At times GitLab needs to communicate a "breaking" change or details related to a high-priority emergency patch. These emails are transactional and are highly targeted to the impacted audience.
Not an emergency? For important planned customer communications, please use the customer update/announcement process, to enable teams to work together and plan without the urgency of an emergency request.
As soon as an emergency communication is recognized, the Requesting team MUST:
Please review the coverage owner closest available per their timezone when deciding who to reach out to.
MOPs Team Coverage | PT / ET Time Available | Coverage Owner: Monday - Friday | Backup: Monday - Friday | Coverage Owner GEO Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
UTC (Emea Working) | 11pm - 3am PT / 2am - 6am ET | Mihai Conteanu | Gillian Murphy | 9am - 1pm EET |
UTC (EMEA Working) | 3am - 7am PT / 6am - 10am ET | Gillian Murphy | Mihai Conteanu | 11am - 3pm UK |
UTC (Amer-Morning) | 7am - 11am PT / 10am - 2pm ET | Jameson Burton | Bryce Weatherford | 10am - 2pm ET |
UTC (Amer-Afternoon) | 11am - 3pm PT / 2pm - 6pm ET | Bryce Weatherford | Jenny Tiemann | 11am - 3pm PT |
UTC (Amer-Evening) | 3pm - 6pm PT / 6pm - 9pm ET | Bryce Weatherford | Amy Waller | 3pm - 6pm PT |
Typical Team Timezones:
Escalation Path:
For Marketing Operations - When OOO/PTO please add this to the backup team members calendar for awareness.
This is the process to follow when there is an announcement that is an emergency that will need to be sent by the marketing ops team. The marketing ops team will determine what platform will be used based on the information that is provided to them such as timing, list size and severity.
mail-merge
in the email. Include field max lengths needed, or best guess. Mktops will determine if they can use an existing field or not.The following approvers are needed for the copy and list size:
Marketing Operations will decide what the best email platform to send from will be. The decision is based on many factors, including the ones below.
Do not Route
executable campaignPerson source
for new leads as GitLab DataMart
Person Status
should be set to Raw
if EmptyFor sends over 100k sending from Marketo, there are several steps to follow to decrease processing time - especially when leads being uploaded are mostly net-new
person created
which will significantly delay processing time and hold up all other Marketo campaign processes (outside of this program)
This section should be used for all customer communications to communicate product or security issues and risk. At minimum, these communications need to be approved in sequence by the head of the department that is leading the communication (e.g., Product, Engineering, Security), Vice President of Customer Success, Legal, or appropriate designates (if they are out on PTO or unavailable).
For low-priority, non-security and non-emergency customer communications, you may skip getting the approvals from VP level of your department if your manager and the VP of Customer Success signs off on it.
The following is the recommended format for ad hoc customer emails though tailor it if the communication objective or content requires this. This does not include marketing (e.g., email campaigns, blogs, etc.) or standard product or security notifications (e.g., release blogs, release notifications, etc.). Emails should be clear, crisp, and direct, providing links for details (e.g., details on the issue or risk, procedural details to action). To maximize reading comprehension, remove all extraneous words and language to maximize the probability the email will be read and acted upon.
The email should answer the following questions in the following order:
To request an email, follow directions on this page
Two examples are provided:
Subject: Important update information for customers using {GitLab Feature}
Hello {Customer name},
If you use {GitLab Feature}, or plan to migrate to it, this information may be relevant to you.
We recently identified {cases} where {GitLab Feature} can cause a {specific issue} that requires GitLab Support intervention to resolve.
We recommend the following actions to identify and resolve this issue:
- If you use {GitLab Feature}, please review the [scenarios] and avoid them.
- If you have not migrated to {GitLab Feature}, please know that we [provided additional support] to all affected releases.
We're working to reduce the conditions that can cause {specific issue} and will update the [{cases}] when we do so. If you are using {GitLab Feature} and require additional guidance, please contact your support representative or your CSM.
Kind regards,
{Sender}
The requestor (Security, CSM, etc.) will follow the process below to create the epic, which will have quick links to the appropriate issues to open.
### :exclamation: Action items for requestor to complete
*Note: this will automatically be a confidential epic.*
* [ ] Once created, associate this epic to parent epic (if exists)
* [ ] Create issues in section at bottom
* [ ] Ensure all issues are associated to this epic
### :star: Purpose
<!-- Requestor, please describe the purpose of the email communication in this section for context by all teams involved -->
### :link: Key links
* [Copy Document]() `to be added by requestor ` ([use this template](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hv0XF7j6SibLgHgGFxxlrbPrufxbcXHrO8ZRG04nFjU/edit#))
* [Target List]() `to be added by requestor when final`
* [Email Program]() `to be added by MOps` [shortcut](https://engage-ab.marketo.com/?munchkinId=194-VVC-221#/classic/MF4267A1)
### :books: Issues for requestor to create (shortcuts below)
* [ ] [Request target list issue (internal link)](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/marketing-strategy-performance/-/issues/new?issuable_template=list-request)
* [ ] [Email request issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/marketing-operations/-/issues/new?issuable_template=incident_communications) - requestor open, MOps DRI
- the email issue is blocked until requestor provides final copy
* [ ] If landing page required: [Landing Page request issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/marketing-operations/-/issues/new?issuable_template=marketo_landing_page_request) (optional, will increase scope and delay timeline) - requestor open, MOps DRI
* [ ] If form required: [Form request issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/marketing-operations/-/issues/new?issuable_template=form_request)
### :point_up: Reminders on action items & timeline
* Requestor is responsible for providing FINAL copy, including review by all reviewers, by date indicated in timeline
* Requestor is responsible for providing list of who must review and approve email
* Requestor is responsible for approving test email and providing send time and date
/confidential
/label ~"MktgOps-Urgency::P1" ~"MktgOps-Priority::High Priority" ~"Customer Success" ~CSM
/cc @amy.waller @bweatherford