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Engineering

This handbook page details processes specific to working with and within this department.

Team

Role Contributor(s)
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Luke Heath (@lukeheath)
Engineering Manager (EM) See 🛩️ Product groups
Quality Assurance Engineer (QA) See 🛩️ Product groups
Software Engineer See 🛩️ Product groups

Contact us

  • To make a request of this department, create an issue and a team member will get back to you within one business day (If urgent, mention a team member in the #help-engineering Slack channel.
    • Any Fleet team member can view the kanban boards for this department, including pending tasks and the status of new requests.
    • Please use issue comments and GitHub mentions to communicate follow-ups or answer questions related to your request.

Responsibilities

The 🚀 Engineering department at Fleet is directly responsible for writing and maintaining the code for Fleet's core product and infrastructure.

Write a feature guide

We write guides for all new features. Feature guides are published before the feature is released so that our users understand how the feature is intended to work. A guide is a type of article, so the process for writing a guide and article is the same.

  1. Review and follow the Fleet writing style guide.
  2. Make a copy of a guide in the /articles directory and replace the content with your article. Make sure to maintain the same heading sizes and update the metadata tags at the bottom.
  3. Open a new pull request containing your article into main and add the pull request to the milestone this feature will be shipped in. The pull request will automatically be assigned to the appropriate reviewer.

Create an engineering-initiated story

Engineering-initiated stories are types of user stories created by engineers to make technical changes to Fleet. Technical changes should improve the user experience or contributor experience. For example, optimizing SQL that improves the response time of an API endpoint improves user experience by reducing latency. A script that generates common boilerplate, or automated tests to cover important business logic, improves the quality of life for contributors, making them happier and more productive, resulting in faster delivery of features to our customers.

It's important to frame engineering-initiated user stories the same way we frame all user stories. Stay focused on how this technical change will drive value for our users.

  1. Create a new engineering-initiated story using the new story template. Make sure the ~engineering-initiated label is added, the :product label is removed, and the engineering output and architecture DRI (@lukeheath) is assigned.

  2. If the user story contributes to an OKR, explain how in the "Key result" section. If not, explain what key result we can measure to determine if this story is successful.

  3. Set yourself as the product designer for the user story if another engineer is not DRI. By default, the engineer creating the engineering-initiated story is DRI for the story and will design and implement it.

  4. Remove the "Product" section and checklist from the issue description.

  5. Create the issue. The new user story will be automatically placed in the "New Requests" column of the engineering GitHub board. If you feel the issue is urgent, tag your EM or the engineering output and architecture DRI (@lukeheath) in a comment.

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We prefer the term engineering-initiated stories over technical debt because the user story format helps keep us focused on our users and contributors.

Draft an engineering-initiated story

The engineering output and architecture DRI reviews and triages engineering-initiated stories weekly on the Engineering board and selects stories to prioritize for drafting by adding the :product label, placing it in the "Ready" column, and assigning to the engineer listed as the product designer.

  1. The assigned engineer is responsible for completing the user story drafting process by completing the specs and defining done. Move the issue into "In progress" on the drafting board and populate all TODOs in the issue description, define implementation details, and draft the first version of the test plan.

  2. When all sections have been populated, move it to the "User story review" column on the drafting board and assign to your EM. The EM will bring the story to weekly user story review, and then to estimation before prioritizing into an upcoming sprint.

Fix a bug

All bug fix pull requests should reference the issue they resolve with the issue number in the description. Please do not use any automated words since we don't want the issues to auto-close when the PR is merged.

Review a community pull request

If you're assigned a community pull request (PR) for review, it is important to keep things moving for the contributor. The goal is to not go more than one business day without following up with the contributor. This applies to PRs from Fleeties, open source contributors, member of the Customer Success team, etc.

If the PR is a quick fix (i.e. typo) or obvious technical improvement that doesn't change the product, it can be merged.

Make sure to create a Github issue and link it to the PR so that we can track the changes in our release process. Make sure to assign the correct milestone to the issue (by having an issue, QA will make sure the fix is not causing regressions).

For PRs that change the product:

  • Assign the PR to the appropriate Product Designer (PD).
  • Notify the relevant PD in the #g-mdm, #g-software, or #g-orchestration Slack channel.

