LakeDrops Team Handbook¶

All team members have usernames on our various platforms which are [firstname][lastname], no spaces, no puctuation, all lowercase.

LakeDrops team members are aksed to use 2FA (second factor authentication) where ever possible.

Also, LakeDrops team member should use a password manager (we recommend KeepassXC) and never re-use any password anywhere. Instead, let the password manager create random password with high entropy and a length of 32 characters.

Emails¶

Every team member has an email address [firstname].[lastname]@lakedrops.com and the email signature should contain this content:

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[Firstname] [Lastname]
Drupal-Expert
[firstname].[lastname]@lakedrops.com | www.lakedrops.com
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[Optionally some social links] 
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LakeDrops GmbH & Co. KG
Am Breitenstein 27 | D-78244 Gottmadingen
Registergericht: Amtsgericht Freiburg i. Br. - HRA Nr. 705928
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Persönlich haftende Gesellschafterin: LakeDrops Verwaltungs GmbH
Registergericht: Amtsgericht Freiburg i. Br. – HRB Nr. 719703
Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Haas, Daniel Speicher
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How to use email¶

In general, we don't use emails a lot - or we don't use email at all. This is because with customers and business partners, we want to keep the communication in the issue system (see Gitlab below). With the team, we always communicate in NextCloud talk (see NextCloud below).

How to setup your email client¶

IMAP-Server: sslin.de
POP3-Server: sslin.de
SMTP-Server: sslout.de
Port for secure POP3: 995
Port for secure IMAP: 993
Port for secure SMTP: 465
Webmail
Change Email Settings

LakeDrops Auth¶

We do have a OpenID server for single-sign-on (SSO) at https://auth.lakedrops.com, however, this is currently only used to login to our website or to NextCloud.

Website¶

Our websites is at https://www.lakedrops.com and every team member has their profile on there. All content is originally written in English and translated into German and Spanish by DeepL automatically when saving or updating content. Before translations get published, they get reviewed by native speakers in the team.

The most important part of the website is the blog, and every team member is welcome to write blog posts mainly on topics around Drupal, DevOps and all the other services that LakeDrops provides.

NextCloud¶

Our central collaboration tool is available from https://cloud.lakedrops.com and we use that mainly for the following areas:

File sharing: all files of LakeDrops are on there and they can be synchronized locally by using the NC client.
Talk: this is where we chat and talk.
There is the #JourFix channel, which we use for topics that are potentially for the whole team.
There are other group channels, where different team members are included for several topics.
There can always be private channels between individual team members.
Contacts: this is our simple CRM with all contact and background information about people and companies
LakeDrops: address book with partners and customer
Accounts: address book with NC users and their details
Calendar: team members should keep their LakeDrops related schedule in their personal calendar. There is also a shared calendar called Vacation and Plan with company related schedules.
Deck: Kanban boards with task planning for everything that's not project related

GitLab¶

Our self-hosted GitLab instance can be found at https://gitlab.lakedrops.com and is being used for all our projects.

Note: SSO over LakeDrops auth doesn't work yet.

Please upload your SSH key at https://gitlab.lakedrops.com/-/profile/keys, so that you can checkout and push commits.

Mattermost¶

Our self-hosted Mattermost instance can be found at https://mattermost.lakedrops.com and is mainly being used for monitoring: each project has its own channel and other systems like GitLab, Alerta, Uptime Kuma, Healthchecks and others are sending status messages into these. So, by keeping an eye on Mattermost, team members should be up-to-date with all activity and get notified about comments, new issues, alerts and everything else.

Team members should authenticate with their GitLab account here.

Monitoring¶

Alerta¶

This can be found at https://alerta.lakedrops.com and team members should authenticate with their GitLab account here.

Uptime Kuma¶

The status of all hosts and websites can be found ar https://uptime.lakedrops.com/status/lakedrops

Healthchecks¶

This site is found at https://healthchecks.lakedrops.com and monitors all cronjobs on all hosts that LakeDrops manages.

Netdata¶

All LakeDrops managed hosts come with a Netdata agent that reports to the dashboard at https://app.netdata.cloud where all metrics about each host is visible. Alerts are being sent to Alerta.

OpenObserve¶

The logs from all hosts are collected in OpenObserve at https://logs.lakedrops.com where forensic analysis can be done when needed.

Time tracking¶

All LakeDrops specific activity is being tracked by team members at https://time.lakedrops.com, both for customer projects that are usually paid directly, but also for all internal and investment hours like these (they go all into the "customer" LakeDrops:

Backoffice: for admin and bookkeeping, etc.
Drupal Contribution (please also credit LakeDrops for all issues on drupal.org)
General: meetings, etc.
IT Operations: all about IT work including those where LakeDrops provides SaaS or hosting for clients
LakeDrops Tools: development and maintenance of LakeDrops tools, and other open source contributions
New Balls Please: client project which will turn into a SaaS business

When adding records to the system (ideally by live recording), the fields customer, project and activity are mandatory.

The description field should contain the issue reference (e.g. docker/l3d#95 in case of GitLab or drupal#3390327 in case of Drupal, for others please be specific) and a short description of what has been done, or at least the title of the issue.