Developer Relations Workflows and Tools

Workflows

Team Workflows

Community platforms

Integrations

Communication

Tool Stack Overview

These are the tools the Developer Relations team is the DRI for:

Tool Description How we use it Technical owner
Common Room Common Room is a community growth platform that brings together community data to surface insights.
 Fatima Sarah Khalid Fatima Sarah Khalid
Discord Community discussion/chat system for Developer Relations and support teams to collaborate and share knowledge with the wider community.
 Fatima Sarah Khalid Fatima Sarah Khalid
Discourse Community discussion platform for Developer Relations and support teams to collaborate and share knowledge with the wider community. How we use Discourse
 Fatima Sarah Khalid Fatima Sarah Khalid
Disqus Disqus is a blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities that use a networked platform. How we use Disqus
 Michael Friedrich Michael Friedrich
Meetup Meetupis an event management platform. How we use Meetup.com John CoghlanJohn Coghlan
Zapier Zapier is an automation application integrating other applications. How Marketing Ops use Zapier, How Developer Relations use Zapier
Zendesk Community Monitoring and processing all mentions of GitLab across the Community Relations’ response channels How we use Zendesk John CoghlanJohn Coghlan
Community Operations Tool Stack (deprecated)

This overview is currently being deprecated as we attempt to migrate from the manually-generated list to one automatically-generated from the data/tech_stack.yml file. Please use the automatically-generated table instead {: .alert .alert-warning}

Click to show deprecated table

These are the tools the Developer Relations team is the DRI for:

Tool Name Description How We Use
Crowdin Crowdin is the platform for the wider community to collaboratively contribute translations for GitLab How we use Crowdin
Discourse Discourse is the platform on which the GitLab forum is run. How we use Discourse
Discord Discord is the instant messaging platform the GitLab community communicates on (in addition to GitLab.com itself) popular channels are #contribute, #general and the support channels
KeyHole KeyHole is the tool we use to collect Twitter impressions and YouTube views How we use KeyHole
Meetup Meetup.com is the platform we use and offer to our community to organize meetups How we use Meetup.com
SheerId SheerId is the platform we use to automatically qualify applications to our community programs
Zapier Zapier is an automation tool used to identify mentions and to route them into Zendesk as tickets, and also to Slack in some cases How we use Zapier
Zendesk Zendesk is the tool Community Ops, EDU & OSS work their program cases and applications How we use Zendesk
Tools pending addition to tech stack

The Developer Relations team is also the DRI for these tools which are pending addition to the tech stack:

Tool Description How we use it
KeyHole KeyHole is the tool we use to collect Twitter impressions and YouTube views How we use KeyHole
SheerId SheerId is the platform we use to automatically qualify applications to our community programs
Other tools we rely on

These are the tools that are essential to some Community programs, but the Developer Relations team are not the DRI for:

Tool Name Description How We Use
Customer Portal CustomersDot - Web portal where customers can manage their subscriptions and account information, generate and manage GitLab licenses. To help troubleshoot issues with community program applications. To create and manage licenses for community program applications and for GitLab EE contributors
Marketo Marketo Powers each intake form for our (Education, Open Source, and Startups) programs. It is an integration which inserts the application record into Salesforce.
Printfection Printfection is our swag management platform How we use Printfection
Salesforce Salesforce is our CRM We use Salesforce (SFDC) to support the Education, Open Source and Startup Programs
Canva Canva is the tool we use to create a lot of our GitLab-branded materials. Community team members should creat an account using their @gitlab.com email and request access to Canva Enterprise from the Design team.

Adding a new tool to the Developer Relations tool stack

  1. Please follow the procurement process as you would for adding any new tool to GitLab’s tech stack.
  2. Ensure that the group_owner field on the tech stack file entry is set to Developer Relations. This will make the tool to be automatically listed on the Developer Relations toolstack.