The PD will be the contact point for the contributor and will ensure the PR is reviewed by the appropriate team member when ready. The PD should:

  • Set the PR to draft.
  • Immediately decide whether to prioritize a user story and bring it through drafting or put the change to the side (not prioritize).
  • Thank the contributor for their hard work, notify them on whether their change was prioritized or put to the side. If the change was put to the side, ask the contributor to file a feature request that describes the change, let them know that it only means the change has been rejected at that time, and close the PR.

Merge a community pull request

When merging a pull request from a community contributor:

  • Ensure that the checklist for the submitter is complete.
  • Verify that all necessary reviews have been approved.
  • Merge the PR.
  • Thank and congratulate the contributor.
  • Share the merged PR with the team in the #help-marketing channel of Fleet Slack to be publicized on social media. Those who contribute to Fleet and are recognized for their contributions often become great champions for the project.

Close a stale community issue

If a community member opens an issue that we can't reproduce leave a comment asking the author for more context. After one week with no reply, close the issue with a comment letting them know they are welcome to re-open it with any updates.

Close a stale community PR

If a community PR hasn't had any updates or response from the author after one week, convert the PR to draft and add a comment tagging the author to let them know they are welcome to push any updates and convert it back to non-draft. After one year, our bot will auto-close it with a comment if it doesn't get updated.

Schedule developer on-call workload

Engineering Managers are asked to be aware of the on-call rotation and reduce estimate capacity for each sprint accordingly. While it varies week to week considerably, the on-call responsibilities can sometimes take up a substantial portion of the engineer's time.

On-call engineers are available during the business hours of 9am - 5pm Pacific. The on-call support SLA requires a 1-hour response time during business hours to any @oncall mention.

Assume developer on-call alias

The on-call developer is responsible for:

To provide full-time focus to the role, the on-call engineer is not expected to work on sprint issues during their on-call assignment.

Create a release candidate

All minor releases go through the release candidate process before they are published. A release candidate for the next minor release is created on the last Friday of each sprint at 8:00 AM Pacific (see Fleet's release calendar). A release candidate branch is created at rc-minor-fleet-v4.x.x and no additional feature work or released bug fixes are merged without EM and QA approval.

Run the first step of the minor release section of the Fleet releases script to create the release candidate branch, the release QA issue, and announce the release candidate in Slack.

During the release candidate period, the release candidate is deployed to our QA Wolf instance every morning instead of main to ensure that any new bugs reported by QA Wolf are in the upcoming release and need to be fixed before publishing the release.

Open the confidential repo environment variables page and update the QAWOLF_DEPLOY_TAG repository variable with the name of the release candidate branch.

Merge unreleased bug fixes into the release candidate

Only merge unreleased bug fixes during the release candidate period to minimize code churn and help ensure a stable release. To merge a bug fix into the release candidate:

  1. Merge the fix into main.
  2. git checkout the release candidate branch and create a new local branch.
  3. git cherry-pick your commit from main into your new local branch.
  4. Create a pull request from your new branch to the release candidate.

This process ensures your bug fix is included in main for future releases, as well as the release candidate branch for the pending release.

If there is partially merged feature work when the release candidate is created, the previously merged code must be reverted. If there is an exceptional, business-critical need to merge feature work into the release candidate, as determined by the release ritual DRI, the release candidate feature merge exception process may be followed.

Request release candidate feature merge exception

  1. Notify product group EM that feature work will not merge into main before the release candidate is cut and requires a feature merge exception.
  2. EM notifies QA lead for the product group and the release ritual DRI.
  3. EM, QA lead, and release ritual DRI must all approve the feature work PR before it is merged into the release candidate branch.
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This exception process should be avoided whenever possible. Any feature work merged into the release candidate will likely result in a significant release delay.

Confirm latest versions of dependencies

Before kicking off release QA, confirm that we are using the latest versions of dependencies we want to keep up-to-date with each release. Currently, those dependencies are:

  1. Go: Latest minor release
  • Check the Go version specified in Fleet's go.mod file (go 1.XX.YY).
  • Check the latest minor version of Go. For example, if we are using go1.19.8, and there is a new minor version go1.19.9, we will upgrade.
  • If the latest minor version is greater than the version included in Fleet, file a bug and assign it to the release ritual DRI and the current oncall engineer. Add the ~release blocker label. We must upgrade to the latest minor version before publishing the next release.
  • If the latest major version is greater than the version included in Fleet, create a story and assign it to the release ritual DRI and the current oncall engineer. This will be considered for an upcoming sprint. The release can proceed without upgrading the major version.
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In Go versioning, the number after the first dot is the "major" version, while the number after the second dot is the "minor" version. For example, in Go 1.19.9, "19" is the major version and "9" is the minor version. Major version upgrades are assessed separately by engineering.

