Product Team meeting notes 11th February 2020

Welcome to the #t-product meeting! :champagne: :male-mechanic:

If you haven’t done an asynchronous meeting before, please respond in threads :slightly_smiling_face:

Also note you can start a reply with :bust_in_silhouette: to be anon, or :no_entry_sign: to go off the record and not be included in the notes, which will be exported and saved to Google Docs, and posted on the Community Forums.

The meeting will be open for 24 hours, after which the notes will be exported. People may comment thereafter but these won’t be included in the notes.

Let’s get going! :arrow_down:

0️⃣ Introductions - Who are you, where are you based, and how are you involved with this team?

Ruth Cheesley (she/her) Hello all, I’m Ruth, based in the rather windy UK and I’m the Community Manager so here in more of a “how can I help” capacity!
norman By my side, I’m Norman, newly product team leader and hopefuly assisted by @Dennis Ameling!I’ll lead as best as i can this team to make mautic every day a bit better :slightly_smiling_face:
john John here. Developer. Acquian. Must find how to automate this section :slightly_smiling_face:
Dennis Ameling Dennis here :slightly_smiling_face: Currently Release Lead for the 2.16.0 release and assisting @norman where possible :tada:
norman Hi @Emilien :mautibot:Who are you ? :slightly_smiling_face:
Emilien Hi here, i’m Emilien from France, actually using mautic for our website acquisition & marketing purpose :wave: (edited)
norman Welcome !
norman Are you a developer ?
Emilien Indeed
norman Excellent
norman Are you okay to give some of your time to mautic community helping on fixing bugs and reviewing PRs ?
Emilien Yep, let’s talk in dm ;)
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) welcome @Emilien

1️⃣ Review last meeting’s notes and actions

1️⃣ . 1️⃣ - Update on M3 release plans

norman @alanhartless & @john your inputs would be helpful !
john We are still finding and fixing regressions. Hard to tell how long this phase will take. Any tests on the latest M3 code base are very welcome and it will help significantly to release faster.
Dennis Ameling @john Would you need some more exposure to get more beta testers on board? Maybe a forum topic to discuss people's experiences with the M3 Alpha? I'm sure @Ruth Cheesley (she/her) is willing to support here :slightly_smiling_face:
john There were many changes since Alpha. Maybe we should release beta once we won't be able to find more bugs and ask the community to test then?
john Testing on a git version is a bit techy for most users. (edited)
norman I agree with that
norman I just launched a call for volunteers on #general but we need something “easy to test”, as much as possible at least.
Dennis Ameling Yes sounds good :thumbsup:
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) Agree with the easy to test comment

1️⃣ . 2️⃣ - Update on 2.16.0 release

norman @Dennis Ameling your inputs would be highly appreciated :slightly_smiling_face:
Dennis Ameling No open issues at the moment, but we have no clue how many people have been testing the 2.16.0-beta thoroughly and if it's safe to release 2.16.0 on Thursday (13 Feb). Was discussing this in the following thread: https://mautic.slack.com/archives/CQMKV0RU1/p1581368838105000?thread_ts=1581334820.092000&cid=CQMKV0RU1
norman I understand that feedback but --> this version does not include that much feature. Mostly bug fixes. So IMO i feel very confident about the quality of that release.

2️⃣ Review Trello tasks

norman You can find the board here! https://trello.com/b/ptjfOu0c/mautic-community-product-team (edited)

2️⃣ . 1️⃣ - Write up the process for migrating plugins from Mautic 2 to Mautic 3

norman :link: to task --> https://trello.com/c/Td8sK7bI/2-write-up-the-process-for-migrating-plugins-from-mautic-2-to-mautic-3
norman @kuzmany would you agree carring that? You said you can give few hours and you are higly experienced on mautic plugin :slightly_smiling_face:
kuzmany Same rules from upgrade.md
norman @Ruth Cheesley (she/her) do you expect something extra ? @kuzmany maybe as freelancer developing plugin, you could write an article explaining that ?“Hi there, I am Zdeno Kuzmany, a Mautic Freelancer and I am often creating plugins and cie for me and my customers. In this blog post, I will explain you why it is important to update your plugin soon and how to do it.” (edited)
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) I think we had suggested that it would be a good topic to cover using an actual example of a plugin. Like a worked example, step by step, of what you have to do. We could share it on the blog, and/or knowledgebase and/or docs wherever appropriate
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) @RGBguy may also want to feature a video tutorial so pinging him for info
kuzmany I can write maybe something like:5 the most issue why your plugin is not ready to Mautic 3 (with before M3/after M3 code)
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) sure, something like that would also be great!
norman Thanks Zdeno
norman @kuzmany when do you think you can provide this article ?

