GitLab Incubation Engineering - Latest, 7 Jul 2023

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From YouTube: Incubation Engineering - Service Desk - June 2023 Showcase

Description

In the June showcase we walk you through the Service Desk custom email settings page workflow, the current development and state of the feature, and the plan to release it in Beta in 16.3 or 16.4. We also talk about `service_desk_email` and why we renamed it in the documentation to "additional Service Desk alias email".

Showcase-Issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/incubation-engineering/service-desk/meta/-/issues/14

Find all videos in the playlist of the Service Desk SEG:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL05JrBw4t0KoB04jd7TCRs9AHOms3hVsZ

You can find all resources on the Service Desk SEG handbook page :
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/incubation/service-desk/

Please subscribe to this GitLab issue if you would like to receive notifications for all future updates:
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/incubation-engineering/service-desk/meta/-/issues/3

Additionally, you may have a look at the feature exploration issue:
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/incubation-engineering/service-desk/meta/-/issues/2

If you want to learn more about Incubation Engineering at GitLab, please visit
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/incubation/

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:30 Service Desk documentation
1:40 Service Desk custom email
4:42 Goals

A

Hi, my name is Mark I'm, an incubation engineer here at gitlab, and this is the June showcase for the service test single engineer group.

A

So our goal is to provide a complete customer support, solution that integrates with the gitlab ecosystem and brings customers, support staff and developers closer together, and my current focus is the custom email address feature in our documentation for service desk. We refer to serviced as the email as custom email, which is not really correct, because we are currently implementing real custom email addresses for service desk. We need to refine the language we use here. So technically you can use incoming email for all email, adjusting features service.

A

Desk email was added to allow self-managed customers and additional Alias email address for service desk email intake.

A

For example, you can use a subdomain and configure a catch-all email address like something at support.example.com to make the local part shorter or even customize the minus issue- minus suffix in the end, but it's actually not a custom email address because it still generates an email address based on the project path and only allows to customize the end part of the suffix.

A

So we ended up with the new name additional service desk, Alias email, which is longer but better describes. What it is. The documentation has been updated a few days ago and reflects that change. Let's talk about custom email, we successfully completed email verification, which is part two of custom email address for service desk, and now we are piecing everything together and at the settings page view app and new endpoints to create, update and delete a custom email address right now. The new Services, we'll use for the controller actions are in review.

A

Let me demonstrate the workflow in the view app. The app is still a work in progress and some texts will probably change. You can find it on the general settings page under the service desk section.

A

But let's talk about the idea. First, you have an email address that you'd like to use for your service desk. In my case, that's fat juice, official gmail.com.

A

Please make sure your service provider supports sub, addressing and preserves the original from header. For example, you can check for sub addressing by sending an email to you. In my case, let's say: fetches official, plus one or plus anything the mail should make its way into your inbox. Only then you'll be able to use the current implementation.

A

You then set up email forwarding from your email address to the more longest email address configured for your service desk project and then you'll provide SMTP credentials. So we can send emails on your behalf now we'll enter the email address I already did it confirm that we set up email, forwarding and enter the SMTP credentials after that we can save the data and Trigger the verification process.

A

So what happens in the background we'll try to send an email using your SMTP credentials to your email address with the sub addressing part and the verification token, and then we'll try to process it.

A

If we cannot send emails on your behalf, the process will probably fail immediately if we encounter an error with a forwarding from header or the token it may take a while. We wait a maximum of 30 minutes until we Mark the verification process as failed, but you can always reset everything at any time. The app will call for changes every 8 seconds, so you can leave the Page open and wait for updates screen if the verification was successful. Now you can toggle the use of the custom email ads anytime.

A

If you want to change the settings, you have to reset the data and start over again.

A

Let me quickly show you how the error stick looks like I'll enter a definitely wrong password.

A

If the verification fail for some reason that will show you the reason and NATO probably also a description, um you cannot edit the data in the database, but you need to reset everything and start over again. If you didn't leave the page, the app still knows the original data you provided, so you don't have to start from scratch. I am out of office in the second half of July, so these are my goals for the 16.3 release.

A

I'd like to complete the settings page app and began endpoints for custom email address and also add viable documentation for custom email address.

A

So people on that explore the feature know what they're doing I'd, also like to release custom email address in beta in 16.3 for self-managed behind the feature flag, which is turned off by default and then probably in 16.4, where it defaults to on what is a beta beta, is non-production ready, but is unlikely to change drastically before its release in general availability and I hope to get lots of feedback from our fellow users. That's it for me for today take care and see you soon.