  1. macadmins-extension: Latest release
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Note: Some new versions of the macadmins-extension include updates that require code changes in Fleet. Make sure to note in the bug that the update should be checked for any changes, like new tables, that require code changes in Fleet.

Our goal is to keep these dependencies up-to-date with each release of Fleet. If a release is going out with an old dependency version, it should be treated as a critical bug to make sure it is updated before the release is published.

  1. osquery: Latest release
  1. Vulnerability data sources

If an announcement is found for either data source that may impact data feed availability, notify the current on-call engineer. Notify them that it is their responsibility to investigate and file a bug or take further action as necessary.

  1. Fleetd components
  • Check for code changes to Orbit or Desktop since the last orbit-* tag was published.
  • Check for code changes to the fleetd-chrome extension since the last fleetd-chrome-* tag was published.

If code changes are found for any fleetd components, create a new release QA issue to update fleetd. Delete the top section for Fleet core, and retain the bottom section for fleetd. Populate the necessary version changes for each fleetd component.

Indicate your product group is release-ready

Once a product group completes its QA process during the release candidate period, its QA lead moves the smoke testing ticket to the "Ready for release" column on their GitHub board. They then notify the release ritual DRI by tagging them in a comment, indicating that their group is prepared for release. The release ritual DRI starts the release process after all QA leads have made these updates and confirmed their readiness for release.

Submit test coverage requests to QA Wolf

Fleet QA owns the test planning process and identifies what needs to be automated. After each sprint, we review merged PRs, release notes, and demo recordings to find new automation candidates. We track these in a shared Google Doc and categorize them as:

  • New test requests (feature + what to test)
  • Existing tests to update

Once coverage is agreed on, Fleet QA submits the request via QA Wolf’s Coverage Request form. The most recent sprints are prioritized first. This workflow lets QA Wolf focus on test implementation while Fleet QA stays accountable for identifying clear, high-value test needs

Prepare Fleet release

See the "Releasing Fleet" contributor guide.

Prepare fleetd agent release

See Fleet's TUF release documentation.

Deploy a new release to dogfood

After each Fleet release, the new release is deployed to Fleet's "dogfood" (internal) instance. To avoid interruptions to sales demos using this instance, deploys should occur outside of the business hours of 7am - 5pm Pacific time Monday - Friday. If a deployment is necessary during business hours, coordinate with the Sales department in the #g-sales Slack channel.

How to deploy a new release to dogfood:

  1. Head to the Tags page on the fleetdm/fleet Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/fleetdm/fleet/tags
  2. In the Filter tags search bar, type in the latest release (ex. v4.19.0).
  3. Locate the tag for the new release and copy the image name. An example image name is "fleetdm/fleet:v4.19.0".
  4. Head to the "Deploy Dogfood Environment" action on GitHub: https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet/actions/workflows/dogfood-deploy.yml
  5. Select Run workflow and paste the image name in the The image tag wished to be deployed. field.
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Note that this action will not handle down migrations. Always deploy a newer version than is currently deployed.

Note that "fleetdm/fleet:main" is not an image name, instead use the commit hash in place of "main".

Conclude current milestone

Immediately after publishing a new release, close out the associated GitHub issues and milestones.

  1. Update product group boards: In GitHub Projects, go to each product group board tracking the current release and filter by the current milestone.

  2. Move user stories to drafting board: Select all items in "Ready for release" that have the story label. Apply the :product label and remove the :release label. These items will move back to the product drafting board.

  3. Confirm and close: Make sure that all items with the story label have left the "Ready for release" column. Select all remaining items in the "Ready for release" column and move them to the "Closed" column. This will close the related GitHub issues.

  4. Confirm and celebrate: Open the Drafting board. Filter by the current milestone and move all stories to the "Confirm and celebrate" column. Product will close the issues during their confirm and celebrate ritual. Engineering-initiated stories (~engineering-initiated label) can be closed without confirm and celebrate.

