Process to Include Plugin on Community

Getting your plugin onto our community server https://community.mattermost.com is a valuable source of feedback. Whether you are a Core Committer or anyone from the community, we want you to get feedback to improve your plugin. However we must ensure that our community server remains stable for everyone. This document outlines the process of getting your plugin onto the community server. In the future, some of these steps will be required to get your plugin into the integrations marketplace (TBD). When you are ready to have your plugin start this process, ask in the ~Toolkit channel on the community server. The PM, or someone else from the integrations team will help you start the process.

Checklist 

Deploying to ci-extensions 

• Basic Code Review passed
• CI system setup to build master
• Has a compatible licence.

Deploying to ci-extensions-release 

• Complete code review by two core committers. One focused on security.
• QA pass
• PM/UX review
• Release created and CI system setup to build releases

Deploying to community.mattermost.com 

• QA pass on ci-extensions-release of the release to deploy.

Step Definitions 

Basic Code Review 

Basic code review of an experimental plugin involves a quick review by a core committer to verify that the plugin does what it says it does and to provide any guidance and feedback. To make it easier to provide feedback, a PR can be made that contains all the code of the plugin that isn’t the boilerplate from mattermost-plugin-starter-template.

• When you are ready for your plugin to start this process, post an introduction in the Integrations and Apps channel on the community server. E.g., “Hi, I have a plugin that I would like to get reviewed. It is called … It is designed to … Thanks for reviewing it!” Here is an example: https://community.mattermost.com/core/pl/6dci1ssexjrh9rmdzt4pdpb9zy

CI System Setup 

Setting up the CI system for your plugin will allow continuous testing of your master branch and releases on our testing servers. Master branch testing is done on https://ci-extensions.azure.k8s.mattermost.com/ and release testing is done on https://ci-extensions-release.azure.k8s.mattermost.com/

In order to set this up, we will need a URL where we can on a nightly basis, pull the latest master build. Once that exists you can make a request in the Integrations and Apps channel.

Compatible Licence 

Recommended Licences:

• Apache Licence 2.0
• MIT
• BSD 2-clause
• BSD 3-clause

More info

Complete code review 

A more through code review is performed before allowing a plugin on ci-extensions-release. This review works the same as the basic code review, but the developers performing the review will be more through. If the developer that performed the first review is available, they should be one of the reviewers. One of the reviewers should focus their review on the any security implications of the plugin.

QA pass 

QA pass involves getting a member of our QA team to take a look and verify the functionality advertised by your plugin.

Steps involved:

• Ensure all setup documentation needed is clear and can be successfully followed
• Dedicated instance or test account to access and test the third-party service, if applicable
• Functional testing has been done to ensure the integration works as expected
• For Plugins owned by Mattermost - Release testing is added to cover the main functionality of the plugin

PM/UX Review 

A PM/UX pass involves getting PM support in ironing out any user experience or UI issues with the plugin.

Steps involved:

• Create a one paragraph summary of the integration
• Document the main use cases into bullet form
• Review the primary use cases and run through them to ensure they are complete, clear and functional.
• Ensure there is documentation to support the plugin (may include having sufficient helper text in the plugin)
• Consider if there are any communication to other teams or users required as part of the rollout to our community server