Skip to content

Product Review: Enabled by Default

The PM Leadership team has had recent discussions with Sid about defaulting to on. The purpose of this issue is for each PM to review their product categories and list items not enabled by default that could be changed to enabled by default..

We want each of the PMs to then pick the right ones and start enabling them by default in the upcoming releases.

Why?

As we focus our attention on monetization and adoption using discovery, usability, and depth, one thing that can make a meaningful impact is having features turned on by default.

We know that adoption curves are significantly higher if features are turned on by default. This also helps us gather great feedback and help us adjust the course of our roadmap. This issue came up a few times of the last few meetings in the PM Scale meeting and I wanted to make sure that we are not building a lot of debt around features that should be on by default but aren't (for whatever historical reasons).

Picking the right defaults is hard --but getting it right has a huge payoff for our users. It keeps the product simple, reduces the number of nerd-knob combinations that the user has to deal with, and reduces time-to-value.

PMs, please check the box when you have completed adding your items to the table.

Enablement section

Feature Why is it not on by default today? On by default issue Section:Stage:Category PM
Advanced Search Requires Elasticsearch integration on a different cluster then GitLab is installed. Also increases Storage needs by 50% for the Search Index #1716 Enablement:Global Search @JohnMcGuire
Native Object storage replication Only a subset of users require this feature and most users can rely on object storage replication provided by e.g. AWS, Azure etc. N/A Enablement:Geo @fzimmer
Docker Registry replication Requires specific configuration before enabling is possible. gitlab-org/gitlab#280855 Enablement:Geo @fzimmer
Location aware URL Requires configuration that is user dependent and can't be guessed. N/A Enablement:Geo @fzimmer
Selective Sync Can be configured when needed but not relevant to all users. N/A Enablement:Geo @fzimmer
Geo for Geo replication on GitLab.com Compliance - GitLab.com located in the US and inability to select data for replication on a granular level. MVC could be small deployment on the west coast gitlab-org&3171 Enablement:Geo @fzimmer
Geo for DR on GitLab.com Considered before but cost plus unclear business requirements were blockers. Working Group is evaluating Geo now gitlab-org&575 Enablement:Geo @fzimmer
Pages for Omnibus Requires separate DNS entry gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab#3342 Enablement:Distribution @joshlambert
Pages for Charts Currently requires NFS gitlab-org/charts/gitlab#37 (moved) Enablement:Distribution @joshlambert
Runner for Omnibus Potential risk (UX, security) to run on same instance as Server gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab#2401 Enablement:Distribution @joshlambert

Dev Section

Feature Why is it not on by default today? On by default issue Section:Stage:Category PM
VSA horizontal flow To avoid confusion with the legacy navigation still in place gitlab-org/gitlab#281598 (closed) Dev:Manage:Optimize @ljlane
Export audit events as CSV Ongoing performance issues. Exploring an improvement that could change this to default on TBD Dev:Manage:Compliance @mattgonzales
Revoke user PATs in Credential Inventory It as previously off by default while we navigated the privacy and permissions control over PATs for users in SaaS groups gitlab-org/gitlab#267184 (closed) Dev:Manage:Compliance @mattgonzales
Project events in group audit log Database performance issues that are ongoing TBD Dev:Manage:Compliance @mattgonzales
User group counts There are database performance issues to resolve, detailed here TBD Dev:Manage:Compliance @mattgonzales
Live Preview Requires hosting and running the feature on a different domain and self-managed instances may not want to communicate with 3rd party domains gitlab-org/gitlab#205365 (closed) Dev:Create:Editor @ericschurter
Phabricator Importer This importer is incomplete and was put behind a feature flag and defaulted to OFF in order to gain feedback before releasing it for everyone. gitlab-org/gitlab#281610 (closed) Dev:Manage:Import @hdelalic
Misc. import There are several feature flags associated with the group::import which will require some research to decide if they should be enabled by default. An issue was created to track that research. gitlab-org/gitlab#282245 (closed) Dev:Manage:Import @hdelalic

Sec Section

Feature Why is it not on by default today? On by default issue Section:Stage:Category PM

Ops Section

Feature Why is it not on by default today? On by default issue Section:Stage:Category PM
Pages Access Control The feature must be set by admin, since default behavior is to match the repository setting No issue needed. groupprogressive delivery @ogolowinski
Vault Integration Requires a Vault Instance to work. Bundling Vault was not something users wanted since many of them already have a Vault. groupconfigure @nagyv-gitlab
Auto rollback in case of failure This action can be harmfull as it over-rides the current deployment and currently happens for any critical alert. Some users prefer to manually rollback and not automatically. A setting was added to enable/disable this activity No issue created devopsrelease Continuous Delivery @ogolowinski
Optional cache on failure The default behavior is cache on success gitlab-org/gitlab#270580 grouppipeline authoring @dhershkovitch
GitLab Kubernetes Agent It was not considered stable enough. We plan enabling it by default once it's ready for gitlab.com. gitlab-org/gitlab#273372 (closed) groupconfigure @nagyv-gitlab
metrics_dashboard_exhaustive_validations Hidden behind feature flag due to regression, now the team is disbanded #1736 (closed) ~"group::monitor" @sarahwaldner
settings_operations_prometheus_service Behind feature flag, because it is part of a larger move gitlab-org/gitlab#24651 (closed) #1736 (closed) ~"group::monitor" @sarahwaldner
prometheus_computed_alerts Unsure #1736 (closed) ~"group::monitor" @sarahwaldner
Go Proxy This Community Contribution is still behind a feature flag due to concerns about scalability. The Contribution is still in progress. gitlab-org/gitlab#220628 (closed), gitlab-org/gitlab#218083, gitlab-org/gitlab#220626, gitlab-org/gitlab#224021 ~"group::package" @trizzi
Dependency Proxy The feature is available by default for public projects, but not private projects. The linked issue is in progress and will be done in 13.7. (sooner for GitLab.com) gitlab-org/gitlab#11582 (closed) ~"group::package" @trizzi
Edited by Patrick Deuley