Edit your team member data

How to review and update your team member data entry, which feeds handbook pages and tools.

This page covers how to review and update your team member data entry (your YAML file in the www-gitlab-com project) and how to add your pets to the Team Pets page.

For the handbook, see the editing handbook page.

The Workday sync creates and updates your team member data entry daily. For example, the Features by Group page lists every product group with its product manager, engineering manager, and other counterparts. It finds these people through their team member data, so a wrong name or GitLab username leaves you out of your group. See How your entry connects to other data.

Product and Engineering workflows that depend on your entry:

Reviewer roulette suggests reviewers and maintainers from your gitlab username and projects roles.
Code owner reviews: handbook pages resolve CODEOWNERS users by gitlab username, to show the name and picture of the page maintainers.
DRI listings: handbook pages such as stable counterparts, stage and group tables, and technical writing assignments list team members by name, role, and reports_to.
Community contribution labels: if gitlab does not match the GitLab account you use for work, your merge requests are labeled as community contributions.

Keep these fields current. Profile details such as story, remote_story, and social handles are optional. For current work on the team data sync, see the FY27 team data sync epic.

Review and update your entry

A sync adds a basic team member data entry for you on your third day of employment at GitLab. Review it and add information to it. If an update is not properly reflected, verify that your Workday setting is correct. All of the available fields are documented in the team member data schema.

If your entry shows a wrong name or GitLab username, update your team data settings in Workday.

Choose how to update your entry

Ask anyone in the company for help if you need it, including the #mr-buddies or #handbook Slack channels. There are four ways to update your entry:

Choose the method below that feels most comfortable and have the following information handy:

Name of the People Operations Team member helping you with onboarding.
A picture of yourself that meets the picture requirements.
(Optional) A story about your background and interests. (See other team member entries for examples.)
(Optional) Your personal LinkedIn / Twitter / GitLab handles. When adding these handles, make sure to only include your username without any links or @ in front of them, such as LinkedIn: username. (Some incorrect examples are: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/username, LinkedIn: @username.)
A relative link to your role. If your link is https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-description-library/engineering/support-engineer/ use /job-description-library/engineering/support-engineer/. Refer to other entries for reference.

Picture requirements

Crop image to a perfect square.
Maximum dimension is 400 by 400 pixels.
Use the JPEG (.jpg) or PNG (.png) format.
Keep the file size below 100k. Minify using something like tinyjpg.com.
Test image in color and black-and-white (you will add the color version).
Name file yournameinlowercase with the appropriate file extension.

Note

Your name and GitLab username come from Workday. If they are wrong in your entry, fix them in Workday too: update your team data settings in Workday.

Method 1: Add your info on GitLab.com using Web IDE

Open the data/team_members/person folder in the www-gitlab-com project.
Open the folder for the first letter of your slug, then open your team member file. For example, a team member with the slug mnohr has the file m/mnohr.yml. To find the file faster, press t to open the file finder and type your name, or search the project for your GitLab username.
- Note: if you chose No in Workday for Export Name/Location to Team Page?, your name is replaced by your job title, and the sync overwrites changes to it. If you cannot find your file by name, search for your GitLab username instead. To change this, update your team data settings in Workday.
Select Edit > Open in Web IDE. Our web editor opens with your team member data entry.
Check that the gitlab value matches your GitLab.com username, so you know you have the right file.
Update your details as described in Fields to update.
To add a picture, prepare it according to the Picture Requirements. In the file explorer, right-click the sites/uncategorized/source/images/team/ folder, select Upload, and choose your picture. Then set picture to the file name, matching the letter case, for example picture: yournameinlowercase.jpg.
Commit your changes to a new branch and create a merge request, as described in Use the Web IDE to edit the handbook.
In the merge request description, explain what you changed and why, for example Update my team member data.
Add your People Operations onboarding team member and your manager as reviewers. Once they have reviewed your changes, they approve and merge the merge request.

