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Trials and Plan Changes

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Request for Premium trial

GitLab.com only offers the self-service ability to trial the Ultimate subscription. GitLab.com support can assist with trials of other plans. Ask the user to create the GitLab.com Ultimate trial, then change the plan via the CustomersDot admin GitLab Groups page.

Extending trials

NOTE: Soon to be deprecated

Sales will often request through a Zendesk Ticket that we extend the duration of GitLab.com trials on behalf of their prospects. These tickets will always be raised from the GitLab Support End User gitlab_support@example.com, with the submitter cc'd on the ticket. The following workflow should be followed to service them.

If any fields when opening the ticket were filled out incorrectly, send a public reply in the ticket asking the submitter to supply the missing information.

NOTE: Due to customers #973 and customers #1643, these must be done via mechanizer or CustomersDot console. Once those issues are resolved, these requests should be done via CustomersDot admin.

  1. Take ownership of the ZD ticket.
  2. Check over the request and ensure that we've been provided enough information to action the request. To do this check that:
    1. The Namespace: field contains a valid GitLab namespace and it that holds the active trial. This should not be a Salesforce link or email address.
    2. The Extend the date to: field contains a future date.
    3. The Trial license plan: field is filled out
  3. Use the Update GitLab Subscription form to process the request.
    1. This should create a new internal request issue documenting the change action. Reference this new issue to the ZD Ticket where the extension was requested.
    2. If there is an error while taking action, check the internal issue to see what went wrong. Please also locate the error in sentry (see Searching Sentry if needed) and file an issue, or comment on an existing one.
  4. If namespace needs to be adjusted manually, then raise a new internal issue with details and ~Console Escalation::Customers label.

Applying a trial to a namespace with an active subscription

At present, a namespace cannot have a trial and an active subscription run concurrently. A customer may request this if they wish to give a higher-tier subscription a trial.

There is an open feature request #12186 requesting to implement this functionality in GitLab.

In the meantime, if you receive one of these requests, ask the requester that they and their customer understand the risks involved.

Confirmation of risks - Example wording

Due to various bug issues it has caused, we are `[working on deprecating trials on an existing SaaS subscription](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/-/issues/3887)`. As we recognize this is a sudden change and communication is still in progress, we can go ahead. However, we want to ensure that you and your customer are aware of the risks.

By manually updating the plan, the namespace's plan will no longer match our subscription records. If the system does a validation check, it will `**immediately**` downgrade the namespace to Free. If this happens, customers can submit a high priority ticket, but are asked `*not*` to submit an emergency ticket as this is a known risk for the change requested.

If the customer does not want to take the risk, we recommend they start a 30-day trial on a separate group, and fork (or create) a project to test the features in the trial group.

If you have communicated the above with your customer and you still want to go ahead, then please confirm that for us and we will make the requested change.

If the requester still wants to go ahead:

  1. Follow the plan change requests using GitLab.com instructions.
  2. Add a comment on the ticket that the change has been made with a link to the namespace admin page.
  3. Set an appropriate due date and place the ticket on hold. The ticket will reopen the ticket on the due date.
  4. Once the due date has been reached, change the plan back to the original, and remove the admin note referencing the change.
  5. In the Zendesk ticket mark the task as 'done', and close the ticket.

If the namespace accidentally gets downgraded to Free and the customer no longer wants to be on the Ultimate trial, use the force associate. Otherwise, manually changed them back to the Ultimate plan.

Workflow diagram

graph TD; A[Issue Created]-->B[Assign Yourself]; B-->C[Issue Actionable?]; C-->J[No]; J-->K[Apply Status::Blocked and Inform Submitter]; C-->D[Yes]; D-->E[Adjust Namespace via Customers Portal]; E-->F[Did it Work?]; F-->G[Yes]; G-->H[Note Issue and Close]; F-->I[No]; I-->L[Locate Error in Sentry or comment on existing issue]; click L "/handbook/support/workflows/500_errors.html#searching-sentry" "Diagnose Errors on GitLab.com" L-->M[Adjust Namespace Manually]; M-->N[Apply Status::On Hold, Set Due Date];

Plan change requests

Except for downgrading to Free, plan changes on a paid non-trial namespace should be done through a subscription purchase.

If a plan must be modified manually, ensure you have approval from product, development, or a support manager, as manually changing a plan causes data discrepencies and can cause bug issues. Use an internal ZD ticket to track approval, the change made, how the change was made, set yourself as assignee, and a due date to remind yourself to change it back.

In the case of an emergency, please make the change, and pass the ticket with an internal note to, or create an internal request for, the L&R team to investigate.

Using customerDot

Important

From CustomerDot you can only change the plan type not the subscription end date.

  1. From the left side menu click on customers and search for the customer.
  2. In the search results click on the GitLab groups icon for the customer you want to update.
  3. You'll see a list of groups owned by the customer and you can perform your change here.

    If you receive an error, follow the usual troubleshooting procedures in looking up the error in sentry and/or for an existing CustomersDot issue, adding to an existing issue or creating a new one as required.

If you get an error, use admin following the instructions in the next section.

Using GitLab.com Admin

  1. Go to the namespace admin page (/admin/users/username or /admin/groups/group_path).
  2. Click Edit.
  3. Change the Plan to the appropriate plan (Ultimate or Premium).
    • Don't use Ultimate Trial or Premium Trial in these cases – these plans are intended for use by automated systems only, and may cause an error on the namespace when set incorrectly.
  4. Add an admin note.
  5. Click Save.

How to extend an NFR (Not for resale) SaaS trial using the rails console.

To extend a trial SaaS extension.

  1. The NFR partner needs to either signup for a trial at: https://about.gitlab.com/free-trial/ or start a trial from within their current GitLab namespace.
  2. Once they have a valid namespace for their trial they need to provide this to support.
  3. The support engineer requires console access to CustomersDot to GitLab Rails to update the namespace.
  4. Within the CustomersDot rails console you should execute the command: view_namespace '<group name space>'
  5. This will return the partners namespace information and order information. Get the order 'id' (i.e. 123456), you will need it for the next command.

Namespace and order id

  1. Execute the command to interact with the order id: o = Order.find 123456
  2. Review, modify, and execute the following command to update the order:

o.update!(product_rate_plan_id: Plan::ULTIMATE_SAAS_1_YEAR_PLAN, quantity: 25, end_date: Date.parse('2022-11-09'), trial: false)

Some important information to consider:

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