  5. Close GitHub milestone: Visit GitHub's milestone page and close the current milestone.

  6. Announce that the release milestone has been closed in #help-engineering.

  7. Visit the confidential repo variables page and update the QAWOLF_DEPLOY_TAG repository variable to main so that the latest code is deployed to QA Wolf every morning.

Update the Fleet releases calendar

The Fleet releases Google calendar is kept up-to-date by the release ritual DRI. Any change to targeted release dates is reflected on this calendar.

Handle process exceptions for non-released code

Some of our code does not go through a scheduled release process and is released immediately via GitHub workflows:

  1. The fleetdm/nvd repository.
  2. The fleetdm/vulnerabilities repository.
  3. Our website directory.

In these cases there are two differences in our pull request process:

  • QA is done before merging the code change to the main branch.
  • Tickets are not moved to "Ready for release". Bug are closed, and user stories are moved to the product drafting board's "Confirm and celebrate" column.

Notify stakeholders when a user story is pushed to the next release

User stories are intended to be completed in a single sprint. When the EM knows a user story will be pushed, it is the product group EM's responsibility to notify stakeholders:

  1. Add the ~pushed label to the user story.
  2. Update the user story's milestone to the next minor version milestone.
  3. Comment on the GitHub issue and at-mention the Head of Product Design and anyone listed in the requester field.
  4. If customer- labels are applied to the user story, at-mention the VP of Customer Success in the #g-mdm, #g-software, or #g-orchestration Slack channel.
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Instead of waiting until the end of the sprint, notify stakeholders as soon as you know the story is being pushed.

Run Fleet locally for QA purposes

To try Fleet locally for QA purposes, run fleetctl preview, which defaults to running the latest stable release.

To target a different version of Fleet, use the --tag flag to target any tag in Docker Hub, including any git commit hash or branch name. For example, to QA the latest code on the main branch of fleetdm/fleet, you can run: fleetctl preview --tag=main.

To start a preview without starting the simulated hosts, use the --no-hosts flag (e.g., fleetctl preview --no-hosts).

For each bug found, please use the bug report template to create a new bug report issue.

For unreleased bugs in an active sprint, a new bug is created with the ~unreleased bug label. The :release label and associated product group label is added, and the milestone is set to the version that the feature will be released in. For example, if the feature will be released in v4.71.0 and the bug did not exist prior to that version, the milestone is set to v4.71.0. The engineer responsible for the feature is assigned. If QA is unsure who the bug should be assigned to, it is assigned to the EM. Fixing the bug becomes part of the story.

Interview a developer candidate

Ensure the interview process follows these steps in order. This process must follow creating a new position through receiving job applications. Once the position is approved manage this process per candidate in a hiring pipeline

  1. Reach out: Send an email or LinkedIn message introducing yourself. Include the URL for the position, your Calendly URL, and invite the candidate to schedule a 30-minute introduction call.

  2. Conduct screening call: Discuss the requirements of the position with the candidate, and answer any questions they have about Fleet. Look for alignment with Fleet's values and technical expertise necessary to meet the requirements of the role. Check for any existing non-competes that could impact a candidate’s ability to join Fleet.

  3. Deliver technical assessment: Download the zip of the code challenge and ask them to complete and send their project back within 5 business days.

  4. Test technical assessment: Verify the code runs and completes the challenge correctly. Check the code for best practices, good style, and tests that meet our standards.

  5. Schedule technical interview: Send the candidate a calendly link for 1hr to talk to a Software Engineer on your team where the goal is to understand the thechnical capabilities of the candidate. An additional Software Engineer can optionally join if available. Share the candidate's project with the Software Engineers and ask them to review in advance so they are prepared with questions about the candidate's code.

  6. Schedule HOPD interview: Send the candidate a calendly link for 30m talk to the Head of Product Design @noahtalerman.

  7. Schedule CTO interview: Send the candidate a calendly link for 30m talk with our CTO @lukeheath.

If the candidate passes all of these steps then continue with hiring a new team member.

Perform an incident postmortem

Conduct a postmortem meetings for every service or feature outage and every critical bug, whether it's a customer's environment or on fleetdm.com.

  1. Copy this postmortem template document and pre-populate where possible.
  2. Invite stakeholders. Typically the EM, PM, QA, and engineers involved. If a customer incident, include the CSM.
  3. Follow and populate document topic by topic. Determine the root cause (why it happened), as well as why our controls did not catch it before release.
  4. Assign each action item an owner that who is responsible for creating a Github issue promptly and working with with the relevant PM/EM to prioritize.

