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Direct Transfer - Placeholder users not displaying when navigating via 'Members added' tile

Summary

After a Direct Transfer import, Placeholder users are created on the destination and top-level group owners will typically navigate to the Members section to begin the reassignment of users.

When navigating to the Members page via the left-hand side navigation panel -> Placeholders tab, the behavior is as expected.

However, when navigating via the 'Members added' tile at the top of the group's main landing page -> Placeholders tab, an error is returned with the error message "There was a problem fetching placeholder users", and the list of Placeholder users are not displayed ("No results found").

This behavior is present on Self-managed as well as Gitlab.com (on .com the error message is slightly different, but effectively the same outcome). I have not been able to test this on Dedicated but I presume it would be the same.

Steps to reproduce

The steps below assume that Placeholder users have already been created on a destination instance after a Direct Transfer import.

  1. Navigate to the top-level group on the destination.
  2. Click on the 'Members added' tile above the list of Subgroups and projects.
  3. Click on 'Placeholders'
  4. Error message appears as described above and list of Placeholder users are not returned.

Example Project

On Gitlab.com: https://gitlab.com/groups/gl-demo-premium-fabiankoh

What is the current bug behavior?

When navigating via the 'Members added' tile at the top of the group's main landing page -> Placeholders tab, an error is returned with the error message "There was a problem fetching placeholder users", and the list of Placeholder users are not displayed ("No results found").

What is the expected correct behavior?

The group owners should be able to see the list of Placeholder users.

Relevant logs and/or screenshots

On Gitlab.com:

Screenshot 2025-02-11 at 2.19.11 PM.png

On a self-managed instance:

Screenshot 2025-02-11 at 2.20.10 PM.png

Navigating from the top level group landing page:

Screenshot 2025-02-11 at 2.21.02 PM.png

Output of checks

This bug happens on GitLab.com

Results of GitLab environment info

Expand for output related to GitLab environment info 

(For installations with omnibus-gitlab package run and paste the output of: \\\`sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:env:info\\\`) (For installations from source run and paste the output of: \\\`sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:env:info RAILS_ENV=production\\\`)

Results of GitLab application Check

Expand for output related to the GitLab application check 

(For installations with omnibus-gitlab package run and paste the output of: \`sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check SANITIZE=true\`) (For installations from source run and paste the output of: \`sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:check RAILS_ENV=production SANITIZE=true\`) (we will only investigate if the tests are passing)

Possible fixes