups available in the drop down when selecting Project Templates in a Group
- Render Sub-groups in the Instance-wide Project Templates to allow nested organization instead of the current flat one
Further details
Having the ability of creating a hierarchy of templates will improve the user experience and help them find the right template quicker, particularly when a few instance of very similar ones are represented.
Using the Built-in templates, there are currently 5 Netlify templates, all prefixed with Netlify/. It would be more intuitive and scalable to have a Netlify drop-down to list them.
Permissions and Security
Documentation
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/custom_project_templates.html#set-up-group-level-project-templates will need to be updated to reflect the changes.
Availability & Testing
Available Tier
- Premium/Silver
- Ultimate/Gold
Is this a cross-stage feature?
No