### Problem to Solve We have heard multiple times from Ops and DevOps personas that they use Slack to collaborate during a fire-fight because it is easy to use and everyone is familiar with it, but it does not offer the storage of historical reference that GitLab comments do. We want to integrate with Slack and create an intuitive set of functionality that enables users to capture series of events and discussions that happen in Slack on a GitLab issue. **Problems** 1. Users need a chat tool to collaborate during a fire-fight. It needs to be closely integrated with the GitLab issue to minimize context/tool switching. It needs to enable easy communication and be familiar/intuitive to use 1. Users need a record of discussions/events to review after the fact. These need to be captured on the GitLab issue in a consumable/searchable format. ##### Why don't we use GitLab issue comments?! GitLab issue comments are great for async collaboration. They do not support real-time synchronous collaboration. We do not want to invest (right now) in making GitLab comments suitable for real-time collaboration because: * It would be a huge effort to re-work GitLab comments to enable synchronous collaboration * This effort would disrupt all Users and other Stage groups that depend upon issue comments. We would need extensive cross-team collaboration to achieve which would lengthen time to customer value * Slack is widely used and accepted as the best ChatOps tool * We can iteratively build out an integration with Slack to solve the customer problem detailed above and deliver value to customers immediately * An integration with Slack will be useful to users of other Stage groups, not just Monitor ### User Research A full summary of UX research can be found [here](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/issues/223). Relevant findings are summarized below. Interviewees included 5 SMB customers and 4 Enterprise customers. * [5/5 SMB customers use chat tools during a firefight- 4 used Slack, 1 user Mattermost](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/uxr_insights/issues/497) * [3/5 SMB customers directly requested an integration with a chat tool](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/uxr_insights/issues/515) * [3/5 SMB customers expressed the need to review incidents after the fact to improve systems, processes, workflows](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/uxr_insights/issues/521) * 4/4 enterprise customers use a chat tool as part of the fire-fighting process (3/4 used Slack, 1/4 used Jaber) * 4/4 enterprise customers review old incidents to understand what happened and to fix current ones ### Intended Users [Sasha the Software Developer](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#sasha-software-developer) [Devon the DevOps Engineer](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#devon-devops-engineer) [Sidney the Systems Administrator](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#sidney-systems-administrator) ### Proposal [User Journey's for Slack](https://app.mural.co/t/gitlab2474/m/gitlab2474/1563486724782/1bfc29946a6c6e38e8ec55e81489f53421bd86b1) *The following list captures solution ideas that have not be validated.* - Mapping between issue comments and gitlab comments - Slack slash commands that let a user add a gitlab comment to an issue - Create new thread in slack for new incidents - User mapping between Slack and GitLab - Automatically archive thread in Slack after inactivity or addition of label to incident in GitLab