Example Finished Document

Maintain TUF repo for secure agent updates

Instructions for creating and maintaining a TUF repo are available on our TUF handbook page.

Provide same-day support for major version macOS releases

Beginning with macOS 16, Fleet offers same-day support for all major version macOS releases.

  1. Install major version macOS beta release on test devices.
  2. Create a new QA release issue with the new major version in the issue title.
  3. Complete all manual smoke tests in the issue and confirm they are passing.
  4. Confirm all automated tests are passing.
  5. File bugs with a P1 label and assign to the appropriate product group.
  6. When all bugs are fixed, follow the writing a feature guide process to publish an article announcing Fleet same-day support for the new major release.

Fix flaky Go tests

Sometimes automated tests fail intermittently, causing PRs to become blocked and engineers to become sad and vengeful. Debugging a "flaky" or "rando" test failure typically involves:

  • Adding extra logs to the test and/or related code to get more information about the failure.
  • Running the test multiple times to reproduce the failure.
  • Implementing an attempted fix to the test (or the related code, if there's an actual bug).
  • Running the test multiple times to try and verify that the test no longer fails.

To aid in this process, we have the Stress Test Go Test action (aka the RandoKiller™). This is a Github Actions workflow that can be used to run one or more Go tests repeatedly until they fail (or until they pass a certain number of times). To use the RandoKiller:

  • Create a branch whose name ends with -randokiller (for example sgress454/enqueue-mdm-command-randokiller).
  • Modify the .github/workflows/config/randokiller.json file to your specifications (choosing the packages and tests to run, the mysql matrix, and the number of runs to do).
  • Push up the branch with whatever logs/changes you need to help diagnose or fix the flaky test.
  • Monitor the Stress Test Go Test workflow for your branch.
  • Repeat until the stress test passes! Every push to your branch will trigger a new run of the workflow.

Create and use Architectural Decision Records (ADRs)

Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) document important architectural decisions made along with their context and consequences. They help teams understand why certain technical decisions were made, provide historical context, and ensure knowledge is preserved as the team evolves.

When to create an ADR:

Create an ADR when making a significant architectural decision that:

  • Has a substantial impact on the system architecture
  • Affects multiple components or product groups
  • Introduces new technologies or frameworks
  • Changes established patterns or approaches
  • Requires trade-offs that should be documented
  • Would benefit future contributors by explaining the reasoning

Examples include choosing a new technology, changing authentication mechanisms, changing a dependency, or establishing a new pattern for handling specific types of data or workflows.

How to create an ADR:

  1. Navigate to the docs/Contributing/adr/ directory in the Fleet repository
  2. Copy the template.md file to a new file named NNNN-descriptive-title.md where:
    • NNNN is the next number in sequence (e.g., 0001, 0002)
    • descriptive-title is a brief, hyphenated description of the decision
  3. Fill in the template with your decision details:
    • Title: A descriptive title that summarizes the decision
    • Status: Start with "Proposed" and update as appropriate (Accepted, Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded)
    • Context: Explain the problem and background that led to this decision
    • Decision: Clearly state the decision that was made
    • Consequences: Describe the resulting context after applying the decision, including both positive and negative consequences
    • References: Include links to related documents or resources
  4. Submit a pull request with your new ADR
  5. Update the ADR's status after review and discussion

Updating existing ADRs:

If a decision is superseded by a new decision:

  1. Create a new ADR that references the old one
  2. Update the status of the old ADR to "Superseded by [link to new ADR]"

ADR review process:

ADRs should be reviewed by:

  • The engineering team members most affected by the decision
  • At least one engineering manager
  • The CTO for significant architectural changes

The goal of the review is to ensure the decision is well-documented, the context is clear, and the consequences are thoroughly considered.

Request product group transfer

Product groups are organized by core use case to allow each product group to develop subject matter expertise. Transferring between product groups offers engineers the opportunity to gain experience contributing to other areas of Fleet. To request a product group transfer, notify the Engineering Manager of your product group or the CTO to be considered for transfer the next time the requested product group has an available position.

Record engineering KPIs

We track the effectiveness of our processes by observing issue throughput and identifying where buildups (and therefore bottlenecks) are occurring.

