Making Changes and Taking Actions on an Account

1. You are here:
2. Handbook
3. Support Team Handbook
4. Support Workflows
5. Making Changes and Taking Actions on an Account

On this page

• Overview
  • User Action First
• Project/Group Changes
• Account Access Requests
• Releasing an Email Address
  • Verify account status and ownership
  • If eligible for email release
• How is permission given for troubleshooting?
• Asking Permission
  • Impersonating

Overview

This workflow focuses on the process when action is required by the Support team on behalf of the user.

The main situations where action may need to be taken on behalf of the user:

1. Project/Group Changes
2. Account Access Requests
3. Releasing an Email Address

User Action First

Following our Security Policy on "GitLab's Access to Your Private Repositories", actions should always be taken by the user whenever possible.

For example, users should be deleting their own projects, but if they encounter an error with every attempt and there are no workarounds, then Support can intervene with permission.

If in doubt, please ask a Support manager to review.

Project/Group Changes

In cases where Support needs to take action on the project or group, such as for troubleshooting purposes, Support should do two things:

1. Verify the user is a group Owner or project Maintainer. Otherwise, ask the user to have an owner/maintainer contact us.
2. Ask for permission to take action. See the Asking Permission section below.
3. Consider adding an Admin Note to the group admin page if Support may need to know the action was taken in the future.

You can continue working with the original requester once an owner/maintainer provides permission if that is their preference.

Account Access Requests

In cases where a user has lost access to their account, all other options (such as SSH recovery codes, password reset) should be exhausted first.

For unconfirmed accounts, the only account action support will typically take is an email typo fix.

Before taking any action on confirmed accounts, ensure that you have verified the account owner using the Account Ownership Verification workflow.

If ownership is verified, then:

1. Confirm permission for the changes.
2. Add an Admin Note to the user's account.

Example cases include:

1. Removing an identity tied to the user account. The identity should also be verified in these cases.

Releasing an Email Address

Similar to Account Access Requests, if a user has lost access to their account and the account shows no activity in its history, then we can consider releasing the email address for the user to create a new account with.

We can also use this workflow when a user cannot add an email address to their account because it is on a different account and is unverified. This often happens if a user has accidentally created an account using one of the single sign-on registration methods or cannot recall creating the account.

For more information on unverified/unconfirmed accounts, please see the confirmation emails workflow.

The primary (for paid users only, all users should be able to get a new confirmation email) and secondary email (for all users until #367823 is resolved) can be released following the process below.

To release an email address for an inactive account:

Verify account status and ownership

Check the user's activity page:

1. If an account shows any activity tied to any type of contribution (such as snippets, or comments in a project or group), use the Account Ownership Verification workflow to verify ownership.
2. If the account shows no activity:
3. Confirm that the email address the user is trying to add exists on a different account.
4. Verify that the account shows no activity and is not a member of any projects or groups. Additionally, confirm that the following are true:
   • The user is unverified
   • The user has never logged in
   • The user has no data (No groups or projects)
5. If the account is verified or data exists, inform the original requestor that the email is not eligible for release. They can request an account deletion if necessary.

If eligible for email release

1. If applicable, add the new email address as a CC to the ticket and ask the user to respond to the ticket from the email address they wish to add.
2. Once the user has replied to confirm they own the email address, update the email address with +release. For example, if the email address is johndoe@example.com, then update the email address on the account to johndoe+release@example.com.
   • This can be done with Admin access or via Chatops
3. Add an Admin Note to the user's account.
4. Advise the customer to add the newly released email address again to their primary account.
5. Consider commenting on this feature request

How is permission given for troubleshooting?

The Support team will not view any private information unless required to resolve an issue. Typically, the issue is filed by the account holder (for users) or valid members of the namespace (for projects and groups) via a support ticket for troubleshooting purposes as outlined in Security Policy on "GitLab's Access to Your Private Repositories".

A Support team member may look at information on pages not explicitly mentioned in the request, but will limit the scope of the review to the minimum access required to solve any issues.

The Support team will only take action from the requester if they:

• Are a member of the namespace.
• Have a problem that requires Support to investigate.
• Provide a link to the namespace.
  • This link can come from the initial form submission or a response in the ticket.

We expect users to provide specific links in order to focus on the related views and logs while investigating an issue. For example, a request to look into a CI/CD error should include links to the relevant job logs, pipelines, and/or CI YAML file.

Any time user data needs to be downloaded (such as cloning a repository), or where secrets must be revealed (such as CI/CD Variables), to further troubleshoot, requires explicit permission before continuing. Any user data that has been downloaded for reproduction purposes must be deleted when the issue is resolved.

Asking Permission

Before any actions are taken, please request explicit permission to take the required action. Be as specific as possible so that there is no confusion.

Once permission is confirmed by the user, then you may proceed.

Some sample phrases:

Could you please provide permission for Support to … ?

or

Could you please confirm that you would like us to … ?

Some examples:

Could you please provide permission for Support to re-run one or more pipelines in project xyz to investigate the issue you've described? Replying in this ticket stating you provide permission will be sufficient.

Could you please provide permission for our Support Engineers to look at the CI/CD variables in the project so that we confirm they are correct? Replying in this ticket stating you provide permission will be sufficient.

Could you please confirm that you would like us to exchange your primary address example@primary-email.address and secondary address example@secondary-email.address on your account? Replying in this ticket stating you provide permission will be sufficient.

Impersonating

Impersonating a user is considered performing an action as another account, impersonating will update the Current sign-in IP and Current sign-in at for the impersonated user.

When impersonating a user, the administrator account will receive a slack message from the SIRTbot app asking to confirm if the impersonation was a legit action.

The action of impersonation is in accordance with our Confidentiality Terms of the Subscription Agreement.