Content workflows for Developer Advocates

Content Library

The Developer Advocacy team creates content that can be used for campaigns, field enablement, product launches and general learning and onboarding. All contents and activities the team participates in are tracked in issues following team workflows.

You can search for relevant content and contact the team in the linked content epics or in the #dev-advocacy-team Slack channel.

The following sections provide an overview of all content assets, and links to find them.

Note: If you need an updated or newly created content asset, please follow the content request workflow.

Highspot

The team’s content is distributed in Highspot in topic and type-specific spots, for example, GitLab Duo (AI) and Customer Outreach.

Product Adoption Initiatives

• FY25 GitLab Duo adoption - Developer Relations epic (internal).
• FY25 CI/CD adoption - Developer Relations epic (internal)

Blog posts

This section provides examples from the many blog posts authored by the Developer Advovacy team. Click on the author names for a full list of blog posts.

• Abubakar Siddiq Ango
  • GitLab Duo Chat 101: Get more done on GitLab with our AI assistant
  • Write Terraform plans faster with GitLab Duo Code Suggestions
  • How to migrate from Bamboo to GitLab CI/CD
• Cesar Saavedra
  • 5 videos and interactive tours to learn GitLab Duo fast
  • Combine GitLab Flow and GitLab Duo for a workflow powerhouse
  • How to use feature flags to lower risk in deployments
• Daniel Helfand
  • How to stream logs through the GitLab Dashboard for Kubernetes
• Fatima Sarah Khalid
  • Develop C++ unit testing with Catch2, JUnit, and GitLab CI
  • Explore the Dragon Realm: Build a C++ adventure game with a little help from AI
  • How to choose the right static site generator
• Fernando Diaz
  • Get to know the security and governance updates in GitLab 17, 17.1
  • Migration guide: GitHub Advanced Security to GitLab Ultimate
  • How to integrate custom security scanners into GitLab
• John Coghlan
  • Developer Relations at GitLab: What we’ve learned since our start
  • Building GitLab with GitLab: How GitLab.com inspired Dedicated
• Itzik Gan Baruch
  • FAQ: GitLab CI/CD Catalog
  • Refactoring a CI/CD template to a CI/CD component
  • Jenkins to GitLab: The ultimate guide to modernizing your CI/CD environment
• Michael Friedrich
  • Refactor code into modern languages with AI-powered GitLab Duo
  • Top tips for efficient AI-powered Code Suggestions with GitLab Duo
  • 10 best practices for using AI-powered GitLab Duo Chat
• William Arias
  • Building GitLab with GitLab: Why there is no MLOps without DevSecOps
  • Modern software development problems require modern AI-powered DevSecOps
  • How Comet can streamline machine learning on The GitLab DevOps Platform

Click-through Demos

Click-through demos are product simulation demonstrations that can be used for self-guided training. They are invaluable for delivering demos to customers in areas with limited internet connectivity or complex environments, where preparation is necessary to showcase the flow. Toggle off the click boxes and speaker notes using fn+F2 to experience the real look and feel of the product.

Note: The demos can be run offline in the absence of internet connectivity. To do so, you can directly obtain the necessary HTML files from here.

Product tours

Product tours are a self-guided journey emphasizing the ‘What’ of a feature, skipping the ‘How-to’ steps to directly showcase the value aspects.

Internal Product tours

While the product tours provide guided walkthroughs with navigation dialogs and explanations at each step and can serve as self-guided tours for customers, the internal product tours are designed to help GitLab team members demo features to customers and prospects. These tours omit the explanation dialogs, creating a seamless live demo experience. Refer to the navigation guides to learn how to navigate through the flows.

Please search for the “[product name] tour - navigation guide” (ex: Advanced SAST tour - navigation guide) in Google Drive to find the step by step instructions to navigate through these tours.

YouTube playlists

GitLab YouTube channel:

• GitLab Demos
• GitLab Snapshots
• GitLab Snapshots - español
• GitLab Snapshots - português
• GitLab Duo Snapshots

GitLab Unfiltered YouTube channel:

• Developer Advocacy with talk recordings, workshops and community engagements.
• GitLab Duo Coffee Chat, learning sessions with GitLab Duo and AI.
• DevOps with GitLab Duo, learning sessions with GitLab Duo, DevOps and AI.

Vimeo folder

• Developer Relations

Maintained documentation

Developer advocates authored and maintain the following documentation pages, with practical and technical examples aiding adoption and efficiency use cases.

