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[Feature flag] Enable Slack notifications in GitLab for Slack app integration

In %15.8 the integrations group in the Manage stage will be completing work for the Slack Application Integration. They will be making updates to the App Home, the Slack Landing Page, and the GitLab Landing page. These are the final touches in preparation for releasing our consolidated Slack application.

Summary

This issue is to rollout Slack Application integration with the support for Slack notifications feature on production, that is currently behind the integration_slack_app_notifications feature flag.

Currently, "Slack notifications" and "Slack Application" are two different integrations. The feature introduced here consolidates these and moves the "Slack notifications" into the "Slack Application" integration.

Owners

  • Team: Manage Integrations Group
  • Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to: #g_manage_integrations
  • Best individual to reach out to: @.luke
  • PM: @m_frankiewicz / @g.hickman

Stakeholders

@abellucci

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

The Slack Notifications to become part of the Slack Application integration. At the same time, it should be acceptable to keep the Slack Notifications as a separate integration entry for some time to give users time to get used to the new settings location.

When is the feature viable?

The feature is supposed to be viable immediately after the feature flag enablement.

What might happen if this goes wrong?

The flag should be turned off. Keeping the Slack Notifications as a separate integrations entry will help reduce the risks.

What can we monitor to detect problems with this?

  • New Sentry errors related to the GitLab Slack application.
  • Kibana errors for Integrations::ExecuteWorker related to the GitLab Slack application.

What can we check for monitoring production after rollouts?

See above.

Rollout Steps

Rollout on non-production environments

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to non-production environments.
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
  • Enable the feature globally on non-production environments.
    • /chatops run feature set integration_slack_app_notifications true --dev --staging --staging-ref
  • Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable. The best environment to validate the feature in is staging-canary as this is the first environment deployed to. Note you will need to make sure you are configured to use canary as outlined here when accessing the staging environment in order to make sure you are testing appropriately.

Specific rollout on production

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary.
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
  • If you're using project-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-org/gitlab,gitlab-org/gitlab-foss,gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com integration_slack_app_notifications true
  • If you're using group-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --group=gitlab-org,gitlab-com integration_slack_app_notifications true
  • If you're using user-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --user=<your-username> integration_slack_app_notifications true
  • Verify that the feature works on the specific entries. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

Preparation before global rollout

  • Set a milestone to the rollout issue to signal for enabling and removing the feature flag when it is stable.
  • Check if the feature flag change needs to be accompanied with a change management issue. Cross link the issue here if it does.
  • Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall Slack alias.
  • Ensure that documentation has been updated (More info).
  • Announce on the feature issue an estimated time this will be enabled on GitLab.com.
  • Ensure that any breaking changes have been announced following the release post process to ensure GitLab customers are aware.
  • Notify #support_gitlab-com and your team channel (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs).

Global rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production should be executed in the #production slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's slack channel (#g_TEAM_NAME).

  • Incrementally roll out the feature.
    • If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
      • /chatops run feature set integration_slack_app_notifications <rollout-percentage> --actors
    • If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
      • /chatops run feature set integration_slack_app_notifications <rollout-percentage> --random
    • Enable the feature globally on production environment.
      • /chatops run feature set integration_slack_app_notifications true
  • Announce on the feature issue that the feature has been globally enabled.
  • Wait for at least one day for the verification term.

Release the feature

After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.

You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.

  • Create a merge request to remove integration_slack_app_notifications feature flag. Ask for review and merge it.
    • Remove all references to the feature flag from the codebase.
    • Remove the YAML definitions for the feature from the repository.
    • Create a changelog entry.
  • Ensure that the cleanup MR has been included in the release package. If the merge request was deployed before the monthly release was tagged, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post.
    • /chatops run release check <merge-request-url> <milestone>
  • Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone.
  • If not already done, clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production channel:
    • /chatops run feature delete integration_slack_app_notifications --dev --staging --staging-ref --production
  • Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set integration_slack_app_notifications false

Availability & Testing

Slack notifications are a good instance of behavior to test e2e. Follow up with !100448 (merged)

Edited by Luke Duncalfe