GitLab Global Content Updates, 15 Mar 2019

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From YouTube: Content marketing workflow in GitLab

Description

Short tutorial on how the GitLab Content Marketing team uses GitLab to manage initiatives, projects, and tasks.

A

Okay cool, so the whole purpose of this meeting is just to kind of get familiar with it lab and our.

A

Marketing workflow so I'm going to share.

A

Hopefully the right thing.

A

Yes, okay, so this is in the handbook, the marketing handbook- and these are just kind of our general marketing project management guidelines really handy reference to have, and it just kind of goes through how we organize using the project, management capabilities and get lab and so going in to get lab. There's a couple of things should know at an important distinction is to know the difference between like projects and groups, so projects can be organized within a group.

A

So if you go to the group's, we have a marketing group and then the different functions of marketing have their different projects listed here, and so the reason we do this is so that we can organize certain activity. It's at a group level that would require us to our cross functionally with other teams, but then be able to organize our actual like workload and tasks within our individual projects. So here at the group level, we have our marketing epics.

A

So if you click on here, you can see our different ethics and there is a ton of stuff in here. There's you know, events epics, there's product marketing, epics ORS, are just commits. Epics and that's what I'll filter for here and that's something to note too, is to start to get familiar with some of the labels that we have for the content. Marketing team just commit is the most importantly well right now to do that.

A

I can just search by label, so you just commit and then all the epochs around that will show up here and what's nice about. This is there's also this road map view and if you click on here, you can kind of see all the different things that we have going on and for how long and where they overlap.

A

This view, probably isn't as helpful when you're looking at everything, because there are so many epics I mean it's it's nice to kind of see, you can click into what's happening one, but it's probably gonna be easier to look at with like a label um and to filter it down, so that you can see a little bit more clearly.

B

It's weird: when I try to click on roadmap, it says something went wrong while fetching epics.

A

That's weird: alright you're I'm, assuming you're logged in mm-hmm I.

A

Mean I'll have to look into that I, don't think that you need certain permissions or anything to see the run that maybe it's just a good glitch right now. Can you think about the twist? Yes, I can okay, okay cool, so yeah I'll try to figure that out I'll talk with Jackie. She was kind of like our power user for this stuff, but going back to kind of the handbook. There is like an area right here that kind of lays out how we use issues milestones and epics.

A

You probably won't need to create epics, at least for a while, because I do kind of cover these really broad marketing initiatives and honestly I, don't even create epics that much I'd, like campaigns, team kind of takes care of that, so that might evolve a little bit. But whenever you're working on a big initiative and you're looking for information, I would always just recommend, starting with the epic we go into our UI.

A

So if you start with the epic it'll, give you a good overview and the best part about the epics is all related. Like issues are gonna be there, so it's the kind of the single source of truth, I'm. Looking for information on something, and so that's that's up X and then the other thing at the project level that you can do is you can search all issues?

A

So, if you're looking for an issue- and you can't remember- or it's not clear if it's in the corporate marketing project or a product, marketing or digital or whatever at the group level up here, you can search all issues and all projects in the group. So it's a handy way to like look for something if you're not sure where it is. Okay,.

B

A

Some other things that we use if you go into labels, this is where you can find all the different labels. There's a ton of labels in here I would really just stick to the ones that are listed in here.

A

That's how our content, marketing board is laid out. The only thing to know about labels is whenever you're, creating an issue for yourself or something that you're working on in content. Marketing is to give it a content, marketing label um and I'll kind of show you more about what I mean when we get into the issues.

A

So the last level at this group level that we organized by is through milestones, I think we have it documented in here. Let's see yeah so so epics are, you know, really big initiatives. That's might kind of be ongoing, whereas a milestone represents a unit of work to be completed within a specific time. So the way that we're using this on our team as I, have created milestones for our quarterly okay ours. So you can see content. Okay are increased, so social referral traffic.

A

Let's point out a good example, though, we'll go into so all three of our okay: ours are here as milestones and if I click into it.

A

Here, there's a start date there's a due date: it spans the quarter in the description I've written down what it is that we're going to do in order to reach this and then, when you're, creating issues. You can attach it to this. So here we can go and view issues, and these are all the issues related to that milestone.

A

So all of these issues in theory should be closed and completed by the end of the milestone and that's like really high-level via stuff, just to kind of stay organized in terms of what we're tracking toward when it comes to the milestones. I usually go in and add stuff to the milestones, but if you're working on something- and you know like this- is part of this one- it's part of increasing awareness, then you can go ahead and just add it or ping me.

A

If you have questions about it, so yeah, that's a really high level of like the group level, but getting into the actual stuff there. You have any questions.

B

I know this all looks really good to me. Cool.

A

So, let's jump into the project, so I'll go back to the group, so we can look at all of them, so the main project you're going to be working in is corporate marketing, so click into that, and so once we've clicked into this project, all of the issues are going to be specific to this project. So you won't be able to find things in other projects when you're at the corporate marketing project level, and so here you'll, you know you'll want to go to the issues.

