GitLab Incubation Engineering - Latest, 30 Jan 2023

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

Description

This video showcases everything from the start of the Service Desk SEG to today and adds the goals for the upcoming month.

Recently we added monthly showcases to our video process, so expect to see a monthly showcase of Service Desk at the end of February with new goals for the next month.

Showcase-Issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/incubation-engineering/service-desk/meta/-/issues/8

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
0:36 Vision
2:05 Recent Work
4:21 Next Goals

A

Hi, my name is Mark, and this is the January showcase for the service desk signal engineer group here at gitlab.

A

In this showcase, I want to briefly talk about the vision for the gitlab service, the single engineer, group, The, Reason work, I have done, and the recent work that happened in this domain and my goals for the upcoming month. If you are more into reading, please make sure you follow along this meta issue that has all the information of the video.

A

This is the service desk single engineer, group handbook page where you can find all resources around my work, because this is the first showcase I want to start at the very beginning. The vision for the service desk single engineer group is the following. Our goal is to provide a complete, yet lightweight and customizable customer support solution that seamlessly integrates with the gitlab ecosystem and brings customers support, staff and developers closer together and just recently service desk was also added to our company's Vision.

A

That means it just got a higher priority, which is great during the application process. At gitlab, I came up with this roadmap to approach the service desk domain. I wanted to start by improving the current service desk functionality and make it useful and then go over and professionalize it make it yours at branded features, so it kind of gets transparent on what software you are using for support and after that head over to the automation domain. So service desk really saves you time and allows you to be more productive along the way.

A

I wanted to raise awareness with blog posts and stuff like this, um so our customers kind of get to know how service does can help them. This roadmap works for me and I'm. Sorry, I, just don't stick with it. So, let's talk a bit about recent work in that area.

A

I started work on bigger integration issues like this customizable email address for service desk. You already saw this in a couple of update videos. If you watched them, it's a bigger one, I chunked it down into smaller tasks and the first, the foundation part was merged and behind the feature flag, and it should make it into 59.. They can set up the custom email address with SMTP credentials via the rails. Console and gitlab will send service desk emails via the specified SMTP host.

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So this is not really a finished feature, but it's it's the first iteration on it, but does not have a front end yet right now, I'm working on verifying the email ownership.

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um This is kind of done, but I need some more polish for email copy and needs I need to add some more tests. Upcoming work is adding the custom email address. As the reply to header and make sure emails to the reply to address will be ingested properly and adding the front-end portion that puts everything together. I also worked on obfuscating issue, email participants based on member role, we're making sure private data is protected, no matter where service desk issue ends up.

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If you do not have at least the reporter role in the gitlab project or group, you won't be able to view the email addresses of issue, email participants anymore, no matter whether it's a public or private project or the issue is confidential or not. This will probably be shipped with 59..

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So, what's really cool is that we now have a new team working on service test box, then board box and eventually are making issue boards real time. I just collected a few issues to just showcase a bit what they are working on.

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um I think this is a special one, because this is a huge pain for some customers. We solved this by adding uploads to Native attachments in service desk emails and I think this will also be shipped in 15 9, and then we have quite a couple of other issues where they work on and dig their way through.

A

So as I'm involved in quite a few issues around service desk I thought it makes a lot of sense to add my stuff as a back-end reviewer, also for General incubation engineering colleagues that might be beneficial. So what are my goals for the upcoming month?

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I want to ship customizable email addresses for service desk projects by the by the end of the next month. It's unlikely that it will be included in the next release, which would be 59 but I'm, quite certain that will be available in the release after that, hopefully also for for the public, but maybe just for an internal group. We started work on helping people at gitlab, get started with service, desk development and review faster.

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We have this GDK merge request where we improve the how to set up service desk documentation, which is this one. I also want to do a recording and show engineers and non-engineers how to set up service desk in the GDK and I also want to add some C data to GDK. So people can just easily review changes to service desk issues because they just have something in their GDK instance. Also. I want to come up with metrics to measure growth and success for this single engineering near group and gitlab service desk in general.

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Additionally, I want to replace the old demonstration video, that's Linked, In the documentation with a new one, because this is really old. So it reflects all the good stuff that were added in the last year to service desk and I also want to start working on blog posts around the whole service desk domain. Like hey, how could you use service desk and provide insight into how customers use service desk and how to set up it properly?

A

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