US Federal Support generally follows the working on tickets flow for global with a few exceptions.
US Federal Support has a number of engineers with verified US Citizenship that have a 100% focus on addressing new and existing cases in the US Federal Support Portal. The agents focused on this instance should distribute effort and work new cases from the Support view. When replying to a new case the agent making the public comment should also assign the case to themselves. Those without a 50% or higher focus on US Federal but do have access to the instance are still encouraged to participate through pairing sessions, joining customer calls, and assisting with gaps in knowledge where possible. Non-fully focused global engineers are not encouraged to assign new cases to themselves.
After 7 days of a case being in the pending state an automation will run that puts the case back into an open state. This allows for the agent to either follow up with the user on the requested actions or move the case to a solved state if they believe the issue in the case is resolved.
There are events where customers will request to re-assign a Zendesk case to a co-worker. We handle this using the Change option at the top of the ticket by the respondents email.
The context for this flow is because CCs are disabled.
Only our US Citizen Support Engineers have access to the US Federal Zendesk Instance. If you are a US Citizen and would like to get access and contribute you can open an Access Request for either a light agent or full agent(limited to Support/Security Team members).
Issues relating to tickets received in the US Federal Zendesk Instance may be discussed outside of the US Federal instance with a few key caveats. Identifying information that includes system names, organization names, customer names, specific infrastructure details (IP address, Hostnames, etc) and logfiles should be limited to internal tickets. Specifics about the technical problem's nature are fine to discuss in chat, issues, and elsewhere publicly but discretion should be used when communicating log snippets, screenshots, and other data to ensure no identifying information is disclosed. When in doubt, ask a manager or the customer's TAM if the information is acceptable to be communicated to non-US citizens.
For any assistance with log review or confidential information within a ticket it is recommended to directly reach out to other engineers with access to the federal instance within Zendesk using an internal comment to avoid accidental disclosure.
Federal tickets can be linked publicly, such as in an issue or merge request as the link itself does not reveal any information, just avoid naming the link with any identifiable information. For
example: [US Federal Internal Ticket](<ticket_link>).
When pairing over video chat, be sure you only pair with engineers that have access to the US Federal instance and avoid screensharing content from the US Federal Support Instance, logs, or other information that is required to be kept confidential.
The US Federal Support instance does not use a mechanism that automatically solves a case after a set period of time. Instead, agents will follow up periodically with the end users to determine if the support case has reached a mutually satisfied state that allows resolution of the case. When following up with a user it may be important to consider addressing the following key points:
You may leverage links to records in controlled access systems such as Salesforce or Zendesk in order to securely provide information. Note that if you have Slack link expansion enabled for SFDC records you should immediately remove the expansion after making your comment.
Examples:
The use of an acronym to discuss an organization is not permitted in either #support_us-federal-chat or #feed_zd-federal channels to prevent disclosure of sensitive information.
Getting help with a US Federal ticket can be tricky since some information must be kept confidential. However, there are many times when a non-US Federal engineer may be the subject matter expert needed to help efficiently resolve a US Federal Support case. It is encouraged to ask questions in #support_self-managed and other non-private slack channels provided the Communication Guidelines are followed. You may also consider cross-posting the request for help back to the private #support_us-federal-chat channel to maximize the pool of engineers who may be able to assist. It should be kept in mind that although the #support_us-federal-chat slack channel is a private channel the communication guidelines still apply as workspace admins and other users invited to the channel may not have been vetted for US Citizenship.
If you need a manager's help with a ticket, please keep in mind that only US Citizens have access to our US Federal Instance, which means that some of our managers cannot help you with tickets. If you are a US Citizen working in US Federal and your manager isn't, please feel free to reach out to a different manager if you are unable to address an issue without sharing confidential information.
When discussing cases or issues with others in GitLab it may be difficult to ensure they meet the access requirements to be allowed to receive confidential or sensitive information via chat, screenshare, or call. The single source of truth is whether or not that person has a US Federal Zendesk account, this can be either full or light agent access. The individuals with access have been confirmed by people-ops to be allowed access to this information. The support-ops team has built a handy tool for team members to check whether a person has access to US Federal Zendesk. The tool can be accessed by GitLab team members via this link please note that it updates weekly on Sundays at 00:00 UTC. If you need verification for someone who was added more recently you can always ask a US Federal Support Manager or Support-Ops Manager to validate. If you are not able to find a person's name in this tool the user should be considered ineligible to access the instance and you should refer to the Communication Guidelines for steps on how to proceed.