At the end of each week, the Engineering KPIs are recorded by the engineering output DRI using the get bug and PR report script.

Edit a DNS record

We use Cloudflare to manage the DNS records of fleetdm.com and our other domains. To make DNS changes in Cloudflare:

  1. Log into your Cloudflare account and select the "Fleet" account.
  2. Select the domain you want to change and go to the DNS panel on that domain's dashboard.
  3. To add a record, click the "Add record" button, select the record's type, fill in the required values, and click "Save". If you're making changes to an existing record, you only need to click on the record, update the record's values, and save your changes.
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If you need access to Fleet's Cloudflare account, please ask the DRI Luke Heath in Slack for an invitation.

Accept new Apple developer account terms

Engineering is responsible for managing third-party accounts required to support engineering infrastructure. We use the official Fleet Apple developer account to notarize installers we generate for Apple devices. Whenever Apple releases new terms of service, we are unable to notarize new packages until the new terms are accepted.

When this occurs, we will begin receiving the following error message when attempting to notarize packages: "You must first sign the relevant contracts online." To resolve this error, follow the steps below.

  1. Visit the Apple developer account login page.

  2. Log in using the credentials stored in 1Password under "Apple developer account".

  3. Contact the Head of Digital Workplace & GTM Systems to determine which phone number to use for 2FA.

  4. Complete the 2FA process to log in.

  5. Accept the new terms of service.

Renew MDM certificate signing request (CSR)

The certificate signing request (CSR) certificate expires every year. It needs to be renewed prior to expiring. This is notified to the team by the MDM calendar event IMPORTANT: Renew MDM CSR certificate

Steps to renew the certificate:

  1. Visit the Apple developer account login page.
  2. Log in using the credentials stored in 1Password under Apple developer account.
  3. Verify you are using the Enterprise subaccount for Fleet Device Management Inc.
  4. Generate a new certificate following the instructions in MicroMDM.
  5. Note: mdmctl (a micromdm command for MDM vendors) will generate a VendorPrivateKey.key and VendorCertificateRequest.csr using an appropriate shared email relay and a passphrase (suggested generation method with pwgen available in brew / apt / yum pwgen -s 32 -1vcy)
  6. Uploading VendorCertificateRequest.csr to Apple you will download a corresponding mdm.cer file
  7. Convert the downloaded cert to PEM with openssl x509 -inform DER -outform PEM -in mdm.cer -out server.crt.pem
  8. Update the Config vars in Heroku:
  • Update sails_custom__mdmVendorCertPem with the results from step 7 server.crt.pem
  • Update sails_custom__mdmVendorKeyPassphrase with the passphrase used in step 4
  • Update sails_custom__mdmVendorKeyPem with VendorPrivateKey.key from step 4
  1. Store updated values in Confidential 1Password Vault
  2. Verify by logging into a normal apple account (not billing@...) and Generate a new Push Certificate following our setup MDM steps and verify the Expiration date is 1 year from today.
  3. Adjust calendar event to be between 2-4 weeks before the next expiration.

QA a change to fleetdm.com

Each PR to the website is manually checked for quality and tested before going live on fleetdm.com. To test any change to fleetdm.com

  1. Write clear step-by-step instructions to confirm that the change to the fleetdm.com functions as expected and doesn't break any possible automation. These steps should be simple and clear enough for anybody to follow.

  2. View the website locally and follow the QA steps in the request ticket to test changes.

  3. Check the change in relation to all breakpoints and browser compatibility, Tests are carried out on supported browsers before website changes go live.

Test fleetdm.com locally

When making changes to the Fleet website, you can test your changes by running the website locally. To do this, you'll need the following:

Once you have the above follow these steps:

  1. Open your terminal program, and navigate to the website/ folder of your local copy of the Fleet repo.

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    Note: If this is your first time running this script, you will need to run npm install inside of the website/ folder to install the website's dependencies.

  2. Run the build-static-content script to generate HTML pages from our Markdown and YAML content.

  • With Node, you will need to use node ./node_modules/sails/bin/sails run build-static-content to execute the script.

  • With Sails.js installed globally you can use sails run build-static-content to execute the script.

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    When this script runs, the website's configuration file (website/.sailsrc) will automatically be updated with information the website uses to display content built from Markdown and YAML. Changes to this file should never be committed to the GitHub repo. If you want to exclude changes to this file in any PRs you make, you can run this terminal command in your local copy of the Fleet repo: git update-index --assume-unchanged ./website/.sailsrc.