A

If you just click on it, it brings you to a list. This isn't the most helpful view. I hardly ever go into just this list view unless I, like really don't know where to find something. I just know it's in this project and I'll start to search your filter for it, but most of time I'm going to go to the boards.

A

And so the dozens for you, but for me it's gonna, it's defaulting to the Content Marketing Board, which is great for us when you can see that on this board we have those labels that are in our handbook, status plan, work in progress, review and scheduled, and so something to know about this board is that it Auto populates. So if you create a new issue, let's do that. Let's go create a new issue.

A

Got test issue: this is a test issue I'm using markdown to create a header. Now I need a list most one plus two plus three, and we can preview it. You have these check box lists now. If we want, we can make it confidential, we could assign it to me, give it a due date. I'm, not gonna, add it to a milestone, but this is like where, if you knew what milestone it was you just quickly add it?

A

We always want to make sure that if we're doing content marketing, it has a content, marketing label, and so let's say this is just an idea and nobody's agreed to work on it, and we need to just talk about it. We're gonna give it that status plan. We don't use the way, submit the issue and because we gave it those two labels. When we go back to our board.

A

That's going to automatically be there.

A

The one thing with these labels to watch out for is, if we are like. Okay, we have our test issue. We can see it's due tomorrow. Let's move to the top we're ready to work on it, so we move it over here, doing that will change the label, but if you're, actually in the issue- and let's say it was in plan- and you want to change it- to status, work in progress, you have to remove the previous label and add the new one, because if you just add the new one it'll have both labels.

A

Does that make sense. Yeah.

B

So if you're in the issue, that's how you would change it, but if you're in the board, you don't have to do that or do you have to do that when you go back into the issue, know.

A

As you move it in the board, it will automatically remove the label from the previous column, but it won't do that in here, and so that's.

A

Another thing to know about that, like the issue will kind of dig into this issue of you know we can go in and edit this description anytime. You have like your basic editor tools up here.

A

This issue description, section, response to markdown I, can find a link for all of the markdown stuff, but essentially like this double hash tag gives you an h1, so I might call this. Like you know, details here are the details and then maybe like under details. I want to have like two dues, and then it would format like that.

A

You can kind of keep going on forever to use.

A

So they'll give you that hierarchy and then there's also up here, there's a couple of templates. So those issues that you're already assigned to are all using this blog post template. So if I know I'm going to use a blog post, I can just go up here, choose this preview it and it's like all there and it's gonna automatically give it those two labels.

A

So that's a good one to know about I, don't know that you'll really use any of these other ones. For now, um webpage update, that's one, and this is if you're going to go to. You know an update to a webpage.

A

You would use this label, you would start answering these questions and then it's going to label it also design, so that Luke and Eric are pulled into the conversation. But you don't have to use templates.

A

You can create an issue for just about anything. If you have an idea about something and you want to discuss it, just create an issue. You can either link to a doc. Where you put your thoughts together, you can lay them out in the issue description.

A

It's really up to you.

A

Any questions about creating an issue.

B

No, this looks good to me, cool.

A

And I can't actually delete this issue so I'm going to close it once we're done like that, um let's see yeah so.

B

Is that usually the case where, once you open an issue, you can't delete it, or is it just for this one? Okay,.

A

Yeah you can, you have to just close it, and the reason for that is because everything is like version controlled, so you're not gonna, just like delete something and like delete that history, I kind of wish you could delete, sometimes because we have no use for this, but it doesn't matter. It's gone to the closed issue section and like I mean it's not going to clutter anything up for us.

B

Okay, that's good.

A

Yeah, so that's you know another board that I made was the just commit campaign and I made this board by just filtering. So you can see here it says edit board. So when I created this new board, I gave it this name and I scoped it. So this board only includes things that have the label just commit and it still uses the same project workflow labels, but it's only gonna pull in issues. I have that just commit label and that's actually how the content marketing board works as well.

A

It only pulls in issues that have content marketing corporate events probably works. Similarly, there's a little different social board also works the same way. These all have a social label and then where it might start to get a little bit. Tricky is if you need to create an issue in another project, so issues that belong in corporate marketing or like issues up the corporate marketing team are working on. So there are sometimes I need things from another team.

A

So a good example of this I needed reporting from the digital team, so I went into the digital marketing programs.

A

Project now and I.

A

Created this issue because I needed some metrics and maybe there's some help with a reporting dashboard. So even though I need it and I'm requesting the work and it's to help me, the digital team is going to actually do the work.

A

They actually pulled up the reports and me that things happen same thing with like if I needed something from product marketing that I needed them to work on, so that I think you might work I would go into their project and create that and I would cross link, though so, if I had an issue in a corporate marketing, that I was working on and I ran into something where I needed something from product marketing go create that issue and their project and then right here in related issues, you can just add and then paste the link.

A

So you can connect and link issues across projects in our group.

B

B

A

Think other that that's kind of it that's kind of like a high-level yeah and a little bit of a deep dive. I mean, as you start, to get in and start creating issues and stuff. You'll pick it up, but that's generally how we organize things.

B

Okay and what's with these thumbs-up thumbs-down.

A

You mean these mm-hmm.

