Dogfood: Custom packages => Fleet-maintained apps

[noahtalerman]

• UPDATE: @noahtalerman: Chatted with @allenhouchins and learned that Fleet the company wants to roll out updates for our celebrity apps, the moment a new version is released by the vendor.
  • We solve this today using custom packages in Fleet + an automation (TODO @allenhouchins: add link to automation) that updates the custom packages URL and policy in our YAML files (GitOps). We think this is what how more companies with a more technical IT team will manage updating third-party apps.
    • What are these celebrity apps? Zoom, Slack, Google Chrome, and 1Password.
  • We think companies with less technical IT teams will use Fleet-maintained apps (FMAs) to manage updates. So, in order to dogfood and feel the pain of less technical IT teams, Fleet the company is going to use (FMAs) to manage updates for apps outside of our celebrity apps.
  • I think we start with Figma, VSCode, Docker, and Postman. These are common apps used by folks in the product groups.

---

• @noahtalerman: Now that we learned Fleet-maintained apps are updated every GitOps run, which customer packages can we convert to Fleet-maintained apps?
  • For the apps we don't want switch, we want to understand why not. What's Fleet missing?
• Why switch? The more we dogfood Fleet-maintained apps => the better we can understand the problems => the better Fleet-maintained apps will be for customers/users.

[noahtalerman]

• I think we start with Figma, VSCode, Docker, and Postman. These are common apps used by folks in the product groups.

@allenhouchins what do you think?

I summarized where we landed in the issue description:

• UPDATE: @noahtalerman: Chatted with @allenhouchins and learned that Fleet the company wants to roll out updates for our celebrity apps, the moment a new version is released by the vendor.
  • We solve this today using custom packages in Fleet + an automation (TODO @allenhouchins: add link to automation) that updates the custom packages URL and policy in our YAML files (GitOps). We think this is what how more companies with a more technical IT team will manage updating third-party apps.
    • What are these celebrity apps? Zoom, Slack, Google Chrome, and 1Password.
  • We think companies with less technical IT teams will use Fleet-maintained apps (FMAs) to manage updates. So, in order to dogfood and feel the pain of less technical IT teams, Fleet the company is going to use (FMAs) to manage updates for apps outside of our celebrity apps.
  • I think we start with Figma, VSCode, Docker, and Postman. These are common apps used by folks in the product groups.

[noahtalerman]

• UPDATE: @noahtalerman: Chatted with @allenhouchins and learned that Fleet the company wants to roll out updates for our celebrity apps, the moment a new version is released by the vendor.
  • We solve this today using custom packages in Fleet + an automation (TODO @allenhouchins: add link to automation) that updates the custom packages URL and policy in our YAML files (GitOps). We think this is what how more companies with a more technical IT team will manage updating third-party apps.
    • What are these celebrity apps? Zoom, Slack, Google Chrome, and 1Password.
  • We think companies with less technical IT teams will use Fleet-maintained apps (FMAs) to manage updates. So, in order to dogfood and feel the pain of less technical IT teams, Fleet the company is going to use (FMAs) to manage updates for apps outside of our celebrity apps.
  • I think we start with Figma, VSCode, Docker, and Postman. These are common apps used by folks in the product groups.

FYI @marko-lisica @mostlikelee

[mostlikelee]

@noahtalerman thanks for the heads up!

Just a note: customer-numa has a very technical team and is also really interested in FMA. It’ll be interesting to compare what technical teams find valuable in FMA versus what non-technical teams value.

[fleet-release]

With each new update,
Fleet-maintained apps now shine,
like stars in the cloud.

Apps like Zoom and Slack,
gleam brightly in the glass town,
ease for one and all.

Fleet savors each bite,
of its own dogfood, learning,
to better the flight.