2️⃣ . 2️⃣ - New branching strategy GitHub

norman :link: to topic --> https://trello.com/c/rToofZGk/4-new-branching-strategy-github
norman @Dennis Ameling maybe you could re-explain that ?
norman I’d like that we take a decision on that today (next 24h asynchronous meeting). Then we can start working (or not if decied as NO)
norman @dbhurley @alanhartless @john if you want to say NO, this is now or never :wedding: (maybe i exagerate a little bit) (edited)
Dennis Ameling In short, it would come down to the following:Create a GH branch for every minor release (release-2.16, release-3.0), so that during the active support period of those minor versions, it's easier to provide bugfixes etc. Those branches should stay on GH pretty much forever (like Symfony/Angular/Kubernetes/etc. are also doing on GH)For more details, read this thread: https://mautic.slack.com/archives/CQMKV0RU1/p1581098399085100
norman I think this is an excellent suggestion for a better future maintenance. As we mentioned in the past, soon as other OSS, we may have to sustain several versions and this architecture makes that possible.It is also easier if someone stucks to a version and we just want to apply security related fixes for instance, with “low” effort.
norman And maybe someday propose this kind of calendar: https://symfony.com/releases
john I'm all for it
norman Thanks!

2️⃣ . 3️⃣ - Explain idea for setting up Travis on mautic/api-library

norman :link: to topic --> https://trello.com/c/GadcXFJO/6-explain-idea-for-setting-up-travis-on-mautic-api-library
norman @Dennis Ameling your input are expected here.
Dennis Ameling Currently, if we want to test the API library (https://github.com/mautic/api-library), we need toSet up a Mautic instance on our local machine (and enable the API + Twilio plugin)Set up the API library on our local machine and run the tests against the Mautic instance you've createdIn order to improve code quality and avoid regressions, IMO these tests should be conducted automatically with e.g. Travis on every commit to either the API library or Mautic itself (2-way tests).I'd need feedback from regular contributors to find out what they think about it and if it would be feasible to implement.More details here: https://github.com/mautic/api-library/issues/205 (edited)
norman Do you have any clue of how to plug that? Because like that it sounds exciting (edited)
Dennis Ameling We could look at Mautibox (https://github.com/mautibox/mautibox) to see if that can help us with setting up Mautic instances to test against. Would already be a major step
norman True
norman @heathdutton does mautibox work currently with M3 ?
norman How could we test M3 on MB? (edited)
heathdutton I need to set up a new mautibox instance, specifically for m3.
norman When do you think you would have time for it ?
heathdutton I already made a swinging attempt and hit some roadblocks. Though, it shouldn’t be too hard to finish. Originally was planning to wait till it was closer to stage, but if it’s holding things back I’ll escalate it.
norman Excellent
norman Estimate date ? Just to have a date for my followup :)
heathdutton Hard to say at this moment… I’ll put an hour into it later today and give you an eta.
norman :heart:
norman You’re (also) the best
heathdutton I can probably get this done this week. It’ll be at https://m3.mautibox.com I just have to fix some things before it’ll work.
Dennis Ameling Thanks so much @heathdutton!!! Highly appreciated! :tada:
heathdutton It’s kinda up… not working as well as the m2 version, but I’ll look at it some more tomorrow.
john What troubles is M3 causing for Mautibox, Heath?
heathdutton Not M3's fault, just differences in folder structure and such.
heathdutton Take a look at m3.mautibox.com when you get a chance, and let me know if you see problems. I’ll pick it back up tomorrow to fix dev mode and anything else you find.
heathdutton Have the cron jobs changed or anything like that?
Dennis Ameling @heathdutton the app/console script has changed to bin/console. So that does affect the cron jobs. Were you aware of that?
heathdutton Yea, already found that.

2️⃣ . 4️⃣ - Validate according to 2.2 that we prepare next releases against M3 branch

norman If we all agree on 2.2 topic, we would work with Dennis to re-push pending PRs against Mautic 3 branch.In fact, we saw how much work it created to merge 2.16.0 in M3 branch (thanks a lot @john for that).
norman Working that way would allow @Dennis Ameling and I to suggest a first draft of short term mautic roadmap (3.0.1 and 3.1.0 probably, TBC).
john All of the pending PRs? It might be a waste of time for all. Some may be outdated, some needs evaluation whether they should be even merged.
norman Roger that, @Dennis Ameling we’ll target them one by one to be sure it is still relevant.

