Document how to remove a primary email from an account
What
Document how to update an account's email address to a new one, make that new email address the primary address, and then remove the old email from the account to free it up.
Why
GitLab requires an email address to be unique across all accounts, so users sometimes need to free up an email address to use on a different account.
In particular users may need to free up an email address if it will be set by SSO, such as when using SAML or SCIM. When using Group Managed Accounts on GitLab.com users will sometimes see an error message that the email has been taken by their existing account, which is currently hard to work around. Ideally we'd present a user flow for updating it from there, but should document the current process until then.
Where
- This should be linked to from the Group Managed Accounts documentation
- We might want to link to this under SCIM too
Procedure
Rough steps are as follows, but should re-tried to reduced to be more certain/minimal
- Update email with new email address on 'Profile' settings page
- Add new email address to 'Emails' settings page
- Confirm new email address
- Ensure that new email is listed as primary on 'Emails' settings page
- Remove old email from 'Emails' settings page
Screen recording
The following shows a naive attempt to update email, which fails initially because the email had not been confirmed. Eventually the email update/removal works and allows Group Managed Accounts to succeed.