B

A

Is just it's like a social feature of gitlab? Okay,.

B

A

So, like I created, the hood see who thumbs up it Rebecca so Rebecca's like yeah great, like I, really need this or she's acknowledging that she saw this she's, probably more so acknowledging like yay for this issue. Okay, so you know this exists because get lab is an open source project and people contribute to our product, so they I am a coder and I want to propose a new feature. Forget lab and I go into that project and they propose this feature.

A

Other people in the community can come in and like thumbs up or thumbs down, and then I was like they get lab product person. I can use that to decide like. Should we create this from I mean I, don't really know if they use it that way.

A

I'm assuming you'll see this a lot of my people, ops issues where we're talking about somewhat like controversial things, yeah, and if somebody brings something up or they're like hey I, noticed this thing and it's not right and we need to fix it, but in like 50 people thumbs up. That issue looks like kind of an indication of people off so like this is a really big deal and we need to pick this okay, but you can also add anything like if I love this issue or like I was like yeah.

A

This was great and I can paint it, and we can do that yeah and then I can take them away. Okay,.

B

Okay, cool I didn't know if they searched some kind of like larger function of like like thumbs down. We don't need this or you know something.

A

Like that I mean you could thumb something down if you thought it was a bad idea. Okay,.

B

um Yeah, it is uh what a service desk I've seen that and I am not exactly sure like. Where is service? Does it's right under issues under labels.

A

So I'm pretty sure this, it's not something that we use per marketing- okay, cool, um but essentially it's like a feature of gitlab where you could hook this up to, like your customer relationship meant and if somebody sounds like a support email, it would populate as an issue. Okay here I believe this is like a functionality that I think is that we have, but is somewhat lightweight, but there should be documentation around it. So you could learn more about it. If you want okay,.

B

Nice I saw like email automatically becomes like issue and I was like. Oh, is this how like unique issues from emails or something? But no, you answered my question.

A

Go back and the reason so you'll see at the project level, though, there's also milestones and let me double check to make sure that's right, there's no milestones and the corporate marketing project and the reason that I do that, but I organize. Even our content milestones at the group level is because of the cross-functional nature of our work.

A

So if I made a milestone in the corporate marketing project and say that we open an issue in digital marketing, as as part of this milestone, we're marching toward I couldn't connect it because it wasn't in different project so milestones and labels. We try to always create at the group level so that we can cross link across all of the projects. Okay,.

A

Yeah I think it was like a super high level look and, like I said once you get in and start creating issues of your own you'll be it'll, feel a lot more. You know familiar.

B

A

Actually I mean if you wanted, like maybe between now and next week, maybe there's like an idea that you have, or you want to create an issue with like they like. What's the word I'm looking for like observations, you've made in your first.

B

A

Lap or something like that, and if you want to do that and play around with it and you can like @mention me on it and I might be anyway,.

B

A

B

And if I, so, if I'm, creating an issue where I like imagine a campaign or something like that, what I want to make it at the like project level and then like check with you and like assign the right labels to it or what I need to create it at like the group level or like if I wanted, to bring in other teams? What I just like check with you first or how does that usually work? If.

A

You're creating an issue: it's gonna typically be at the project level. That's probably gonna be in corporate marketing if it's something that you're working on, but that doesn't mean that other people won't collaborate with you. So, let's see, if I can find a good.

A

So reengagement nurture. This is something that I worked on with Agnes. You can see. Agnes is even assigned to this, even though she's not in corporate marketing urs I'd do this together, which one which one is this. It's called reengagement nurtured, okay,.

B

A

So this is in the corporate marketing, because this issue was for writing the copy for this nurture truck.

A

But if you scroll down into the comments you can see, Agnes and I are going back and forth quite a lot, so we're still collaborating I needed her input. But this issue, specifically the task that's being worked on in this issue- was writing copy. So that's why it's here and you'll see what's another good one.

A

Oh man, social board, that's why I'm confused.

A

So if we go into this white paper, Erica was writing this white paper, which is why it's in our handbook, but you can see that she looped in Jason who's a product person and they're going back and forth Brendon who's.

A

Also a product is commenting with feedback on it, she's coordinating with me, so you can pull in as many people as you want into an issue from all the different kinds of teams to have a discussion and give you back an input, but in terms of like, where you're putting it just thinking about who's, actually doing the work. Mm-Hmm.

B

B

Now, all of this makes a lot of sense, because when I first started getting into gitlab, you showed me the boards and so I've been playing around looking at those, but this makes it a lot more manageable awesome.

A

I'm glad to hear that and yeah like as soon as you start getting into the like actual work, cuz you're like onboarding and all of this stuff and as you start to get into like the flow and then workflow and stuff, like that, you'll pick it up pretty quickly. I! Think, okay,.

A

Anything else, any other like big questions or small questions, any kinds of questions.

B

What you think I think I'm going to learn a lot. You know just kind of as I do and everybody's been so receptive if I've had questions like Erica and William, especially so I feel like I'm gonna, learn a lot as I go, but I think this gives me the good big big picture on how to create issues how to manage these boards. How to go through like the workflow of working on something. So I think this looks good.