Using Github

The Community Team uses the GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository @WordPress/Community-Team

All team-wide tasks, projects, and tracking start and branch out from our main repository dedicated to the Community Team. We currently manage Community Team focused task and project management covering Issues tracking:

  1. Vetting of Event Applications, which currently covers our 2 event types:
    • WordCamps and Events Applications
    • MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. Applications
  2. A General Master Board to track current repetitive, role-specific, tasks of the Community Team and its members (soft-usage, currently mostly in use for Team RepTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. and Administrative team tasks.)

Purpose

This documentation is designed to facilitate the WordPress Community Team’s adoption, onboarding, and usage of GitHub Project Management tools starting with Event application tracking. 

This is aimed as a first step towards enhancing operational practices within the WordPress ecosystem.
Its key purposes include:

  • Simplifying Onboarding: To ease the Community Team into GitHub, offering a straightforward guide for tracking events in a transparent and focused workflow fostering accountability.
  • Boosting Efficiency: Streamline event applications by leveraging GitHub’s tools, aiming for a more organized, visually driven, people-focused process – allowing easier identification of available tasks for contributors with availability to claim.
  • Enhancing Transparency: Increase transparency, accountability, and Contributions through better tracking, attribution, metrics, organization-wide visibility and collaboration opportunities between projects and across-team.
  • Recognizing Contributions: Improve the visibility, acknowledgement, and attribution of team member contributions for roles and tasks previously not tracked or logged to users’ WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles.
  • Insightful Decision-making: Utilize new available metrics, analytics, and insights allowing iterative continuous process improvement, decision-making, and data-informed status updates.
  • Standardizing Operations: lead and encourage the Standardization of tools, workflows, automation, and processes across the WordPress.org project from cohort, projects, to the x-team level, setting a precedent for best practices.
  • Encouraging Improvement: Adopt an iterative approach to enhance processes, beginning with event application vetting management, setting the stage for ongoing enhancements. Constant Improvement becoming a more integral part of Team and Contributor culture.

This guide serves as a concise blueprint for the Community Team’s transition to GitHub, aiming to streamline project and task management, beginning with the tracking of Event Application Vetting, as we foster a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration within the WordPress community.


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The GitHub Event Tracker

Start at the official Community Team’s repository here: @WordPress/Community-Team

The GitHub Event Tracker is currently used to organize and manage applications vetting by Event Supporters and Program Supporters.

The GitHub issues allow the those contributing to the vetting of an application more visibility and also a good overview of the status of who is doing the vetting, if a review is needed and if the vetting is complete.

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Project Board: Overview of Vetting Process Stages

You will see all the issues in their separate stages.

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The Issue Status’s are:

  1. Awaiting Triage: When a new issue is created, it will show up as Awaiting Triage. Ideally, these issues or tickets are created using the Event Issue Creator Bookmarklet, but we can also create an issue manually.
  2. Todo / Ready: When triage is done, which means someone has assigned the ticket to another person, or when someone assigned the ticket to themselves, it is good to move that ticket to Todo Status.
  3. In Progress: If you are assigned an issue and are in the process of vetting the application, please ensure to move the issue to the In Progress Stage. This way we all know that you are currently working on the issue.
  4. In Review: Sometimes an application requires more information or a check-in with another person in the team. It is best to move the ticket to In Review, so we all know this particular application has some sort of blocker and needs more support.

The Event Types and vetting process for WordCamps and Meetups vary. If you wanted to view only the one of these Event types and their open Issues, there are filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. views for each of them.

There is even a ‘smart’ view if you wanted to only see all items that are assigned to you, in the “My items” project view.

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Requirements: Before you start

These are the prerequisites needed in order to move forward with this project documentation:

If you do not have access to anyof these, you will not be able to vet applications (unless your role as an Event SupporterEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. is to help review MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. applications and notify Program Supporters once vetted to follow-up. Please ask someone for access #community-team – Only Event Supporters can vet and be given access to vet Meetup applications, and Program Supporters can vet and be given access to vet both Meetup and WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. applications. Or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.”  @program-managers in community-event-supporters or community-program-supporters.

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Creating GitHub Issues for Event Applications 

The GitHub Community’s Triage Team has permissions to for creating, assigning, editing all Event Issues. And any Community Team member to the Github repo can create their own issues, self-assign, and comment on issues.

The process for Event Application Vetting in GitHub is quite straight forward:

  1. Create the GitHub Event Tracking Issue (based on what needs vetting on on central.
  2. The Issue is then triaged and either assigned to an available Vetter, or a Vetter can self-assign.
  3. The Vetter will update the GitHub Issue with status updates until vetting is completed.
    • and once vetting is completed, the assigned vetter just needs to close the issue.

Event Application Issues can be created on GitHub manually by following the Event Application Template.
We have also built a helpful bookmarklet tool which automates most of this process and is the recommended way to create new Event Issues for GitHub.

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Using the Bookmarklet tool

This bookmarklet is a browser tool that allows you to create a GitHub Event Issue with one to two clicks from the Events Tracker page on WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each..

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Installation

Install the latest version of the bookmarklet by navigating to the following page and following the instructions:

 → https://wordpress.github.io/Community-Team/ 

Drag the bookmarklet button into your browser’s bookmark bar to install.

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Usage

Note: This Bookmarklet only functions when you are on a specific event tracker page on central.wordcamp.org.

  • Log into the WordCamp Central site and GitHub.com.
  • Open a specific event tracker page on central.wordcamp.org.
  • Click on the bookmarklet in your bookmarks bar while on the central tracker event page.
    • A new tab opens with with all necessary information pre-filled for submission to the GitHub Event Issue Tracker.
  • Click on the green button (Submit new issue) at the bottom. And your Event Issue is created.
This is a demonstration of how the bookmarklet tool makes things easier, and how it works.

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Using the GitHub Issue Form

You can access the Event Application Vetting form on Github by navigating:

@WordPress/Community-TeamIssuesNew issue
Then simply Select Event Application Vetting by clicking ‘Get started

Submit a new issue after completing the form:

  • Complete the form making sure we have added:
    • Event Type,
    • Event Name: city/event name, a
    • nd included the Central Tracker link.
  • If everything looks good, scroll the page and click on “Submit New Issue“.

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Issue assignment

Once the issue is created, you can assign it to yourself or a teammate. 
You can also comment /claim in the issue to self-assign it to yourself.

To self-assign an issue to yourself, you can simply leave a comment with the text `/claim‘ –

Then you will see if it’s not taken, and if it will be auto-assigned to you.

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Application Review Process on GitHub

Once you’ve received the issue assigned to yourself, you’ll use GitHub just to track the progress, but the whole process will be carried out using the event tracker and HelpScout as usual.

You can easily update the status of an Issue in the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. using the dropdown show in the image.

  • Update the tracker status to In Progress.
  • If you need a second opinion or help from teammates, while you wait for their feedback please update the status to In Review.
  • If you need to, you can leave a comment on the issue.
  • Once you’ve completed the entire application review process (tracker updated and email sent to organizer for inviting to orientation or reject the application), please update the issue by closing as completed in the comment section, and finally updating the status to Complete, if not automatically updated.

This is where the Issue’s life-cycle ends, and is considered finally complete — once it has been vetted, you will select to Close as completed. This is down by the Vetter.

IMPORTANT:  Never share non-status-specific information and comment updates to GitHub Issues (This includes your vetting notes, and personal, identifiable, or confidential information). Keep such information in the Central Event Tracker only.

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