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    Note: You can run npm run start-dev in the website/ folder to run the build-static-content script and start the website server with a single command.

  1. Once the script is complete, start the website server:
  • With Node.js: start the server by running node ./node_modules/sails/bin/sails lift
  • With Sails.js installed globally: start the server by running sails lift.
  1. When the server has started, the Fleet website will be available at http://localhost:2024
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Note: Some features, such as self-service license dispenser and account creation, are not available when running the website locally. If you need help testing features on a local copy, @mention eashaw in the #g-website Slack channel.

Check production dependencies of fleetdm.com

Every week, we run npm audit --only=prod to check for vulnerabilities on the production dependencies of fleetdm.com. Once we have a solution to configure GitHub's Dependabot to ignore devDependencies, this manual process can be replaced with Dependabot.

Respond to a 5xx error on fleetdm.com

Production systems can fail for various reasons, and it can be frustrating to users when they do, and customer experience is significant to Fleet. In the event of system failure, Fleet will:

  • investigate the problem to determine the root cause.
  • identify affected users.
  • escalate if necessary.
  • understand and remediate the problem.
  • notify impacted users of any steps they need to take (if any). If a customer paid with a credit card and had a bad experience, default to refunding their money.
  • Conduct an incident post-mortem to determine any additional steps we need (including monitoring) to take to prevent this class of problems from happening in the future.

Check browser compatibility for fleetdm.com

A browser compatibility check of fleetdm.com should be carried out monthly to verify that the website looks and functions as expected across all supported browsers.

  • We use BrowserStack (logins can be found in 1Password) for our cross-browser checks.
  • Check for issues against the latest version of Google Chrome (macOS). We use this as our baseline for quality assurance.
  • Document any issues in GitHub as a bug, and assign them for fixing.
  • If in doubt about anything regarding design or layout, please reach out to the Head of Design.

Check for new versions of osquery schema

When a new version of osquery is released, the Fleet website needs to be updated to use the latest version of the osquery schema. To do this, we update the website's versionOfOsquerySchemaToUseWhenGeneratingDocumentation configuration variable in website/config/custom.js. The osquery schema is combined with Fleet's YAML overrides to generate the JSON schema used by the query side panel in Fleet, as well as Fleetdm.com's osquery table documentation.

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Note: The version number used in the versionOfOsquerySchemaToUseWhenGeneratingDocumentation variable must correspond to a version of the JSON osquery schema in the osquery/osquery-site repo.

Restart Algolia manually

At least once every hour, an Algolia crawler reindexes the Fleet website's content. If an error occurs while the website is being indexed, Algolia will block our crawler and respond to requests with this message: "This action cannot be executed on a blocked crawler".

When this happens, you'll need to manually start the crawler in the Algolia crawler dashboard to unblock it. You can do this by logging into the crawler dashboard using the login saved in 1password and clicking the "Restart crawling" button on our crawler's "overview" page](https://crawler.algolia.com/admin/crawlers/497dd4fd-f8dd-4ffb-85c9-2a56b7fafe98/overview).

No further action is needed if the crawler successfully reindexes the Fleet website. If another error occurs while the crawler is running, take a screenshot of the error and add it to the GitHub issue created for the alert and @mention eashaw for help.

Change the "Integrations admin" Salesforce account password

Salesforce requires that the password to the "Integrations admin" account is changed every 90 days. When this happens, the Salesforce integrations on the Fleet website/Hydroplane will fail with an INVALID_LOGIN error. To prevent this from happening:

  1. Log into the "Integrations admin" account in Salesforce.
  2. Change the password and save it in the shared 1Password vault.
  3. Request a new security token for the "Integrations admin" account by clicking the profile picture » Settings » Reset my security token (This will be sent to the email address associated with the account).
  4. Update the sails_config__custom_salesforceIntegrationPasskey config variable in Heroku to be [password][security token] (For both the Fleet website and Hydroplane).

Re-run the "Deploy Fleet Website" action

If the action fails, please complete the following steps:

  1. Head to the fleetdm-website app in the Heroku dashboard and select the "Activity" tab.
  2. Select "Roll back to here" on the second to most recent deploy.
  3. Head to the fleetdm/fleet GitHub repository and re-run the Deploy Fleet Website action.

Rituals

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