Maintained talks

These golden talk slide decks provide storytelling for lightning talks at events, speaking engagements, customer workshops, etc. You can use the slide decks for your own talks, workshops, etc. or repurpose specific slides into new stories.

These talks are maintained throughout FY25:

Projects

Source code, demo projects, workshops, tutorials, research, etc. are documented in the Projects handbook. This includes use cases for GitLab Duo (AI), CI/CD components, DevSecOps and Security, Workspaces, GitLab API, etc.

Content Creation

Guideline and tips for creating GitLab tours with Navattic

1. Keep the product tours concise, ideally consisting of 8 to 12 steps, each highly focused on delivering clear value. In contrast, demos in documentation may adopt a more instructional “how-to” approach with longer steps.
2. Consider adding links to relevant blog posts or documentation within tooltips or modals to provide users with further context or resources.
3. In the demo settings, under ’theme’ select ‘GitLab Branding [Navattic Team]’.
4. Navattic supports two types of screen captures: Web and Screenshots. It’s recommended to use web captures for an ‘in-product’ feel, but in some cases, due to Navattic product limitations, you may find that web capture doesn’t work well for some pages. In such cases, use screenshots instead. Here are some guidelines for screenhots capturing:

• Open your browser at 1920x1080 resolution (Full HD). You can use Window Resizer to set the resolution.
• Open GitLab UI in full screen and capture only the GitLab UI (avoid including the Chrome toolbar or the MAC menu).
• Use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+4 to Capture selected portion of the screen.

Content Distribution

UTMs for URL tagging and tracking

The Developer Advocacy team works with the Developer Relations Team UTM Strategy, which is based on the larger Marketing UTM strategy. The utm_content prefix for the Developer Evangelism team is de_, this allows for easily filtering of the team’s data in Sisense.

You can use the UTM Generator on the Community UTM Page to easily generate UTM Codes for your campaigns.

We use the following campaigns:

1. Blog posts (general) - All GitLab blog where we are not authors. Content tracking for social media.
2. Blog posts (authors) - GitLab blog posts where we are authors. Content tracking for social media.
3. Talk resources (general) - QR codes and short URLs for talk slides.
4. Community newsletter - community newsletter short URLs.
5. Demos (TMM, DE) - technical demos with standalone URLs.
6. Release Evangelism - Release evangelism activities.
7. Podcast resources - URLs shared with podcast hosts.
8. Contributed articles - external articles shared on social media.

Event and content specific tracking examples are KubeCon EU 2023.

Content Distribution Workflow

After content has been crafted and published, the next step is distribution. Here are some steps to assist in the process:

1. Use the UTM Generator to create UTM codes and short URLs for your content. Further insights about this can be found in the Developer Advocacy UTM Strategy.

For documentation and community:

1. Tutorial blog posts, demos, etc. that are helpful to everyone should be added to the GitLab documentation. Follow the contribution docs and create related topics headings if not existing. Raise an MR, use content short URLs, and ask the designed technical writer to review. Example MR: Add tutorial blog posts to workspaces docs
2. Consider sharing your content on one of our community platforms like the GitLab Forum or the r/gitlab subreddit. If you’re covering a topic that’s broader than GitLab, you can also consider other subreddits or cross-posting your content on blogging sites like dev.to.

For social media:

1. Draft some copy for sharing your content on social media. See Content Sharing for tips and an overview of different platforms. Review the message tips for additional engagement ideas, e.g. emojis.
2. Suggest your content as a story on Bambu so other GitLab team members can also share it. Details on how to suggest content on Bambu.
3. After posting your content on social media, share a link in the #social-media-action Slack channel to request promotion from the social media team.

For GitLab teams:

1. Content that can be useful to our Field Teams, should also be posted in Highspot.
2. Share an update in the #dev-advocacy-team Slack channel using the following message template:

:results-tanuki: <Content type> published: <title>

Social short UTM URLs:

1. LinkedIn:
2. Twitter:
3. Mastodon:

Content epic: <URL>

Thanks/cc @teammembers

Example:

:results-tanuki:  Blog published: Set up your infrastructure for on-demand, cloud-based development environments in GitLab

Social short UTM URLs:

1. LinkedIn: https://go.gitlab.com/EHIjRt
2. Twitter: https://go.gitlab.com/uz7OSE
3. Mastodon: https://go.gitlab.com/pFxdKa

Content epic: <URL>

Thanks a lot @HelpfulCoworker for editing this long read :handshake: :purple_heart:

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