Clarification of CI/CD limitations needed

[kristofferwebmind]

What type of issue is it? (Choose one - delete the others)

Wrong documentation

What article/section is this about?

(link here)

"Back Office Limitations

To ensure smooth execution of the Umbraco CI/CD Flow, it is highly recommended to adhere to a specific principle: refrain from making any alterations to the schema, except in the leftmost environment within the Umbraco Cloud back offices. The intention behind this principle is to prevent conflicts that could potentially arise due to simultaneous modifications made in different environments."

Describe the issue

The above text can be read as if the principle is to make schema changes directly in the backoffice of the cloud environment. The sentence "in the leftmost environment within the Umbraco Cloud back offices" is wrongfully stating that the environment in question is an environment on Umbraco Cloud when the leftmost environment in question where the schema changes should be made actually equates to the developer's local environment.

[sofietoft]

Thanks for reporting this @kristofferwebmind !

I do agree that it could sound like schema changes are made in the backoffice on a Cloud environment, even though the recommendation should indeed focus on the local environments 🤔
The section is called "Backoffice Limitations" though, so I'm wondering what this section is trying to say...

How about a rewrite to something like this:

To ensure smooth execution of the Umbraco CI/CD Flow, it is recommended to make schema changes in the leftmost environment. Ideally, changes should only be made in local development environments. The intention behind this principle is to prevent conflicts that could potentially arise due to simultaneous modifications made in different environments.

And then, instead of calling it "Backoffice limitations", it should be "Workflow limitations".

What do you think?

[kristofferwebmind]

Hi Sofie!

Yes, I agree with everything you are saying. The rewrite is great and communicates exactly what should be said. But it does raise the question why this is even in the docs under this chapter... Left to right is a general cloud principle, right? So it does not make sense to list this as a limitation at all... I didn't think of that aspect of it so now I don't know what to say... 😅 Makes you wonder what the actual limitation is and if we are losing track of that limitation by rewriting?

[sofietoft]

Hmmmm! VERY good point @kristofferwebmind !

Let me talk to those who wrote this guide. They should be able to provide us some more insight on this - hopefully 😁
I'll get back to you!

[sofietoft]

Alright, I've had a chat with Alina who wrote parts of these CI/CD docs, and we came up with a new rewrite:

Workflow considerations

To ensure smooth execution of the CI/CD Flow, it is recommended to make schema changes in the [leftmost environment](link to deployment workflow article). Ideally, this means the local development environment. Schema changes include changes made to Document Types, Data Types, Templates, and the like. The intention behind this principle is to prevent conflicts that could potentially arise due to simultaneous modifications made in different environments.

To add some more context to it:
The section was added because not many people are actually aware of the "left to right" deployment approach on Cloud 🙈 the support team often need to help people out of messes because of this, so that is why this "limitation" was mentioned in this context as well 😅

[kristofferwebmind]

Nice! :) Well done! #H5YR

[sofietoft]

I've made a PR with the changes. It'll go through an internal review, and then we'll publish it.
Thanks again for highlighting this and helping us making sure the Docs are as clear as possible 💪 MUCH appreciated!!