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[Feature flag] Rollout of `advanced_user_search`

Summary

This issue is to rollout Advanced user search on production, that is currently behind the advanced_user_search feature flag.

Owners

  • Team: global search
  • Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to: #g_global_search
  • Best individual to reach out to: @maddievn

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

When Elasticsearch is available, user searches will use Elasticsearch to get the results instead of postgres.

When is the feature viable?

  1. Two elastic migrations need to be completed: create_user_index and backfill_users. (These are completed on gitlab.com).
  2. Elasticsearch needs to be available

What might happen if this goes wrong?

  • Web user search on the global search page could 500
    • For group level
    • For project level
    • For global level
  • API user search could 500
    • For global level: api/v4//search?scope=users&search=user
    • For group level: api/v4/groups/<group_id>/search?scope=users&search=user
    • For project level: api/v4/projects/<project_id>/search?scope=users&search=user

What can we monitor to detect problems with this?

Internal link

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 <feature-flag-name> 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 <feature-flag-name> true
  • If you're using group-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --group=gitlab-org,gitlab-com <feature-flag-name> true
  • If you're using user-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --user=<your-username> <feature-flag-name> 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).
  • Leave a comment on the feature issue announcing estimated time when this feature flag 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 <feature-flag-name> <rollout-percentage> --actors
    • If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
      • /chatops run feature set <feature-flag-name> <rollout-percentage> --random
    • Enable the feature globally on production environment.
      • /chatops run feature set <feature-flag-name> true
  • Leave a comment on the feature issue announcing 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 <feature-flag-name> 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 <feature-flag-name> --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 <feature-flag-name> false
Edited by Madelein van Niekerk