Code of Conduct Enforcement
Overview The Developer Relations team will contribute to enforce the GitLab Community Code of Conduct on GitLab.com, to ensure we keep a positive, welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone to contribute. Currently, the team will engage in moderation if there is a discussion (generally on an issue or on a Merge Request) that requires urgent or a significant volume of moderation. Please reach out in the #developer-relations Slack channel and tag @dev-advocates when urgent.
Common Room workflows
Common Room is a community growth platform that helps manage, engage, and grow digital communities by integrating data across different platforms, identifying members, and reporting trends and sentiment. The Developer Relations team uses Common Room to aggregate, review, and take action on insights from across our community platforms. It is also used to track trends and community sentiment. Accessing Common Room Access is granted through Okta and is billed per individual seat.
Community Discord workflow
Overview The GitLab Community Discord server is a place to connect with the wider GitLab community, join live streams and pair-coding sessions, share projects, and discuss contributions with other community members. Whether you’re new to GitLab and looking for help getting started or an experienced user looking to share your knowledge with others, the server is a place to chat with the community in real-time. In our community server, you can:
Developer Relations tools: Zapier
Zapier subscription We use Zapier to automate the task of forwarding mentions of GitLab, swag store orders, etc. The Zapier subscription runs on the Team plan, and is shared with the GitLab team. Zapier access URL: https://zapier.com Account: search for the shared Zapier account in 1Password’s Zapier vault. Please file an access request if you cannot access that vault. Once logged in, you can access, edit and create Zaps in the Developer Relations folder
Developer Relations workflow: Team Budgets
Team Budgets We use Allocadia to manage team budgets. Due to a limited number of seats being allocated to the Marketing team, only a limited number has access to the tool from the Developer Relations team (sign-in from Okta is required). They are responsible for coordinating with the Developer Relations team to make sure that forecasts are properly added to Allocadia. Quarterly Budget Planning Issues. As each quarter begins, the Developer Relations team creates a new issue using the quarterly_budget_plan issue template in the Community Ops project.
Developer Relations Workflows: Content Review
The Developer Relations team provides ongoing support to a number of stakeholders who create content including Product Marketing, Brand, and numerous Sales teams. In order to ensure the technical accuracy of content being created across GitLab, we conduct regular reviews of top-performing content across GitLab’s main public facing content channels, notably about.gitlab.com and Highspot. Fix Fridays Our primary mechanism for conducting content reviews is Fix Fridays. These are once-monthly days set aside for content review.
E-mail response workflow
Overview Workflow Respond to e-mails sent to our community@, education@, merch@, opensource@, startups@ addresses. Deprecated e-mail aliases: movingtogitlab@, swag@shop.gitlab.com. You might still receive occasional e-mails from those addresses. If you do, please reply from the appropriate active e-mail address from within Zendesk. Please ensure that all e-mail traffic happens within Zendesk. This enables team members to collaborate on tickets, to bring visibility on conversations, and to make our response time metrics more accurate.
Forum workflow
Users Registration and Login Wider community members can register for an account on the community forum by using the Sign up button and choosing their preferred method (email, oauth, etc.). For GitLab team members it is recommended to use the with GitLab oauth method. This will authenticate against GitLab.com as oauth provider, prefill the profile being created, and later serve as oauth login. This method also grants additional permissions, see the administration section for users below.
Reddit response workflow
Overview The r/gitlab subreddit is a place for questions, discussion, and support on all things GitLab. To request user flair for the GitLab subreddit, ping @devrel-team in the #developer-relations Slack channel, and include your Reddit username. Your flair will read GitLab Staff. Subreddit Flairs: There are 3 post flairs in the GitLab subreddit - general question, support, and project. General Questions: This can include questions about GitLab as a product, comparing GitLab to competitors, hiring, developer education, and questions about remote work at GitLab.
Stack Overflow: Tagged Questions and GitLab Collective Overview
Overview Stack Overflow is a place for questions, discussions, and support on all things GitLab. General questions and tags Questions tagged gitlab Stack Overflow GitLab Collective Note: The sponsorship for Stack Overflow’s GitLab Collective concluded on September 30, 2022 and the GitLab Collective was decomissioned. All of knowledge and submissions shared by our community will be retained. Articles and answers to questions about GitLab will be decoupled from the Collective and continue to exist in the public Stack Overflow knowledge base.
Swag: Process & FAQ
Swag Assets Google Sheet “Developer Relations Swag Coupon Codes & Delivery Tracking”. The file can be found in the Shared Google Drive Contributor Success, and is titled “[GitLab] Developer Relations Swag Coupon Codes & Delivery Tracking” Swag Redemption portal https://gitlabcommunity.orderpromos.com Inventory Portal https://gitlabstore.mybrightsites.com Swag Redemption Portal This portal shows the items you can claim, given the right coupon code. This is the link sent out to Wider Community Members. Inventory Portal This portal shows everything we’ve ordered and that is in stock & ready to ship.
Twitter response workflow
Overview Handles for social channels TWITTER HANDLE RESPOND FROM GUIDELINES @GitLabStatus Zendesk Post service updates @GitLab Zendesk Respond to mentions and questions The @GitLabStatus account should only be used to give updates on the availability of GitLab.com and to follow up on users reporting that GitLab.com is unavailable or responding to a previous availability update on @GitLabStatus. Only the infrastructure team should be posting updates on @GitLabStatus. There is a defined process for this describing who should do this, how and what channels should be alerted.
Zendesk for GitLab Developer Relations
Developer Relations Zendesk instance The Developer Relations team uses a dedicated Zendesk instance to centralize the management of relevant community mentions, and to process Education Program, Open Source Program, and Startup Program applications and requests. This instance is separate from other Zendesk instances GitLab uses. The majority of cases in Zendesk are routed there via Zapier automation, or a native Zendesk integration. Each case is then converted into a Zendesk ticket and filtered into a View, ordered by category.