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Warning

Migrations are coming to VA GitHub. See the Migrations section for more information.

30 Day Activity Policy

Users with no activity in the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub Enterprise Cloud in 30 days will be removed as per ATO policy.

User 30-Day Activity Policy

The Department of Veterans Affairs mandates that users must be removed from GitHub Enterprise Cloud if they are inactive for 30 days. This process is automated and will remove users from the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com if they have not had a recorded activity in the last 30 days.

What is considered activity?

Unfortunately, due to limitations in the GitHub API, we are unable to track all activity on GitHub.com. We are not able to detect read-only activity such as logging into GitHub.com and viewing VA repositories or issues.

To be identified as active users need to perform an action in GitHub, for example:

  • Joining the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com
  • Committing to a repository in the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com
  • Doing anything that counts as Contributions in the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com by the Contributions API
  • Creating or commenting on an issue in the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com
  • Creating a release in the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com.

How do I know if I am at risk of being removed?

Once a week, an automated process will run and create an issue in the github-inactive-user-mentions repository. This issue will be assigned to you.

The issue assignment triggers a GitHub notification for your user account, however whether you receive that notification depends on your GitHub notification settings and potentially your email configuration.

To ensure you will receive the notification email:

  1. Use the email address that you check most often as your Default notifications email.
  2. Check Email in the Participating, @mentions and custom option.
  3. Verify that the github-inactive-user-mentions repository is not ignored in your watching list.
  4. Check your email client spam folder for GitHub notification emails

How do I prevent being removed?

To prevent being removed from the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com, you must perform one of the activities mentioned above. If you have not performed one of these activities in the last 30 days, there are a few options available to you.

  • Open a Preserve User request in the github-user-requests repository.
  • Comment on the issue assigned to you in the github-inactive-user-mentions repository.
  • Reply-All to the email notification you received from GitHub when the issue was created in the github-inactive-user-mentions repository.
    • You must reply-all to the email notification to ensure that the issue is updated with your comment.

What happens if I am removed?

If you are removed from the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com, you will lose access to all repositories in the Department of Veterans Affairs organization on GitHub.com.

To restore your access, simply request access again via the documented Getting Access process.

Once you have access again, you may restore you team membership by navigating to the Reinstate User workflow in the github-user-requests repository. Once on the page, simply click the Run workflow button to the right of the page and enter you GitHub username in the username field and click the Run workflow button.

Note: This automated workflow is only able to restore your access to teams if you were removed in the previous 30 days. If you were removed more than 30 days ago, you will need to request access to these teams again from the team owners.

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