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Issue Triage in the VA

GitHub User Requests Issue Triage

There are a number of different requests that the GitHub team receive.
To help manage these requests we’ve set up a repository specifically for this, github-support.

Types of Requests/Issues

While the github-support repo was created to handle all types of issues, there are a couple of “usual suspects” that we’ve optimized for by creating issue templates.

Onboarding users into the VA org

All GitHub invites are done using user emails. GitHub usernames are not considered an efficient way to onboard users since there is a chance of misspellings.

There are two ways to request to onboard users into the VA GitHub organization:

  1. Use the VA internal request form

    This is the preferred way to request user onboarding. Access to internal VA resources is needed. When using above form and a VA email, the user will automatically be invited into the organization within a few minutes.

  2. Use the GitHub Issue template

    This issue template was created to help teams that need to onboard users but are still going through their VA onboarding process. Using this issue template will require an additional approval from a VA point of contact that is involved with the project/team that is requesting the user onboarded.

How do we triage these requests?

The GitHub team has created scripts to help manage these requests.

Requests from the internal VA form

Onboarding scripts are run within 5 minutes after an issue is created. Once the user has been issued an invite they will receive an email from GitHub with instructions on how to join the org.

Issue comments are posted with the actions taken on the issue. Once the invite is sent the issue is closed.

If a non VA email is requested in the form, the script will not invite the user automatically, instead we will need approval from someone within the VA to add that user. Once approval is received, in the form of a comment with “approved”, anyone in the admin group will need to run the invite command on the requested email by making a comment with /invite [Email Address] in the body. This will send the invite to the email specified.

Requests from the GitHub Issue template

These requests are handled by hand at the moment. The issue is analyzed and approval is asked for where necessary.

Approvals are given via an issue comment. Once we have this approval the triaging team will add a comment with the following command /invite [Email Address] and the user will have an invitation email sent to their inbox.

Off-boarding users into the VA org

User off-boarding is currently managed via GitHub Issues. Please follow the instructions provided in our User Removal Request Policy to request user off-boarding.

Making repositories public

By default all repositories created in the VA organization are private or internal. Both options are private, internal repositories have the additional characteristic of being accessible to all VA organization members in GitHub.

The VA does have repositories that are meant to be public and some that are public by default. To make a repository public an issue should be created with the request. Once the request is made an approval is needed from a VA point of contact to proceed with making the repo public.

The approval can be given by commenting approved in the issue. Once this approval is given the GitHub team will make the repo public.

Once public the issue will be closed.

Configuration Management Engagement

TBD

DevOps Tools Info Suggestion

TBD

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