GitLab Incubation Engineering - Latest, 6 Jan 2023

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From YouTube: Incubation Engineering - Service Desk - Update 2

Description

This is the second update video for the GitLab Service Desk Single Engineer Group. Marc gives a short summary of the first update, presents the first MR for customisable email addresses and a task breakdown for the work ahead.

Showcased Merge Request: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/108017
Feature Flag rollout issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/387003
Update-Issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/incubation-engineering/service-desk/meta/-/issues/6

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
0:15 Update 1 summary
0:43 First MR for customisable email address
2:22 Task breakdown

A

Hi, it's Mark I'm the single engineer group for gitlab service desk, and this is update number two.

A

So I'd like to give you a very short summary of opted one I, provided you a vision for GitHub service desk and I, presented a solution path for customizable email addresses so put in a nutshell: users set up their custom email address to forward all emails to the service desk email address and provide SMTP credentials, so we can send emails on their behalf. This way, customer seeking support will only see the custom email address in their communication. I'm.

A

Currently working on this first merge request: custom email address foundations, the part of just using the SMTP credential and sending service desk emails via those settings. Let's just jump in that adds some database fields to service desk settings, which is the storage place for all service desk, related options for project.

A

So we can save the custom email, for instance whether the setting is enabled and the SMTP Fields like address, which is the host the port number username and the password. It uses two Fields because it's an encrypted attribute- and we also have a feature flag here which will be turned off by default until the feature is complete and deployed and tested. Internally, you can also subscribe to this rollout issue and to just showcase the basic functionality, so we basically just overwriting the default delivery methods for all service desk emails.

A

If the feature flag is enabled and the custom email is enabled and put it to mail, SMTP and then add the SMTP settings, so these emails will be sent over the given SMTP server. So, what's not included in this much request. Right now is um there's no validation, verification of the email address and the credentials and there's no use interface. It's just purely the functionality to actually send it like a proof of concept.

A

um The rest will all be handled in the upcoming merge requests, so going back. I did a task breakdown for customizable email addresses. You just saw the first part using SMTP credentials. The foundational work I just identified four additional tasks um like verify the email, ownership and the correct function and setup.

A

So we will just basically send a special email that checks a few things and we will see whether we receive this email um check for whether the credentials work, whether sub addressing works, the ownership um and whether email forwarding is set up correctly, and we will also notify the project owner and maybe the user, who just added the um the settings whether it worked or not. The next part would be to change the reply to address right now.

A

It's the incoming email address of the gitlab instance, and we would want to change that to the custom email address and we also need to change the ingestion so that the service desk email can also handle replies.

A

um The, Next Step would be to just put all those settings stop stuff in the front end, so we can actually add the settings. You have kind of an overview about the validation process um and maybe some additional information, and you can also enable and disable the custom setting after validation has been done and after that, I would like to add some documentation. So we can enable it on gitlab.com and eventually publish it in release.

A

So that's it for today take care and see you soon.