Zendesk Global without contributions

Support Operations policies page for project setup for Zendesk Global without support contributions

For projects involving Zendesk Global that do not enable support contributions, the only real tasks are building the core project itself.

To begin, you need to create the source project. To do this, first navigate to gitlab-support-readiness/zendesk-global and determine what area this falls into. As an example, if this is about tickets (such as forms, fields, settings, etc.), it might make sense to make the project in the Tickets subgroup. You will need to use your best discretion here to decide on that. Once you are in the group you are creating the project within, click the blue New project button at the top-right of the page.

This will bring you to the new project page, showing various options to assist in the project’s creation. The option you want is Create blank project. After clicking that, you will need to fill out some information. It should be as follows:

  • Project name: A name that specifies what the form is form
  • Project URL: You are fine to allow gitlab.com to populate this for you
  • Project deployment target (optional): Leave this as is and do not modify it
  • Visibility Level: Private
  • Project Configuration: Uncheck all boxes

After ensuring all that is solid, click the blue Create project button. This will result in an empty project being created.

You will want to double check all the settings being used are accurate before proceeding.

Settings for source project
  • General
    • Naming, topics, avatar
      • Project Description (optional): Something to describe the project’s use
    • Visibility, project features, permissions
      • Project visibility: Private
      • Issues: Unchecked
      • Respository: Checked
      • Merge requests: Checked
      • Forks: Unchecked
      • CI/CD: Checked
      • Container registry: Unchecked
      • Analytics: Unchecked
      • Requirements: Unchecked
      • Security and Compliance: Unchecked
      • Wiki: Unchecked
      • Snippets: Unchecked
      • Package registry: Unchecked
      • Model experiments: Unchecked
      • Model registry: Unchecked
      • Pages: Checked
      • Monitor: Unchecked
      • Environments: Unchecked
      • Feature flags: Unchecked
      • Infrastructure: Unchecked
      • Releases: Unchecked
      • CI/CD Catalog resource: Unchecked
      • Enable email notifications: Checked
      • Show default emoji reactions: Checked
      • Warn about Potentially Unwanted Characters: Checked
    • Badges
      • There should be no badges
    • Compliance framework
      • There should be no compliance framework
    • Service Desk
      • It should not be activated
  • Integrations
    • There should be no activated integrations
  • Webhooks
    • There should be no webhooks
  • Access Tokens
    • There should be no access tokens
  • Repository
    • Branch defaults
      • Default branch: master
      • Auto-close referenced issues on default branch: Checked
      • Branch name template: Leave it empty
    • Branch rules
      • No need to edit this, let it self-populate
    • Push rules
      • Reject unverified users: Unchecked
      • Reject inconsistent user name: Unchecked
      • Reject unsigned commits: Unchecked
      • Reject commits that aren't DCO certified: Unchecked
      • Do not allow users to remove Git tags with git push: Unchecked
      • Check whether the commit author is a GitLab user: Unchecked
      • Prevent pushing secret files: Unchecked
      • Require expression in commit messages: Leave it empty
      • Reject expression in commit messages: Leave it empty
      • Branch name: Leave it empty
      • Commit author's email: Leave it empty
      • Prohibited file names: Leave it empty
      • Maximum file size (MB): 0
    • Mirroring repositories
      • There should be no mirrors setup as of yet (one will be made later)
    • Protected branches
      • There should be on entry:
        • Branch: master
        • Allowed to merge: Maintainers
        • Allowed to push and merge: gl-support-bot
        • Allowed to force push: Unchecked
        • Code owner approval: Checked
    • Protected tags
      • There should be no protected tags
    • Deploy tokens
      • There should be no deploy tokens
    • Deploy keys
      • There should be no deploy keys
  • Merge Requests

    • Merge method: Merge commit

    • Merge options:

      • Enable merged results pipelines: Unchecked
      • Automatically resolve merge request diff threads when they become outdated: Unchecked
      • Show link to create or view a merge request when pushing from the command line: Checked
      • Enable “Delete source branch” option by default: Checked

    • Squash commits when merging: Require

    • Merge checks

      • Pipelines must succeed: Unchecked
      • All threads must be resolved: Checked
      • Status checks must succeed: Unchecked

    • Merge suggestions: Leave it empty

    • Merge commit message template:

      Merge branch ‘%{source_branch}’ into ‘%{target_branch}’

      %{title}

      %{issues}

      See merge request %{reference}

    • Squash commit message template:

      %{title}

    • Default description template for merge requests: blank

    • Merge request approvals

      • Approval rules: Leave as is
      • Security Approvals: There should be none
      • Approval settings
        • Prevent approval by author: Checked
        • Prevent approvals by users who add commits: Checked
        • Prevent editing approval rules in merge requests: Checked
        • Require user re-authentication (password or SAML) to approve: Unchecked
        • When a commit is added: Remove all approvals

    • Suggested reviewers: Do not enable

    • Merge request branch workflow: There should be none

  • CI/CD
    • Ensure Public pipelines under General pipelines is unchecked
    • Leave the rest as it
  • Packages and registries
    • Leave as is
  • Monitor
    • Leave as is
  • Analytics
    • Leave as is
  • Usage Quotas
    • Leave as is

After confirming the settings, you will want to create a merge request with the desired code. Make sure to setup the .gitlab folder and its contents for the project!

Once that merge request has been successfully merged into the default branch, you will then configure any needed CI/CD variables in the project’s settings. To do that, hover over Settings on the project and click CI/CD. You will then navigate to the Variables section and click Expand. For each variable you need (determined by your code and setup), you need to click the Add variable button to bring up a sub-menu. When doing these, ensure you uncheck the Protect variable box, uncheck the Mask variable box, and check the Expand variable reference box. Once you have entered your Key and Value, click the blue Add variable button.

The final step will be creating the pipeline schedule this will use.

To setup a pipeline schedule, hover over Build and click Pipeline schedules. Click the blue Create a new pipeline schedule button (for the first schedule) or the blue New schedule button (for subsequent ones). For the description, enter a description that states what it is doing (syncing to Zendesk, posting in Slack, etc.). For the Interval Pattern, enter a cron-style string that reflects when it will run (crontab.guru can help with that). For the Cron timezone, enter [UTC 0] UTC. For Select target branch or tag, use master (this is our default). If you have any variables dependent on this specific pipeline schedule, you can enter them here. Make sure the Activate checkbox is checked, and then click the blue Create pipeline schedule button.

Once that is done, so is the project setup!

NOTE You probably need to update some form of our handbook for this new project, so make sure that gets done!

Last modified July 9, 2024: Fix links and spelling (e30f31b6)
View page source - Edit this page - please contribute. Creative Commons License