Skip to content

[Feature flag] Rollout of stop_welcome_redirection

Current status - 2025-06-17

Enabled for 100% of users in production as of 2025-03-14

Investigation ongoing https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/520090

Summary

This issue is to roll out the feature on production, that is currently behind the stop_welcome_redirection feature flag.

Owners

  • Most appropriate Slack channel to reach out to: #g_acquisition
  • Best individual to reach out to: @dstull

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

Users will no longer be trapped in redirection loops with the welcome step during user registartion/onboarding.

What can go wrong and how would we detect it?

Users in onboarding will get trapped in onboarding.

Rollout Steps

Note: Please make sure to run the chatops commands in the Slack channel that gets impacted by the command.

Rollout on non-production environments

  • Verify the MR with the feature flag is merged to master and has been deployed to non-production environments with /chatops run auto_deploy status https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/183899
  • Enable the feature globally on non-production environments with /chatops run feature set stop_welcome_redirection true --dev --pre --staging
  • Verify that the feature works as expected in staging.
    • Perform a new user sign up. Ensure redirection if another url is tried during the welcome page works as expected and after onboarding force redirection stops.
  • If the feature flag causes end-to-end tests to fail, disable the feature flag on staging to avoid blocking deployments.
    • See #e2e-run-staging Slack channel and look for the following messages:
      • test kicked off: Feature flag stop_welcome_redirection has been set to true on **gstg**
      • test result: This pipeline was triggered due to toggling of stop_welcome_redirection feature flag

For assistance with end-to-end test failures, please reach out via the #s_developer_experience Slack channel. Note that end-to-end test failures on staging-ref don't block deployments.

Specific rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production must be executed in the #production Slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's Slack channel.

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary with /chatops run auto_deploy status https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/183899
  • Depending on the type of actor you are using, pick one of these options:
    • For user-actor: /chatops run feature set --user=dstull stop_welcome_redirection true
      • also do this for a new user just finishing account verification step.
  • Verify that the feature works for the specific actors.
    • Perform a new user sign up. Ensure redirection if another url is tried during the welcome page works as expected and after onboarding force redirection stops.
    • Ensure for an already existing account, there is no change in navigation.

Preparation before global rollout

  • Set a milestone to this rollout issue to signal for enabling and removing the feature flag when it is stable.
  • Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall Slack alias.

Global rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production must be executed in the #production Slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's Slack channel.

  • Rollout the feature on production.
    • 50%: /chatops run feature set stop_welcome_redirection 50 --actors.
    • 100%: /chatops run feature set stop_welcome_redirection true
    • Between every step wait for at least 15 minutes and monitor the appropriate graphs on https://dashboards.gitlab.net.
  • After the feature has been 100% enabled, wait for at least one day before releasing the feature.

Release the feature

After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.

You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.

  • Create a merge request to remove the stop_welcome_redirection feature flag. Ask for review/approval/merge as usual. The MR should include the following changes:
    • Remove all references to the feature flag from the codebase.
    • Remove the YAML definitions for the feature from the repository.
  • Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone.
  • Once the cleanup MR has been deployed to production, clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production channel: /chatops run feature delete stop_welcome_redirection --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref --production
  • Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled on production by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set stop_welcome_redirection false
  • Disable the feature flag on non-production environments:
/chatops run feature set stop_welcome_redirection false --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref
  • Delete feature flag from all environments:
/chatops run feature delete stop_welcome_redirection --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref --production
Edited by Doug Stull