2️⃣ . 5️⃣ - Define short-term roadmap for 3.0.1 and 3.1.0

norman If 2.2 and 2.4 agreed, as I mentioned I’ll wok to target open PRs and open issues we would want to focus on 3.0.1---> Objective would be to reduce pending PRs and amount of reported and open issues.
norman Concerning 3.1.0 we would target one main feature to integrate in it.
norman Working that way with a list of targeted PR and issues would be also very helpful for me to create a new community developer onboarding program.In fact, i know what i can ask to people to work on, while being sure it will be quickly integrated in mautic staging. A good way to introduce people in mautic community contributions i believe.
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) @dbhurley we’re still pending your write-up on the roadmap / trello board proposal. Perhaps we could work on that collaboratively and ensure we come to a clear way forward?
dbhurley I think there is a question we need to resolve prior, regarding maintaining 2.x and building 3.x
dbhurley And if the strategy I recommended is the right approach or if the community wants to explore a different strat
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) I think that has already been talked about quite a bit further up in #t-product
dbhurley Great! What was the conclusion in a sentence?
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) https://mautic.slack.com/archives/CQMKV0RU1/p1579776795005400
dbhurley Oh, I've read that. That's merely a table for releases to be displayed
dbhurley That's not a strategy for ongoing 2.x releases is it?
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) I’d say we are responsible for keeping Mautic and its core dependencies up-to-date, so I guess that would limit the scope toMautic itself (e.g. XSS)Symfony (we won’t fork Symfony but are responsible for only using supported LTS releases, currently 3.4 or 4.4)PHP (support at least 1-2 of the currently supported releases, that is 7.2/7.3/7.4)That policy would then apply starting with M3. Do you think that’s feasible? For 2.16 I’d say we only provide security fixes for Mautic itself (exception from the rule)
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) ^ that was what I was looking for
dbhurley No, I'm asking how long we support 2.x with continued releases? only 2.16? Do we only support 2.16 until it's released? Do we stop patching or any fixes after 2.16 is released?
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) trying to find where we talked about there being a couple of minor releases for the 2.x until 3.1 stable I think was what we said?
dbhurley Side note: Can we disable the support bot for certain channels?
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) hah, I am not sure I’ll check
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) no, sadly there isn’t a way to restrict it to specific channels
norman No, I’m asking how long we support 2.x with continued releases? only 2.16? Do we only support 2.16 until it’s released? Do we stop patching or any fixes after 2.16 is released?I think we should support 2.16 with security fixes at least for 6 months. But too early in our new age to invest much more effort on that.
dbhurley Here's a doc I've been working on to address this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tCQ8q3Jyu3Y-7zt-gFPB8YmgekSCFqjtB-Jb3X4kBUA/edit?usp=sharing
norman It is not public
norman Can you change share settings ? (edited)
dbhurley oops, done
norman Exciting. My comments:Tempo (timeframe) seems very short for all of that. But I’m okay to have this ambition.I’d like to see email builder sooner as far as I think we can provide a reliable POC end of March.It doesn’t take into consideration the objective to merge all pending PR (still actual). But i believe it does need to be integrated in a general roadmap and we can tackle that with patchs (or for feature maybe include it in minors offered by your roadmap). Same for issues reported I’d like we focus on.
dbhurley I'd love to update features for each release. We can do this once we've seen output and can better estimate a release window. (For email builder)
norman Sooner is better right? :smile:
dbhurley :slightly_smiling_face: yes, however, as always, this is a case of"believe it when you see it."
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) So do we want to share this on the blog? Or do we need any edits?
norman @Dennis Ameling what is your opinion ? I believe we can have that as objective and basis, then we can modify it and enrich it depending on the activites we work on ?
norman @Ruth Cheesley (she/her) we see new face getting in that want to contribute, i’ll try to enroll them in the development to achieve roadmap objectives, but i think for the big tasks we’ll need to know who is the MAT 3 members offered by Acquia (3 dedicated developer for mautic community). I think we need them enrolled in this #t-product
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) Yes indeed.
norman Okay then I can give you the mission to chat with Acquians knowing who will be the people in the MAT ?
Ruth Cheesley (she/her) Yeah for sure.
Dennis Ameling Ehm @norman @Ruth Cheesley (she/her) depends what we want to do with the blog post. Since DB mentioned that the roadmap should be a "living document", I'd prefer having this in a forum topic instead. There, the roadmap would the first post in the thread and people can easily comment on it.I did a similar thing back in 2017 when doing my internship at T-Mobile NL; created a "work in progress & ideas" forum topic with the things we were working on, and people could comment on it: https://community.t-mobile.nl/4g-voor-thuis-algemeen-477/work-in-progress-ideeen-4g-voor-thuis-269829. Not the same as a roadmap, but you get the idea :slightly_smiling_face: (edited)

3️⃣ Any other business

Zapier plugin update

norman @john & @kuzmany do you think we can move fwd with that ?
john The functional tests must be bullet-prove as there is no other way how to test it before the release.
norman @kuzmany can you address that ?
kuzmany the unit tests passed, tester already test it and your customer already use it on production, right? I can't do nothing more (edited)
norman Yes we’re using it
norman @john what else would you like ?
john I wanted to make sure it works. Sounds like it does. I'm giving heads up to Acquia product team that it's coming. I can release it after their acknowledgement.
norman excellent
norman can you share a approximative due date for my follow up ? (edited)
john I have no response so far (US is slowly waking up). No due date I can share yet.
norman Ok let me know. This is just to put a reminder to myself :slightly_smiling_face:

Participants:

Ruth Cheesley (she/her), norman, john, Dennis Ameling, Emilien, kuzmany, heathdutton, dbhurley