Method 2: Add your info on GitLab.com using the ‘web interface’

Go to the GitLab.com / www-gitlab-com project.
Click the + under the red line near the top of the screen.
Click New branch.
For Branch name, name it something unique (it’s temporary so don’t worry too much about the exact name) like your initials-team-data-update-yourdepartment-the date and click Create branch. Example: hk-team-data-update-custsupport-feb06
Start by adding your image. Click on Repository on the left side.
In the file browser, navigate to sites/uncategorized/source/images/team.
At the top of the page click + and choose Upload file to upload your picture. Be sure to follow the picture requirements. Add a commit message in the format Add picture for YourFirstName YourLastName. Ensure the target branch is the one you previously created. Turn off the Start a new merge request with these changes toggle. Click Upload file.
Now you will edit your team member data entry. All of your information is stored in a data file. Navigate to data/team_members/person/FIRST_LETTER_OF_YOUR_SLUG/SLUG_REPLACE.yml (you are looking for a file that specifies your name or slug).
Navigate to the relevant yourslug.yml file. Click on Edit on the top right side of your screen, and choose Edit single file.
Update your details as described in Fields to update.
After you add your information, add a commit message, and click on “Commit Changes”. If you have the “create a new merge request” option checked, then it will create the merge request (MR) for you.
Now Create a merge request in GitLab.com with the branch that you created by clicking Create merge request button.
Once on the Create a new merge request page, in the Description box, under the Why is this change being made? heading, explain what changes are being made and why. For this specific MR, you can enter something like: Adding my information and picture to my team member data as part of onboarding tasks. For this MR, you do not need to change anything else in the description text.
Click Create merge request.
At the upper right of the new page, click edit next to Reviewer. Set your People Operations onboarding team member and your manager as reviewer for this merge request.

Method 3: Add your info using a Local Git clone (using the terminal and an IDE)

Note: This method may take longer than other methods, because it requires git clone for a large repository.

Download Git, following the start using git documentation.
Follow the steps to create and add your SSH keys.
Clone the www-gitlab-com project through your terminal, following the command line commands documentation.
Create and checkout a new branch for the changes you will be making.
Add your picture to the sites/uncategorized/source/images/team/ directory. Be sure to follow the picture requirements.
Open data/team_members/person/FIRST_LETTER_OF_YOUR_SLUG/SLUG_REPLACE.yml in your favorite editor, specifically looking for the file with your name or slug.
Update your details as described in Fields to update.
Save the changes to the file in data/team_members/person/FIRST_LETTER_OF_YOUR_SLUG/ that you just edited.
Optionally, validate your changes locally before you push. Follow Validate data changes in the www-gitlab-com development guide.
- Note: The MR pipeline automatically validates your file, as described in Reviewing your changes.
Once ready, stage and commit your changes, with a comment Update team member data for FirstName LastName.
Push your branch.
Create a Merge Request in GitLab.com with the branch that you created and assign your manager as reviewer.

Ask an agent for help

Open GitLab Duo Agentic Chat in the www-gitlab-com project and describe what you want to change. For example:

Help me update my biography in the team member YAML data. My name is Michael Friedrich.
Here is my updated biography: <text>. Find my existing entry and show me the proposed diff.

Replace the name and biography with your own. You can also ask the agent to review YAML formatting, identify duplicate fields, and consolidate your proposed edits. Use the team member data schema as the reference, and ask it to flag conflicting values or fields managed by Workday.

Review the diff before asking for a draft MR. Keep unrelated profile details intact and follow Reviewing your changes before requesting approval.

Fields to update

Check and update these fields in your entry. The team member data schema lists all fields and the ones that the Workday sync maintains.

Update your name if needed to your FirstName LastNameor PreferredName LastName
locality should be left empty
country should be set to Remote
Verify your role
If your position title is incorrect or not filled in, navigate to job_families.yml and use command-F (macOS) or ctrl-F (nix) to search for your job title. You can search for files in the Web IDE using command-P (macOS) or ctrl-P (nix).
Check that your role has a link to your job description. If not, add a link. For example, change <a href="">Solutions Architect</a> to <a href="/job-description-library/sales/solutions-architect/">Solutions Architect</a>.
Verify reports_to lists your manager using the slug value from their team member data entry. The filename (without the extension) is also the slug, meaning aname.yml has a slug of aname.
If you are a manager, verify the reports_to of your direct reports are referring to your slug.
If you’re currently on a borrow request, add borrow and set the to and end_date keys, such as:
```
borrow:
  to: ramya-authappan
  end_date: 2023-09-15
```
Set your current work priorities in the work_priorities field, as an array, such as:
```
work_priorities:
  - Product Analytics
  - ModelOps
```
Add the filename of your profile picture, making sure to match letter case. Delete ../gitlab-logo-extra-whitespace.png, if present. The completed line should look like this: picture: yournameinlowercase.jpg.
Ensure your list of departments is accurate. Use other team members’ as a reference.
Add your specialty.
Add your expertise. This must be formatted as HTML. An array will display incorrectly.
Update any data that was filled in but is incorrect.

Optional profile details:

Add your pronouns.
Consider adding pronunciation for your full name to help others to pronounce your name correctly (such as, Sid See-brandy for Sid Sijbrandij).
Add your Twitter and GitLab handles without the leading @.
Add your Mastodon account in the format mastodon.instance/@username. Basically, the profile link without the https://.
Add your own story. Use other team members’ stories as a reference.
If remote work has changed your life in a meaningful way, consider adding your own remote_story, using other team members’ remote stories as a reference

Important: Do not use the tab character, and respect the spaces between lines to avoid breaking the page format. Referenced file names/extensions are case sensitive, and a file that is not found will cause a pipeline failure. The file should end with an empty newline or it will cause a pipeline failure.

Reviewing your changes

Check the merge request to validate changes:

Check the CI/CD pipeline and its linter jobs which check new and modified files, matching the required data schema, for example required properties, unique slugs, and reports_to refers to an existing team member entry.
Ensure that the latest pipeline is OK before requesting a review.
After the www-gitlab-com MR is merged, the handbook projects can fetch the updated data in their next deployment job. That might take a while until a handbook MR is merged.

Update your team data settings in Workday

The Workday sync creates and updates your team member data entry from two settings in Workday:

GitLab Username: fills the gitlab field in your entry, which links it to your GitLab account, for example for reviewer roulette. Enter only your GitLab.com username, without the @. Do not enter your name or email address.
Export Name/Location to Team Page: if set to Yes, the sync exports your name and location. Otherwise, your entry shows your job title instead of your name, and the sync overwrites manual changes to name.

Fix both settings in Workday, not only in your team member data entry, so that the sync uses the correct values.

To check or update both settings:

Go to your profile, then select View Profile > Actions > Additional Data > Edit Effective-Dated Custom Object.
Select today’s date, then edit the additional data.
In the GitLab Username form, check or enter your GitLab username without the @, then submit.
In the You have submitted dialog, select Edit Additional Data again.
For Export Name/Location to Team Page, select Yes, then submit.

How your entry connects to other data

Your entry is one of several data files in the www-gitlab-com project. Other files refer to team members, and handbook pages combine them:

sections.yml and stages.yml name the counterparts of each product section, stage, and group.
categories.yml and features.yml describe the product categories and features of each group.
projects.yml lists GitLab projects. The projects field in your entry refers to them, for example for reviewer roulette.

flowchart LR
  WD[Workday] --> TM[Your team member data]
  ST[Sections and stages] --> FP[Features by Group page]
  CF[Categories and features] --> FP
  TM --> FP
  PR[Projects] --> RR[Reviewer roulette]
  TM --> RR
  TM --> CO[Code owner avatars]

The Features by Group page, for example, combines sections, stages, categories, features, and team member data. To see which files feed which pages and tools, see the data flow overview.

Add your pet(s) to the Team Pets Page

Using what you learned in the steps above, consider adding your pet(s) to the Team Pets page.

The main differences are the names and locations of things.

The picture should be petname.jpg or petname.png with the same picture requirements.
Upload the picture to sites/uncategorized/source/images/team/pets.
Your pet information should be added to the end of the data/pets.yml file.
Your commit message can be similar to Adding my dog Gary to the Team Pets Page.
Assign your manager as the reviewer.
- If your manager has a warning yellow triangle symbol on their avatar after adding them, they can approve, but not merge. Post in the #mr-buddies Slack channel after your manager has approved with a request to get it merged.

Last modified October 15, 2026: Update the team member data guide and rename it to edit-team-data (fc491a0d)

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